The BBC continues
its good reclamation work in broadcast Hess material. The earliest
recording is the Schumann, which dates from 1950. Hess’s 1938
commercial recording of Carnaval has been long admired
and its most recent incarnation on Naxos, along with her other
pre-War Schumann recordings, is special.
Her visit to the
BBC studios produced a performance that doesn’t differ materially
in most respects from what we know of her earlier playing. Naturally,
as with all great players, there are minor differences – chord
weighting, voice leading, a certain degree of pedalling as well.
But her conception remains as consistently illuminating and
perceptive, as wholly musical and free of artifice as ever it
was. One would only point to a couple of details to illuminate
the way in which Hess had rethought detail – or maybe it would
be more judicious to say that she had rethought detail on that
particular broadcast. Eusebius does however show a tightening
up of tempo and also therefore in its relationship to the preceding
Valse noble and to Florestan with which it is
explicitly contrasted. In her BBC broadcast Hess deliberately
strips back the overt romanticism of her 1938 performance to
present something somewhat more linear, less heavily chorded,
less mellowly pedalled; it unfolds therefore with a somewhat
clearer-eyed strength. In these small particularities we can
follow, as far as is possible, Hess’s lifelong association with
Schumann and with Carnaval in particular.
The Bach session
from 1950 shows us Hess in fine, communicative and intensely
human form. The Prelude in G is played with distinction, exuding
a rapt spirituality devoid of glamour. And the English Suite
in A minor is similarly engaged and engaging. A few split notes
and the like are of little account when the playing is so honest
and buoyant. As one might expect the Sarabande is laid
out with reserves of feeling and both Bourrées are full
of the kind of dedicated élan that Hess could produce when not
fettered by recording restraints – or fears of them.
The last item I
was rather dreading. The Haydn was her final public performance
of anything, anywhere. Having long ago internalised Marian McKenna’s
Hess biography and the desperate final details of Hess’s decline
I was expecting the worst. Booklet annotator Jeremy Siepmann
quotes a passage from the biography regarding the BBC engineer’s
splicing together the performance to make it acceptable for
broadcast. This comment was actually made by Hess’s niece Beryl
Davis in an interview in 1970. It’s well known that an earlier
Schubert broadcast – which is still extant – was deeply depressing;
we have Howard Ferguson’s testimony on that score, as he regularly
turned the pages for Hess - as he does on this Haydn broadcast.
The performance of the Haydn is rather heavy and a touch idiosyncratic
– Hess divests the opening theme of a few notes - and in the
finale reluctant to get airborne. That said it’s not as disastrous
as I’d been expecting; if the BBC scissors really did get to
work on it between recording and transmission then they did
a good job. It would be intriguing to know just how the Schubert
B minor sounds.
There’s some tape
hiss on the Schumann but it’s otherwise in very presentable studio
sound. The Bach is slightly boxy but again of little account.
It’s a matter of great pleasure that so much live and broadcast
material has been issued by APR and the BBC of late. Long may
that continue. Now let’s have all of Hess’s concerto collaborations
with Boult.
Jonathan Woolf
Myra Hess (piano)
