We know Barbirolli’s symphonic Brahms best
from his 1966-67 Vienna cycle. That was a rather enervated quartet
of performances by common consent though there were rewarding
things about it. But he did record the last two symphonies with
the Hallé and made a fine New York 78 set of the Second.
It’s no great surprise
then to find that this live 1954 Proms performance of the C
minor is altogether a more lithe, vital and convincing document
than the one with the Vienna Philharmonic made over a decade
later. Tempo transitions are managed more effectively and the
directional curve of the music making is very much tensile and
determined. In fact it displays an urgency pretty much missing
from that later performance and indeed from the studio recording
that Furtwängler made in Vienna seven years previously. Barbirolli
controls the opening movement with real symphonic power and
control but it’s in the slow movement that he is most characteristically
himself. This has surging accelerandi and an operatic intensity
that binds the music to the lyric rather than the central European
philosophic axis – not an absolute of course but it’s tempting
to make the distinction in the light of the Italianate lyricism
of his conducting here. The finale is taken at a fine tempo
and Barbirolli avoids rhetorical excesses and bombast, especially
brass bombast. There is a small amount of sectional indiscipline
and lack of optimum blending. And there’s some slight tape distortion,
which can be heard most audibly in exposed wind statements.
But I wouldn’t make too much of these things – they’re minor.
The coupling consists
of Haydn. Barbirolli makes a dashing, big band show in the fast
sections of the overture to L’Isola Disabitata. This
was a very obscure piece for him to parade at the time – and
even sleeve note writer and Barbirolli authority David Ll. Jones
can find no other performance of it by the conductor. Nor, rather
amazingly, did Barbirolli ever perform The Creation in
its entirety – only excerpts. So quite what galvanized him to
programme these two at the Proms is really anyone’s guess. Gulliver
sings well – a lyric tenor essentially but with sufficient weight
to cope with any declamation put his way. I note he sang in
Part I of Gerontius when Barbirolli performed it before
Pope Pius XII in 1958.
Concert programmes
were longer then, even in 1954. The rest of this Prom concert
included Haydn’s Symphony No.104 and Brahms’s Double Concerto
with Endre Wolf and André Navarra. The former work was a great
favourite of Barbirolli’s and he recorded it twice on 78s. The
Brahms he recorded with Campoli and Navarra. Even so I’m sure
admirers would welcome the rest of this Prom concert – actually,
assuming it still exists, it would have made a good two-for-the-price-of-one
double CD set.
Jonathan Woolf
David Galliver (tenor)
