I suppose it was in about 1978 that I went along to
the Milan Conservatoire to hear a concert by the Radio Orchestra which
should have begun with a Shostakovich work (Symphony no. 14, I think)
and Harold in Italy. Conductor, a Russian as yet unknown to me,
Vladimir Delman.
In the event the Shostakovich was not performed. The
Soviet artists’ agency had discovered at the last moment that two of
their singers had been booked to perform under a Russian emigré
conductor who had renounced his Soviet passport, settled in Italy and,
worse still, had Jewish blood in him. Their loyalty to the Communist
vision might never have survived the ordeal and they were ordered back
home. It was announced from the platform that Maestro Delman felt there
was insufficient time to prepare an alternative work and so the first
part of the concert, such as it was, consisted of the violist playing
a Berio sequenza. After the interval the orchestra assembled and a small,
stooping, white-haired man stepped out, batonless, blinked as though
the last thing he expected to find was an orchestra, and proceeded to
coax from the players a performance of Harold in Italy which, if sometimes
slow, was often revelatory in texture and phrasing, with the orchestra
playing far above its usual standard.
Vladimir Delman (Leningrad 1923-Milan 1994) had arrived
in Italy almost by chance in 1974, following his decision to leave the
Soviet Union (the story is told in the booklet). In the following years
he acquired a baton, a thick bushy white beard and slightly more girth.
He was conductor of the orchestra on this CD from 1986-1988, after which
he moved to the Milan RAI Symphony Orchestra, battling manfully against
the increasingly philistine attitude of the RAI to music in general.
It was such an open secret that the orchestras were to be disbanded,
maintaining only that in Turin, that the question was only that of "when",
not "whether". Meanwhile the orchestra of Naples went, the
choirs of Rome and Milan went and rumours flew. Players who left were
not replaced by fixed-contract players, just by temps booked on a concert-by-concert
basis. Under the circumstances it is remarkable that Delman managed
to obtain some fine performances and even to improve the general level
of the orchestra, which finally fell to the hatchet in 1993. And all
the time public money was being spent on the restructuring of the Teatro
del Verme (in which many years previously Toscanini had conducted the
première of Pagliacci but which was by then semi-derelict)
as a new home for the RAI orchestra! Delman then set about organising
the Milan Giuseppe Verdi Orchestra, in the first place practically a
youth orchestra, but died before very much had got done. The Giuseppe
Verdi Orchestra has now become, under Chailly, an established part of
Milanese musical life, and the rather enigmatic figure who founded it
has not been forgotten.
Hardships in the Soviet Union (including a period in
a concentration camp) had clearly left their psychological mark on Delman.
At times he could behave with an old-world courtliness; but nothing
could rid him of the idea that the artists’ room at the Conservatoire
was his personal room even when he was not conducting that evening,
and "intruders" could provoke frightful storms followed by
the lavish application of disinfectant in an attempt to make the room
inhabitable once again. He could be unpredictable at rehearsals, of
which he demanded a great many, and he looked far older than he really
was (almost as old as he does in the grotesque photograph which adorns
this CD). His forays into non-Russian operas were controversial and,
in the case of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, disastrous, but
many Italian critics held him to be the greatest living interpreter
of Tchaikovsky, and he was also felt to have a particular insight into
a range of romantic works by composers such as Berlioz and Mahler, and
among these works was Bruckner’s 9th.
Any assessment of Delman is going to run into an obvious
difficulty. How far could we truly assess the art of such pianists as
Rubinstein and Horowitz if our only recordings of them were played on
poor upright pianos in dry acoustics? Something of their greatness would
shine through, but the full range of their abilities would reach us
only fitfully. The Emilia Romagna orchestra is not as bad as I feared.
The secure and euphonious delivery of the great horn theme near the
beginning is reassuring. There are no out-and-out howlers though ensemble
sometimes goes awry, as in the stamping passages of the Scherzo (the
conductor’s interpretation only comes into focus in the reprise). The
strings are sweet-toned but lack power and are swamped by the brass
in forte passages (and the engineers have not tried to compensate).
Trumpet intonation is suspect at times. The acoustic is not dead, but
the reverberation is too short for Bruckner. But, if we want to know
how Delman conducted Bruckner 9, this is all we have. A trawl through
the RAI archives might locate alternative performances, but the problems
would remain. As far as I know Delman never did have the chance to realise
his interpretations with a really great orchestra, so we just don’t
know what the results might have been.
So what of Delman’s interpretation? Most other performances
I have to hand seem to agree on a first movement which comes in at about
24-and-a-half minutes, and this includes a late Giulini and a Celibidache
from 1969 (in those years his tempi were still relatively normal). In
general, the character of the music does not change a lot between
these different performances even if some move a little faster or slower.
With Delman the issue is not just that he stretches it out about three
minutes more (27’ 21"), it is that the music takes on a quite different
character. He uses the extra time to obtain a lot of subtle shading
and this is a very resigned Bruckner, left apparently numbed by the
powerful climaxes. The second subject material is almost becalmed, and
it is here that the differences between Delman and everyone else in
my experience are the greatest. It is as though he has never heard the
work in other hands and has in all innocence come to the conclusion
that the lines to be brought out of the texture as those of principal
melodic importance are different ones. There is a fairly general
consensus of opinion as to where the melodic lines lie and it is a strange
experience to hear a well-known work apparently recomposed. And yet,
strictly speaking, nothing in the score actually says that the others
are right and Delman wrong, the more so when his actual results are
extremely beautiful.
As I suggested above, some ragged ensemble prevents
us from appreciating fully the conductor’s stern interpretation of the
scherzo until after the rather secretive, will-o’-the-wisp trio. This
is, perhaps, his most "normal" movement. At 20’58" the
last movement would appear to be faster than many, but Delman’s complete
avoidance of gushing romantic expression in favour of much very intimate
phrasing actually makes it sound very slow. This is another case where
Delman seems to be reconstructing the score in complete ignorance of
how it is "usually" done and proceeding, like Walt Whitman’s
in his journey to the "unknown region" with "nor map
there nor guide", balancing and phrasing so many passages in strange
but perhaps wonderful ways so that we feel like strangers in a land
we thought we knew. That Delman himself was very much involved in the
performance is evident in another way – he was a prince among podium-grunters.
Things might have worked out differently for Delman.
While still a Soviet citizen (unfortunately the booklet tells this story
without giving the date) he was sent to London to conduct "The
Sleeping Beauty". In spite of the number of rehearsals he demanded
the orchestra (again, we are not told which) was so impressed that they
endeavoured to engage him immediately for more concerts. Great things
might have come of it. Alas, the Soviet artists’ agency insisted that
the orchestra should engage another conductor from their books (the
orchestra ended by engaging neither). Had he lived a little longer,
maybe with a sounder orchestral base, he might have become a cult figure.
He could become one yet, since the RAI archives include a lot of potential
material, including a filmed Tchaikovsky cycle. It remains to be seen
how much of this material is compromised, and how seriously, by orchestral
and technical standards.
Obviously I’m not recommending this to those who want
a basic Bruckner 9. I do think the conductor was an interesting and
maybe important figure and I hope my comments will enable you to decide
whether you want to investigate or not.
Christopher Howell
Recorded live April 1994,
location not given