In big bold-faced type,
the headline of the program notes challenges
the very existence of this "new"
- see recording date! - version of Beethoven’s
Ninth by asking the sixty-four-dollar
rhetorical question: "Why Yet Another
Recording?"
I was impishly tempted
to type the words: "Why Indeed?"
and submit them as my entire review;
I assure you, it would have been perfectly
adequate.
But something more
is required of our reviewers than snide
one-liners, and after some reflection
and another three or four listens, I
decided that this very curious issue
is not without interest.
First of all, what/where
is "Kansai, Osaka"? Well,
Kansai is the official designation of
a region or prefecture that contains
three of Japan’s larger cities: Osaka,
Kobe and Kyoto. Whether the Kansai Philharmonic
is a training ensemble for the larger
and more prestigious Osaka Philharmonic,
the notes do not tell us, but they perform
in the same venue: Osaka Symphony Hall,
an acoustically very "live"
auditorium, built during the early 1980s,
and patterned – on the inside, at least
– after Vienna’s noble-sounding Singverein.
The notes do not tell
us how large the Kansai outfit is, nor
do they contain a photo so we can judge
visually. These two omissions, along
with the poker-faced academic codswallop
that passes for program notes, may be
taken as clues, I think, that everyone
involved in producing and marketing
this CD wanted desperately to banish
the word "provincial" from
all listeners’ vocabularies, but I fear
their efforts have back-fired.
In a recording from
such a little-known orchestra and conductor,
it’s the annotator’s job to convince
us – assuming we’ve somehow acquired
this album, and I cannot imagine many
consumers actually paying cash for it,
unless it’s being offered at a rock-bottom
price – that it’s "special"
and worthy of respect on some grounds
beyond the quality-of-interpretation.
No disrespect intended, but even the
rawest neophyte record-buyer, weighing
this CD in one hand and a CD by, say,
the Berlin Philharmonic in the other,
isn’t likely to gamble on the Japanese
home-boys.
But Wolfgang Teubner’s
annotations aren’t likely to persuade;
instead, by copping an attitude that
combines special pleading with chip-on-the-shoulder
academic dogmatism, they muddy the waters
frightfully. Herr Professor lectures
and harangues us in such a way as to
drain us of good will toward the performance
itself before we’ve even heard it.
The gist of Teubner’s
argument, insofar as he has one,
is centered on the fact that conductor
Bünte spent time - we’re not told
how much - communing with the "first
version of the work from the manuscript
in the Berlin State Library". The
assumption we’re supposed to make is
that this recording provides numerous
Urtext Revelations (What, Roger Norrington
missed something?), but after wagging
his finger at "the entrenched performance
conventions" that now encrust the
score like barnacles, he only cites
two specific instances of Restored Probity.
Firstly, there’s the
unwritten appoggiatura in the middle
of the bass’s stentorian "O
Freunde!" (bar 135). Teubner
castigates ten generations of performers
for ad-libbing that fermata. Of course,
in the preceding paragraph, he reminds
us that Beethoven was stone-deaf when
he composed the Ninth and couldn’t
write well for the human voice even
before he lost his hearing. So isn’t
it at least possible that if
Beethoven had heard that melodramatic,
slightly ominous inflection during the
rehearsals he might have said: "Hey,
that sounds cool – let’s leave it in!"
Admittedly, it’s been
42 years since my last college German
class, but after reading this, I walked
around the house for about twenty minutes,
muttering the word "Freunde"
with every inflection I could think
of short of gibberish, and concluded
that, even at a soft conversational
level, it’s almost impossible to say
the word without putting some kind of
little stress in there. Mr. Yokata,
the bass in this recording, manages
to do it, but he sounds uncomfortable
and the phrasing sounds forced. Also
– while I have no wish to come down
too hard on this aspect of the
performance -- it does makes
a difference that he’s singing with
a discernable Japanese accent. I honestly
don’t think the Phantom Phermata is
a Big Deal, either way.
