After several issues
dedicated to Peter Maag and André
Cluytens, always chosen with great care
for what is really interesting and worth
exhuming, Arts Archives’ exploration
of the RAI vaults has now arrived at
Giulini. Very wisely, they have not
gone for an umpteenth version of something
he recorded in the studio several times
over, but have homed in on a work he
did not set down commercially.
Schumann’s large-scale
oratorio on Thomas Moore’s poem from
Lalla Rookh has enjoyed good press but
very few performances over the years.
Somehow it seems difficult to persuade
the public and concert promoters that
the composer of exquisite miniatures,
or even of some pretty bracing symphonies,
could really cope with anything on this
scale.
Yet Giulini clearly
took it on as a labour of love and performed
it when he could. Many voices were raised
in disappointment when his Edinburgh
Festival performance was not taken into
the studio, but EMI obviously thought
it would not sell. Oddly enough Electrola,
German EMI, set down the first recording
of the work in Düsseldorf at about
the same time as Giulini gave the present
performance. The Düsseldorf reading
was not even issued in the UK at the
time and "Das Paradies und die Peri"
began to reap a little of the success
it deserves only with the issue of Armin
Jordan’s award-winning performance on
Erato in about 1990. Jordan was quickly
followed by Albrecht on Supraphon. Since
then we’ve had several more, including
Sinopoli and Gardiner.
The recording here
is of fairly good quality, though I
noticed a high level of background crackles
at the start of CD 2. These soon subsided.
Some soloists seem closer to the microphones
than others – or else some project their
tone better than others – but on the
whole I think we should not expect more
from a live relay of more than thirty
years ago.
Some may be fearing
that the quality of the orchestra will
wreck the whole enterprise. Giulini,
as is his wont, appears at the beginning
more interested in obtaining eloquent
phrasing than tight ensemble. But ensemble,
for Giulini, always did mean having
everybody feel the music together,
something far deeper than just playing
it together. As the work proceeds
the orchestra yields to his spell, producing
a stream of poetic warmth and rising
to true incandescence at such moments
as the end of Part 1. Note, if this
disturbs you, that Italian brass players
were still using euphonium-like vibrato
in 1974. Personally it didn’t worry
me too much.
If the Edinburgh performance
should ever turn up on disc, it will
have a large choir of amateur voices,
albeit carefully selected and excellently
prepared. British ears seem to prefer
this to a smaller group of professionally
trained singers, but I’m not so sure
if anybody else does. In Italy, "professionally
trained" singers meant in 1974, and
mostly still does, singers who have
been through a Conservatorio where singing
means singing Verdi. Giulini insists
on real pianissimos, which sometimes
results in hesitant attack. As with
the orchestra, Giulini’s persuasive
powers gradually succeed in wielding
it all together, and there is blazing
conviction at the climactic moments.
Giulini’s inspires
his forces to give a seamless narration,
arousing regret that he never wished
to conduct Wagner. No one would doubt
that this is a masterpiece in his hands.
The finest singer is
probably Werner Hollweg, the narrator.
His pliant tone is not large, but it
is even and able to ride the full orchestra
when required. British listeners will
already have noticed the presence of
Margaret Price. Since her contributions
are almost invariably either preceded
or followed by Hollweg, this does point
up the fact that her vocal production
seems based on singing everything with
a very round "O", with the result that
her tone appears to emerge from a tube.
At times one gets the idea that an owl,
or even A.A. Milne’s "Wol", is doing
the singing rather than a human being.
And the naturalness of Hollweg’s vowels
are ever-present to show this up.
On the other hand,
Margaret Price had one of the most lustrous
voices around at that time, and the
sheer quality of the sound can hardly
be denied. "Schlaf’ nun und ruhe in
Trämen voll duft" makes a truly
exquisite ending to Part 2. By that
time, furthermore, we’ve heard another
soprano, Oliviera Miljakovic as the
Jungfrau. A less distinctive voice,
well-groomed but exactly like so many
others we’ve heard. Her timbre acquires
real quality – of a slightly soubrettish
kind – only when she is able to develop
it on a long note, thereby reminding
us that Price’s vocal timbre is maintained
on all her notes. So, whether or not
the excess of "Os" irritates you as
much as it does me, this is superior
singing, Miljakovic’s merely acceptable.
