Victor HERBERT (1859-1924)
Cello Concerto No 1, Op. 8 (1884) [25:28]
Cello concerto No 2, Op. 30 (1894) [22:33]
Irish Rhapsody for Grand Orchestra (1892) [15:58]
Mark Kosower (cello)
Ulster Orchestra/JoAnn Falletta
rec. Ulster Hall, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 27-29 April 2015
NAXOS 8.573517 [64:00]
Victor Herbert is one of those composers who hovers on the
fringes of the repertoire – known principally for light operetta and
for his second cello concerto. He was born in Dublin but moved first to London
and then to Stuttgart at an early age, after his widowed mother married a
German doctor. His education focused on his obvious musical gifts and he learnt
the piano, flute and piccolo, taking up the cello at the age of fifteen. From
around 1877 he toured central Europe as a cellist, returning to Stuttgart
in 1881 and taking up a solo position with the Würtemburg Court Orchestra.
Herbert and his wife emigrated to the US in 1886 and here he was lionised
as a cellist, conductor and composer.
In spite of speaking with a pronounced German accent Herbert traded on his
Irishness - there was a large diaspora of Irish immigrants in New York - and,
emphasising this, the Irish Rhapsody on the present disc is his quite
successful attempt to string together a series of then-popular Irish melodies
with, as the booklet writer puts it, “a display of sturdy German contrapuntal
expertise”. JoAnn Falletta and the Ulster Orchestra give this an enjoyable
performance but, for most potential buyers, the two cello concertos will be
the draw.
The Cello Concerto No. 1 was composed in 1884 and first performed by the composer
in Stuttgart shortly before he emigrated to the U.S. For many years it survived
only in manuscript and, after Herbert’s own performances ceased, it
fell into oblivion until it was rescued and recorded for the first time in
1986 by Lynn Harrell. It has since been published but this Naxos CD is the
only other recording of it I have been able to find. It’s a fairly slight
work. The first movement has some similarities of character with the Sullivan
concerto (of 1866) and sounds like music from the middle of the nineteenth
century rather than later. The second movement is more memorable, with a lovely
yearning theme framing a central scherzo section. The last movement is a virtuosic
polonaise which succumbs to note-spinning in places but manages to stick in
the mind.
Kosower’s performance is very fine. In many respects he sounds similar
to Harrell and switching between the two initially reveals no major differences
of approach or tone. That said there are several subtle but telling differences.
Harrell’s technique is marginally preferable - a slightly more characterful
tone with tasteful touches of portamento. He also varies the tempo to a greater
extent and this makes the music sound more interesting – especially
during the first movement duet between the cello and the orchestral harp,
where the effect is magical, and moments like this lift the music above the
relatively commonplace. Both soloists play their own cadenzas in the first
movement and there is little to choose between them. Harrell’s contains
a little more extended rhetoric and variety and (together with greater variations
of tempo elsewhere) is responsible for Harrell taking 12:26 for the first
movement by comparison with Kosower’s 11:18. The slow movements are
equally fine. Speeds in the finale are very similar but, once again, Harrell
tends to vary the tempo more and Kosower’s performance tends to chug
along fairly solidly by comparison.
The Ulster musicians provide good support but the Academy of St Martin’s
sounds the more refined orchestra. Both recordings are good with about the
right amount of reverberation. Harrell is well integrated into the plane of
the orchestra whereas the Naxos recording tends to put Kosower in the spotlight
– which is fine except where this tends to capture the occasional grunt
from the soloist. On balance I marginally preferred the Decca recording and
performance but it is a close-run thing.
The Cello Concerto No. 2 dates from 1894. It marks quite an advance on the
first concerto and it is also shorter and more tightly constructed –
very much according to the same plan as the first concerto of Saint-Saëns,
with which it bears many similarities. The concerto starts with a big, memorable
theme to which all the subsequent themes are related. We get a Lento
bridging passage to a lovely Andante Tranquillo slow central movement
and then we are back to a virtuoso finale based on the opening theme of the
first movement. This, of course, is the Herbert concerto that is reputed to
have inspired Dvorak to have his second go at writing a cello concerto (he
had never got around to orchestrating his first effort of 1865). In fact it
may simply be that Herbert’s work demonstrated to Dvorak that it was
perfectly possible to use a big orchestra without masking the soloist.
After Dvorak’s great concerto appeared, Herbert’s work suffered
by comparison. Tully Potter’s booklet note suggests that it was forgotten
until Julian Lloyd Webber revived it in the mid-1980s but, in fact, it never
disappeared completely from the repertoire and there is a venerable old performance
from 1957 on Mercury by Georges Miquelle, supported by the Eastman Rochester
Orchestra under Howard Hanson, to prove it. These days, apart from the Harrell
and Kosower performances we also have Lloyd-Webber’s 1986 performance
(coupled with the Sullivan concerto), a newer one by Gautier Capucon (review)
and versions by James Kreger (review)
and Yo-Yo Ma - all coupled with the Dvorak second concerto. The Miquelle performance
has long been a favourite of mine and is still available – now also
on Naxos (download only). The old Mercury single microphone recording technique
produced results that still sound astonishingly good – even in the (usually
disastrous) form of electronically re-processed stereo. Ma’s performance,
with the New York Philharmonic under Kurt Masur, came out in 1995 and was
very well-received so I decided to compare Kosower with both Ma and Miquelle.
As with the comparison between Harrell and Kosower all three cellists sound
strikingly similar in tone – with Kosower and Miquelle barely distinguishable
in places. In fact I could only identify the Miquelle performance by the slight
raggedness in the string sound of the older recording. Ma has a slightly greater
rasp to his sound and, of the three, Kosower tends to play with most legato.
Kosower’s orchestral soundstage is, as with the first concerto, recessed
behind the soloist with Miquelle’s less so. Like Harrell, Ma is more
in the plane of the orchestra and there is a better stereo spread and slightly
more detail in his recording. Timings suggest that the first movements are
very similar. Whilst this is true it masks the fact that there is greater
variation of speed in Ma’s performance.
| I | II | III | |
| Ma | 8:14 | 6:49 | 5:39 |
| Kosower | 8.12 | 7.35 | 6.44 |
| Miquelle | 8.13 | 8.17 | 6.35 |
The main differences are in the middle and last movements. Like Harrell, Ma
is slightly more characterful than Kosower – but he doesn’t have
it all his own way. Kosower pulls the music back a little more and acquits
himself extremely well with some especially lovely hushed playing in the slow
movement. Miquelle achieves much the same but slowing to a greater extent.
Here it is also interesting to compare the orchestral strings - the Ulster
orchestra has the purer sound but the New York Philharmonic has the greater
intensity and variety. In the last movement Miquelle and Kosower adopt similar
speeds but, as in the slow movement, Kosower tends to pull back slightly more.
Ma and Masur set off faster and maintain the momentum – with some very
fast and accurate virtuoso playing from the soloist in the scampering passage
towards the end.
In the final analysis these are all splendid performances and recordings and,
given the similarities, it is difficult to go wrong with any of them, although
I suppose the old Mercury recording must now yield to the newer ones. Also
I feel that Ma, like Harrell, is just that little bit more characterful than
Kosower. On the other hand your choice may be dictated by the choice of coupling
or your budget - Harrell’s disc will set you back 2-3 times as much
as Kosower’s. In any event this new Naxos disc of concertos that should
be better known is very acceptable indeed at budget price.
Bob Stevenson
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