In his
eloquent
obituary of Sir Colin Davis for Seen and Heard, Mark Berry has,
understandably, focused on Sir Colin’s work in the opera house
and on the concert platform. He was fortunate enough to see Davis ‘live’
on many occasions. However, many of us only experienced his art through
radio, television or recordings. Fortunately, Sir Colin has left us
a very substantial and high quality legacy of recordings. This short
article in no way purports to be a survey of his recordings but is merely
a brief overview.
It is, perhaps, worth starting by recalling the main posts that Sir
Colin held during his illustrious career because his recording career
was inextricably linked to most of those appointments:
- Sadlers Wells Opera: Chief Conductor (1960). Musical Director (1961-65)
- BBC Symphony Orchestra: Chief Conductor (1967-70). Principal Guest
Conductor (1971-75)
- Royal Opera House, Covent Garden: Musical Director (1971-86)
- Boston Symphony Orchestra: Principal Guest Conductor (1972-84)
- Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra: Chief Conductor (1983-93)
- Staatskapelle Dresden: Conductor Laureate (1990-2013)
- New York Philharmonic Orchestra: Principal Guest Conductor (1998-2003)
- London Symphony Orchestra: Principal Conductor (1995-2006). President
(2006-13)
Davis’s recording career began in the late 1950s. Many of his
earliest recordings were made for EMI, which recently issued a 6-CD
boxed set, ‘Sir Colin Davis - The Early Recordings’ (63989-2).
However, in the 1960s he became an exclusive Philips artist and made
many notable recordings for them including, of course, his first Berlioz
cycle with the LSO, which was a landmark series in so many ways. Several
operas were recorded by Philips during Davis’s time at the Royal
opera; these included a number of Mozart operas; a 1976
Tosca
(
review);
and the first - and so far only - recording of Tippett’s
The
Midsummer Marriage, a recording which subsequently migrated to Lyrita
(
review).
Concert pieces were not neglected either and from this period comes,
among many other things, a 1966
Messiah (
review).
Davis also made a number of recordings for Philips outside the UK, including
a 1974 Concertgebouw traversal of
Symphonie Fantastique, which
is still highly regarded (
review).
Also from Amsterdam came a wonderful, stylish set of Haydn’s ‘London’
Symphonies, recorded between 1975 and 1981. In Boston during 1975 and
1976 Davis made the first of three Sibelius symphony cycles that he
was to record and very fine it was. He later recorded the complete symphonies
twice with the LSO, first for BMG RCA (
review)
and later for LSO Live. Both of these LSO cycles also included
Kullervo.
During Sir Colin’s time with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
he recorded extensively with them for BMG RCA. From those years comes
a 1984
Messiah (
review).
There was also a cycle of the Brahms symphonies & concertos. Göran
Forsling had reservations (
review)
but Christopher Howell enjoyed it more (
review).
Another product of the Bavarian years was a live 1991 account of Verdi’s
Falstaff (
review).
From the same year comes a Mozart Requiem (
review).
There’s also what constitutes something of a rarity in Sir Colin’s
discography: music by Mahler in the shape of a recording of the Eighth
Symphony, no less, from 1996 (
review).
His studio recordings with the Staatskapelle Dresden included a splendid
1984 ‘Emperor’ Concerto with Arrau for Philips; some late
Mozart symphonies (
review);
and a complete Schubert symphony cycle (
review).
However, there have also been quite a number of live Dresden recordings
issued in recent years including a 1998 Berlioz
Te Deum (
review)
and Sir Colin’s second recording, from 2003, of Tippett’s
A Child of Our Time (
review).
Sir Colin’s work with the LSO after 1995 brought about a wonderful
Indian summer as far as recordings were concerned. There was some studio
work, such as their recording of Tippett’s
The Rose Lake
(
review).
Most of their recordings were for the orchestra’s own LSO Live
label, however, and the discography was extensive, including a third
recording of
Messiah, the third Sibelius cycle, a recently completed
Nielsen cycle, Britten’s
Peter Grimes (
review),
and James MacMillan’s shatteringly eloquent
St John Passion,
a work which I think I’m right in saying is dedicated to Davis
(
review).
There were also some very fine recordings of Elgar’s symphonies,
including Anthony Payne’s completion of the Third. If
The Dream
of Gerontius disappointed that was more a question of the
soloists rather than of Sir Colin’s conducting (
review).
However, his 2005 recording of Walton’s First Symphony is extremely
good (
review).
It is, surely, for his recordings of the music of Berlioz above all
else that Sir Colin Davis will be most warmly remembered. I think I
have every one of them, including a few made outside of his two LSO
series, and whenever I appraise a recording by another conductor - many
of which are very good - I find that time and again Davis sets the benchmark.
There have been many strong champions of Berlioz’s music but has
any other conductor done more for this composer or demonstrated such
empathy with and understanding of his output? If Davis had only recorded
his Philips cycle that would have been counted as a major achievement
- and we must not overlook some other recordings, such as his 1993 Vienna
recording of
Roméo et Juliette (
review).
However, in 2000 Davis embarked on a major series of concerts of Berlioz
with the LSO and the orchestra had the vision to record many of the
performances which, issued on LSO Live, formed the basis of a near-complete
second cycle. The recordings met with general acclaim and included such
gems as
Les Troyens (
review),
Roméo et Juliette (
review)
and
Symphonie Fantastique (
review).
The cycle isn’t quite complete: we must hope that somewhere in
the LSO archives there are performances of the
Te Deum,
Nuits
d’Été and the
Symphonie funèbre et
triomphale. One major gap has just been filled, however: only
recently a splendid new recording of the
Grande messe des morts
arrived for review. My review has already been submitted and I can assure
readers that the recording is a fitting, if now sadly posthumous, testament
to the career of one of the finest conductors of the post-war era.
Sir Colin’s work will surely live on through his many fine recordings.
Happily there is at least one more to come: a concert performance of
Weber’s opera
Der Freischütz, taped in 2012, is to
be issued by LSO Live in the next few weeks. That’s eagerly awaited
and we must hope that other new recordings await issue. Furthermore,
it would be particularly fitting if the BBC and LSO Live could cooperate
to issue some of Davis’s broadcasts on disc. One that comes to
mind straightaway is the performance of Beethoven’s
Missa Solemnis
from the 2011 Proms (
review).
Issuing that performance on CD would be just one way of celebrating
Sir Colin’s remarkable career.
John Quinn
