When this legendary
live performance first appeared in the
UK, on four Philips LPs, in March 1955
I was a schoolboy in short trousers,
the set cost well over £7, many workers’
weekly pay was not much more, and Mengelberg
was under the twin clouds of Nazi collaboration
and excessive romanticism. So it had
been known at first by reputation rather
than first-hand experience until successively
reappearing on various labels.
Ultimately Philips
reissued it on two CDs as a Philips
Duo (462-871-2PM2) which are currently
available. Unfortunately they cut an
already cut performance to fit the two
discs, dropping three numbers (the bass
recitative ‘Der Heiland fällt vor
seinem Vater nieder’; the chorus ‘Laßt
ihn, haltet, bindet nicht!’; and the
chorale ‘Wer hat dich so geschlagen’)
a total of 8’34". It is complete
on Naxos. One has the impression earlier
Philips reissues were taken from re-dubbings
of the 1952 LPs or their tape masters,
which presumably went out of copyright
in 2003. Naxos tell us they have used
Dutch LPs, so the same. However, listening
to the spacious sound one assumes that
Philips have returned to the original
Philips-Miller film, though they make
no claims in their booklet. They have
also left some film hiss and crackle,
particularly near the beginning. For
Naxos the original LPs have been used
as the source of this bright, clean
reissue on 3 CDs of everything Mengelberg
gave us, together with all five commercially
issued Mengelberg Bach orchestral recordings.
Hearing historical
recordings of the St Matthew Passion
is very much an interest of the moment
for we have just celebrated the 150th
anniversary of the first British hearing
of the Bach, with two Festival Hall
performances, an exhibition, and a scholarly
conference at the Royal Academy of Music.
In the nineteenth century this, along
with many other choral works, was treated
to the massive performance practice
given to Handel’s Messiah and
Mendelssohn’s Elijah. For example
Sir Henry Wood's account of his approach
to the St Matthew Passion (in
My Life of Music). For his Sheffield
Festival performance in 1908, Wood wanted
to do a more authentic version than
the Robert Franz edition then generally
given in the UK which added trumpets
and trombones, and used an English text
which was not faithful to the King James
Bible. But Wood's attempt at authenticity
produced a performance in which he used
a choir of three hundred, a very full
complement of strings and eight
woodwind to each part. Wood remarked
that all he did was to amplify Bach's
original orchestration. This was symptomatic
of the approach to Bach and Handel in
the days of big choirs and choral festivals.
Although not on that
scale, later performances and early
recordings reflected that philosophy,
notably heard in the celebrated, idiosyncratic,
but most rewarding account conducted
by Vaughan Williams in 1958 (Pearl GEMS
0079) a view he had developed in performances
throughout the inter-war years. Later,
for British audiences came the Elgar-Atkins
edition which introduced English words
from the King James Bible, and was first
heard at the Three Choirs Festival in
1911. We may put it in perspective by
reference to the splendid reissue on
Dutton (2CDAX 2005) of the celebrated
1947-8 Decca recording featuring Kathleen
Ferrier and the Bach Choir, once on
an astounding 42 78 sides, which many
readers will have long cherished in
its reissue on three Ace of Clubs LPs.
The German nineteenth
century historical performance tradition
in this work survives in a broadcast
conducted by Hans Weisbach preserved
on 78rpm acetates and currently available
on Preiser 9099, and a 1941 wartime
broadcast from St Thomas’s, Leipzig,
by Günther Ramin (with Erb, Hüsch
and Lemnitz) once on 31 78 sides, which,
distressingly, we are told was cut to
remove all Jewish references. It was
available on CD (if you can find it)
on Calig 50859/60. Polydor (67951-68S)
also once had a commercial version conducted
by Bruno Kittel with his own choir and
the Berlin Philharmonic on 37 sides
though possibly never transferred to
CD. The other 78 version, known by repute
though not widely heard outside the
USA was that of a live performance in
Boston – said to be the first complete
performance in Boston - conducted by
Koussevitsky in 1937 and issued by Victor
on a weighty 53 sides. Once on LP (Adlonni
AH 202/3) it is currently available
on three Rockport Recordings CDs (RR
5012/4), and although criticised by
some it is worth exploring for Keith
Faulkner’s honey-toned Christus. Later
came Furtwängler’s 1954 EMI recording
(CHS 5 65509-2). This tradition had
its final apotheosis in Klemperer’s
celebrated EMI recording in 1961, notable
not only for superb playing and choral
singing, but for a remarkable solo line-up
and Klemperer’s monolithic vision.
In Amsterdam Mengelberg
had long conducted an annual performance
of the Matthew Passion, a tradition
he had started in 1899. The earliest
surviving recorded trace of this tradition
comes from acetates dating from 1936
and issued on one CD by the late Michael
G Thomas on his Archive Documents label
(ADCD 109). Three years later this performance,
from 2 April 1939, was recorded live
by Dutch Radio using the Philips-Miller
Optical Recording system. (For details
of the system and its application to
this work see website http://www.soundfountain.com/amb/phmil.html.)
The outbreak of war five months later
meant the recording was consigned to
a basement and forgotten, not coming
to life again until they were played
in front of an invited audience in the
small hall at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam
in 1952, and subsequently issued on
LPs.
Mengelberg’s is a great
performance based on years of study
and performance, with leading soloists,
notably the tenor Karl Erb as the Evangelist
but also soprano Jo Vincent and the
bass Willem Ravelli as Jesus. This is
an emotional and romantic portrayal
by artists who clearly believed in it
and were caught up in the sacred drama.
The actual sound of the soloists is
remarkably good, they are beautifully
caught on the wing. The choir is passionate,
doubtless sensing the ending of an era,
remarkably fervent and has considerable
impact but in very loud passages tends
to distortion and taken on a glassy
hard sound, the one area where I might
marginally prefer the Philips reissue.
Mengelberg uses harpsichord continuo
and his player, Johannes den Hertog,
has a curiously massive-sounding instrument
occasionally not unlike a piano.
This is one of the
great monuments of the recorded literature:
you accept it for what it is: glory
in the passionate and romantic telling
of the story, and thank God it has come
down to us. Curiously, for once I can
recommend the Philips on two discs as
the cheaper option if you cannot afford
the Naxos!
The fillers for Naxos,
on 3 discs, are a different kettle of
fish. Mengelberg’s massive, scoopy,
1930s performances of orchestral works
by Bach - the booklet claims them to
be the complete Mengelberg commercial
recordings, dating from 1929 to 1938
– are not to everyone’s taste these
days, and I suspect you will not often
return to them, though if you want them
they are unlikely to be better done,
and it is fascinating to hear Mahler’s
version of the ‘Air’ from Suite No 3,
portamenti and all. But the St Matthew
Passion is the thing, an astonishing
survival of a cherishable tradition,
bringing unique insights and the lifetime’s
experience of a great conductor, played
and sung by some of the leading performers
of their day. Wonderful.
Lewis Foreman
see also review
by Jonathan Woolf
Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York 