Herr Teubner also takes
grave offense at "the march music
before the tenor entry ‘Froh, froh,
wie seine Sonnen’…", claiming
that "it was not placed there by
Beethoven, so that we always hear some
30 bars too many at that point."
I’d like more information as to who’s
suspected of "placing" them
there and why and when they were tacked
on; my copy of the score has them and
it’s based on a 19th Century
edition. By excising those egregious
30 bars Maestro Bünte makes the
passage sound more urgent, true, but
also very, very abrupt. I rather like
the more expansive treatment, so absent
more information I can’t beat the drums
too loudly in favor of this revision.
In his next sentence,
alas, Herr Teubner takes the Great Cop-Out:
"It would exceed the scope of this
introduction to enumerate all the other
deviations. Suffice it to say that the
present recording follows the original
manuscript more closely than has been
the case in past ones."
ALL "past
ones", or just some? That casual
reluctance toward "enumerating
the deviations" rather left me
in the lurch. A few generalities would
have helped me decide whether the extensive
list I made of things that sounded "different"
in this version were the result of conductorial
insight, the number and seating plan
of the sectional personnel, or the vagaries
of microphone placement by the recording
engineers.
Oddly enough, though
- for a conductor whose quest for Authenticity
led him to risk his eyesight trying
to decipher the composer’s hen-scratches
- Maestro Bünte’s tempi
throughout are fairly middle-of-the-road
– his revisionism doesn’t extend to
those startling extremes of metronomics
that made Norrginton’s "restoration"
sound either revelatory or preposterous,
depending on whether you regarded Sir
Roger as a serious conductor or just
an opportunistic, fussy pedant who was
clever enough to find a gimmick that
would jump-start his previously lackluster
career …
Thank God the whole
matter of Ye Olde Authentick Instruments
doesn’t even come up for discussion!
Anyone who seriously contends that Beethoven
would have preferred the puny,
flat-beer clunk of a piano-forte
to the rich, thundering power of a gigantic
Bösendorfer should probably visit
an audiologist without delay…
Ohkie-dohkie, then,
what do we have once we get beyond Herr
Teubner’s confusing and strident program
notes?
A damn good Beethoven’s
Ninth, actually. No one would
mistake the Kansai ensemble for the
Vienna Philharmonic, but they sound
like a youthful, dedicated bunch of
players and there’s a palpable sense
of commitment in every bar. Whether
he’s doing it because he saw it that
way in the manuscript or not, Maestro
Bünte illuminates many overly-familiar
passages by bringing forward the woodwinds
and softening the horns, imparting a
lovely sense of buoyancy to their lines;
I was especially taken by how effective
this was in the closing pages of Movement
I, which emerge with colors very different
from the monolithic iron-gray sound
we usually hear at that point.
I rather like my Ninth’s
to have thunderous timpani, but for
some listeners the Kansai drummer, who
must have wrists of steel, will surely
sound too aggressive too much of the
time. Perhaps the manuscript has a little
note scrawled in the margins: "Achtung!
The timpanist should play very loudly
and without much subtlety for the entire
duration of this piece!"
"Loud" and
"unsubtle" also describes
the sonics, which are surgically clear
and always in-your-face, but without
much warmth or hall ambience.
If Bella Musica is
charging full price for this release,
it will probably sink without a trace
because of the sheer annihilating prestige
of the competition. Nor can I recommend
it as anyone’s first choice among the
forest of Ninths available
to the consumer. But if you find it
discounted or remaindered, go ahead
and grab a copy. It’s a refreshingly
different "take" on a work
that’s become so routine it has largely
lost its power to amaze, if not
to move, the listener. Perhaps the highest
compliment I can pay to Maestro Bünte
and his stalwart band is to say that
at the very least, their performance
made me sit up and take notice of this
astounding work. I felt at least a dim
reverberation of the impact it must
have had on the audience that heard
it for the first time, on May 7, 1824
William R. Trotter
Orchestra and Chorus of the Kansai Philharmonic,
Osaka/Carl-Auguste Bünte 