Good singing, if a
little on the small side, comes from
Anne Howells; Marjorie Wright, unknown
to me, makes a stronger impression.
Wolfgang Brendel has little to do but
does it very well. Robert Amis el Hage
was a regular in RAI productions of
those years, his sturdy musicality generally
an asset, as here. Carlo Gaifa was another
RAI regular. By the side of Hollweg
he does sound rather like an Italian
tenor who would rather be elsewhere,
but it would be easy to imagine something
far worse from that point of view. In
the round, then, Giulini’s vision of
the work is well served by all concerned.
I can’t advise on the
alternatives, and the blazoned Jordan
seems not to be available at the moment.
If you want modern digital sound, the
Gardiner has been highly praised. I
can’t imagine a better conducted version
than this, though.
Or can I?
Just out of curiosity
I listened to the last 15 minutes –
all I had preserved, more or less by
accident – of a RAI performance given
in Milan in 1992 under that erratic
but fascinating figure, the late Vladimir
Delman. In spite of Giulini’s reputation
for slow tempi, the "last 15 minutes"
actually corresponds to the last 9 minutes
of the earlier performance. In the penultimate
no. 25 Giulini opts for a warm flow
and a feeling that we are gradually
rising to the final climax. Delman seems
to be groping his way forward in a kind
of mystic trance, holding the attention
by his continual probing into the orchestral
textures. The soloists survive the time-stretching
with honours – I don’t even know who
they are, as I said, this survived a
clear-out by pure accident – and the
result is to bring a new dimension to
the music, and I would say a greater
one. This section takes 4:59 under Giulini,
8:19 under Delman.
Then the finale breaks
in. Giulini takes a broad tempo which
seems to grow out of what has come before.
Delman, as much a man of extremes as
Scherchen or Celibidache, simply takes
off! It’s an exhilarating, life-enhancing
display. The odd thing is that, in spite
of a much faster tempo, Delman takes
6.38 compared with Giulini’s 3:57! Delman
plays about double the amount of music
as Giulini, and since he presumably
didn’t compose it himself I take it
Giulini in his wisdom did a bit of pruning.
But without a score it’s difficult to
know whether this is a "legitimate"
cut, marked in the score and maybe allowed
by Schumann himself. I can only say
that, at Giulini’s tempi, the finale
seems long enough, while it doesn’t
outstay its welcome at Delman’s exuberant
clip.
This cut raises the
question as to whether Giulini did any
cutting and trimming elsewhere. However,
his timing is identical to Jordan’s
and 6 minutes longer than Albrecht’s,
so probably he did not.
Delman was a cult figure
in Italy, now forgotten even there,
perhaps for lack of recordings. He could
yet become a cult figure since material
for potential release in the RAI archives
is not lacking, including a televised
Tchaikovsky cycle. However, it is all
compromised by the fact that the RAI
orchestras, never the world’s best,
might be described as a "chronicle of
a death foretold" in the decade or so
that he worked with them. The extract
I’ve just heard starts with a very wobbly
horn solo, for example, and no doubt
there’s plenty more where that came
from. He was also unpredictable himself
and I believe he suffered psychological
problems as the aftermath of his years
in a Soviet lager. Still, while exercising
due caution, Arts Archives might care
to look into the Delman legacy.
As for Giulini’s RAI
legacy, since his repertoire became
increasingly circumscribed with the
years, the odds are that there is little
from the stereo era which was not repeated
elsewhere. However, his 1970 "Don Giovanni"
offers a rather different cast from
his EMI recording and I suspect most
opera lovers would be glad to hear it:
Ghiaurov, Bruscantini, Janowitz, Jurinac,
Kraus, Miljakovic, Monachesi and Petkov.
Going further back into the mono era
and his years as the first Principal
Conductor of the newly-founded RAI orchestra
of Milan, he conducted a wide range
of material, including atonal stuff
by long-forgotten Italians. His broadcast
of an opera by Haydn caught the attention
of Toscanini. There might be some surprises
among all this, though I wouldn’t expect
much of the recordings themselves. It
might be worth investigating whether
the two Mozart concertos with Michelangeli
from the early 1950s have to sound as
utterly dire as they do on their bootleg
issues.
Christopher Howell
for details
Coro di Roma della RAI/Gianni Lazzari
