Felix MENDELSSOHN (1809-1847)
Hebrides
Overture (Fingal’s Cave), Op.26 (1830, 1832) [10:00]
Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt
(Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage), Overture, Op.27 (1828, 1834) [12:02]
Die schöne Melusine
(The Fair Melusine) Overture, Op.32 (1833-35) [11:24]
Ruy Blas
Overture, Op.95 (1839, 1844) [7:46]
Wiener Philharmoniker/Carl Schuricht
rec. 26 April 1954, Grosser Saal, Musikverein, Vienna. ADD/mono
Franz SCHUBERT (1797-1828)
Rosamunde, D797 (Incidental music to Helmina von Chézy’s play) (1823, from earlier
material):
Overture (Die Zauberharfe, D644) [9:50]
Entr’acte No.3 – Andantino [6:27]
Ballet Music No.1 [5:53]
Ballet Music No.2 [6:13]
Wiener Philharmoniker/Pierre Monteux
rec. 25 November 1957, Sofiensaal, Vienna. ADD/stereo
ELOQUENCE 4824955
[69:30]
The Australian arm of Decca and DG continues to delight us with some fine
reissues. As I write up this review, for example, I’m enjoying their
reissue of Richard Bonynge’s LSO recording of Adam’s Le Diable à quatre and some shorter pieces (4828603 –
review). That’s a fine successor to their reissue of the same forces in Giselle, reissued in 2007 –
review.
Those are both in 1960s stereo sound and, while they couldn’t be mistaken
for modern DDD, they require little tolerance. The Mendelssohn overtures
date from 1954 and are in mono, while the Schubert comes from only slightly
later, in early stereo, so this album, inevitably, requires a deal more
tolerance from the modern listener. On the other hand, it’s possible still
to enjoy recordings of this era, as in the case of Anatole Fistoulari’s Swan Lake and excerpts from The Nutcracker, dating from
1952 and 1951 respectively, which Jonathan Woolf thought presented in ‘the
best possible (mono) light’ –
review.
I would be a little less forgiving of the thin sound of that recording,
but I completely agree that the performances were well worth reissuing.
Collections of overtures, by Mendelssohn or whoever, are far less popular
now than they were. There’s an album from Claudio Abbado with the LSO,
released in 1988 (DG 4231042, the same four as from Schuricht, plus the Midsummer Night’s Dream overture, Harmoniemusik and the
Trumpet Overture, available for around £8.50). These performances are also
included in DG’s very worthwhile budget-price 4-CD set of the five
symphonies and seven overtures (4714672).
The overtures Ruy Blas, Calm Sea and Hebrides,
plus the complete Midsummer Night’s Dream music, also feature as
part of Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s LSO Live series of recordings of the
Mendelssohn symphonies, now collected as a set (LSO0826, 4 SACDs + blu-ray
audio, around £24 or download from
hyperion-records.co.uk
for £12/£18, 16-/24-bit). Those recordings have met with general approval
here and elsewhere, including a Recording of the Month accolade from David
Barker for Symphony No.3 and The Hebrides (with Schumann Piano
Concerto –
review).
The most complete set of recent years, however, comes from Edward Gardner
as part of his series of recordings of Mendelssohn with the City of
Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (Chandos CHSA5235 –
review). That collection includes Schuricht’s four plus St Paul, Athalie, Midsummer Night’s Dream and the Trumpet
Overture: all that I could add to my colleague’s praise of that, as heard
in 24/96 sound from
chandos.net,
in
Summer 2019/2
was to echo it. Listening to that recording again only confirms that
opinion.
Clearly, Schuricht in 1954 mono, cannot hope to compete sound-wise with
Abbado or Gardner, but the conductor had a special penchant for
Mendelssohn, and this recording achieved something like legendary status in
its time. There are also some off-air recordings of his Mendelssohn from
Stuttgart on Hänssler (HAEN93155), but these Decca recordings are the ones
to have. The Vienna Philharmonic are at their best, and the recording still
sounds much more than bearable. The Eloquence reissue is well worth its
modest price for these alone, especially bearing in mind that the
Mendelssohn LP cost 36/5½ when first released on LXT2961 (£1.83, but
equivalent to at least £50 today).
Gardner makes the music a tad more exciting than Schuricht, with tempos
typically a shade faster. The difference is most marked in Melusine, where he knocks a whole minute off the latter’s 11:24.
That doesn’t mean that Schuricht is too slow – the extra time which he
allows makes this especially charming.
Schubert’s Rosamunde music is the exception in that the rest of
his theatre music is mostly forgotten. Though labelled as for the play of
that name, it was largely cobbled together from earlier compositions: the
overture, sometimes given the title Die Zauberharfe, came from his
opera Alfonso und Estrella. The incidental music was composed at
the same time as the ‘Unfinished’ Symphony; Entr’acte No.1 has sometimes
been pressed into service as the putative finale of that work. In the hands
of Sir Charles Mackerras in his recording of the Newboult reconstructed
finished ‘Unfinished’, with the Symphony of the Age of Enlightenment, it
receives a performance that almost convinces me of the theory (Erato
Veritas 5618062, Symphonies Nos. 5, 8 and 9, download only, around £12 in
lossless).
It’s a shame that Pierre Monteux didn’t include that Entr’acte. His
recording offers the Overture, here labelled Zauberharfe,
Entr’acte 3 and Ballet Music 1 - its first CD release on Decca – and 2. The
Overture receives a fine performance, with close attention to the dotted
rhythms required in the score, and the other excerpts are also conducted
convincingly. Trevor Harvey, reviewing the original release, on RCA,
thought the Entr’acte a little too sentimentalised, preferring Szell, whose
recording, also coupled with Mendelssohn, was released around the same
time. My own preference is exactly the oppositive: Szell is a little too
brusque for me in Schubert and Mendelssohn – I owned his recording of the latter when it was
released later on CBS Classics – whereas Monteux here is ethereal, with
shades of the heart-stopping slow movement of Schubert’s String Quintet in
C.
Though made in stereo, the Monteux recordings remain a little thin, but
more than tolerable. Rather oddly, the booklet claims a release on the
lower-price Decca SPA label as the first outing for the Schubert. In fact,
it was one of a number of RCA releases made by Decca engineers and
subsequently reissued by them after the partnership was dissolved. Monteux’s
1958 LSO recording of Scheherazade, another result of that
collaboration, was also first released on RCA and subsequently by Decca on
their Weekend label and later on Eloquence 4808899. Some dealers still have
copies of the latter and there’s a download release on 4501322 – well worth
acquiring, albeit that both are now much more expensive than the Weekend
release when it cost £4.99. But don’t forget the Ansermet Scheherazade, of roughly the same vintage (Beulah 1PS52, with
Ravel and Debussy –
Autumn 2019/1,
or 1PDR15, with Easter Festival Overture, etc.: Reissue of the
Month –
DL News 2015/7).
Would I consider the new Mendelssohn and Schubert release as well worth
obtaining as those other Decca vintage recordings? Overall, the answer has
to be in the affirmative, for the vintage quality of the performances and
the perfectly tolerable sound. Only those who insist on the latest hi-res
recordings need steer clear.
Brian Wilson
Previous review:
Jonathan Woolf
