I have a feeling that
Scherchen’s 1958 Requiem may have been
misjudged. Or, to put it another way,
the qualities that made it seem so unsympathetic
to some can, in a good transfer, give
it a richer sense of personality and
occasion, a deeper transaction with
Berlioz’s blazing genius. That said
it will still strike many as a lost
cause. Tempi are often at the heart
of the controversy with Scherchen and
that’s as true of his Berlioz as much
as it is of.his Bach Orchestral Suites
– here the performance of the Requiem
spills out onto two discs.
Certainly it needs
to be taken on highly personalised terms.
The latest incarnation by Tahra has
improved on the old Vox/Vega/Westminster
pressings by virtue of greater clarity
and immediacy; the recording can still
be distant and somewhat opaque in places
– Les Invalides was not an easy space
in which to record – but it’s been somewhat
ameliorated here, which is very much
to the benefit of the performance. Even
the occasionally problematic stereo
balances can be swept up in the grandeur
of the interpretation.
Weighty, serious and
with noble sonorousness, Scherchen’s
Berlioz is not for those to whom Fournet,
Munch, Beecham and Davis are lodestars
in this work. The opening movement actually
put me in mind of the elderly Celibidache’s
Bach but in the Dies Irae we
get some shuddering strings, well controlled
and projected lower men’s voices, and
a genuine sense of Scherchen’s absolute
commitment to the work. I can’t help
but feel that the static Quid sum
miser is part of his greater architectural
schema, though it’s not one to which
I happen to be especially sympathetic.
No one wants to judge performances by
the stopwatch but there was seemingly
a French consensus between such as Fournet,
whose first ever recording of the work
in Wartime I reviewed (on Malibran)
and Munch (Boston 1959) to take the
Rex tremendae at 5.40 – and not
Scherchen’s bar-distending 6.58.
What Scherchen does
so well is cumulative power and grandeur
and a palpable sense of spiritual commitment,
though it’s always one that equates
slowness of tempo with gravity of feeling.
The gravely etched bass line is part
of a marmoreal approach to the Offertorium
that lasts all of 11.13 (compare Fournet
and Munch who agree on a mean of 6.23,
a truly exceptional difference). But
Scherchen does have Jean Giraudeau in
the Sanctus and his voice is caressing,
fragile, boyish and otherworldly in
its employment of a typically French
head voice. I admit to being very partial
to him and his raptness has a beauty
all its own. The final Agnus Dei
needless to say lasts a Brucknerian
15.33 – Fournet and Munch are in absolute
tempo agreement as to 11.55 – but Scherchen’s
apartness from a perceived French tradition
in this work brings other gravities
and perceptions.
The leading contenders
for performances of around that time
(and now) would include the ones already
mentioned – I strongly recommend the
Fournet with Georges Jouatte
despite the problematic Parisian
acoustic, though the later Munch with
Leopold Simoneau is a central recommendation
– and the live Beecham from 1959 with
Richard Lewis now on BBC Legends, which
is superb.
Jonathan Woolf
Jean Giraudeau (tenor) 
