This is a twelve
CD edition of Ney’s complete late recordings for Colosseum,
a company based in Nuremberg. Willy Luther, business manager
of the town’s symphony orchestra, was also in charge of the
record label and so recordings of three of the Beethoven concertos
with Ney became possible. And much else of course. In addition
to the large number of recordings issued at the time we have
previously unpublished material. The second and third movements
of Brahms’s First Sonata for example are included as is a brief
spoken commentary from Ney. There is also the 1960 recording
of Ney reading from the Heiligenstadter Testament (twelve minutes)
and a collection of encore and lyric pieces. In addition the
pianist’s daughter, Eleonore van Hoogstraten, recites poetry
by Rilke (recorded in 2003) to recreate the ambience of some
of the ”poetry and music” evenings enjoyed at the Ney house.
I’ve written about
Ney before in the context of a Biddulph disc of some of her
recordings from the 1930s (see review). I don’t propose to go into the details of
her insalubrious and deplorable conduct during the Nazi years
except to point out that the compact booklet notes offer a wholly
inadequate and indeed farcical representation of her behaviour,
which has been very well documented elsewhere - see for instance
David Monod’s Settling Scores; German Music, DeNazification
and the Americans 1945-1953 which was published by the University
of North Carolina Press in 2005.
What’s important
here is the quality of her musicianship in these, her last tranche
of recordings made between 1960 and 1968, the year of her death.
She performed indomitably, almost to the end. With so many performances
it’s best to concentrate on a few salient features. She certainly
retained her luminous tone to the last. It was a cardinal legacy
of her years with Leschetizky and later with von Sauer; that
much certainly cannot be gainsaid. What the newcomer to these
late recordings will find is a sense of deliberation and precision
that will fall on the ear either as prodigious depth or else
as stolid aridity. There are times listening to these performances
when polarities such as this are really the only possible, some
may add permissible, response.
Her playing of Beethoven’s
Pathetique is measured with a communing, calm grandeur
about it. But there is something almost defiantly static about
it that is a product of her methodology and not necessarily
her age. It’s a feature that recurs throughout these recordings
and will for many prove an insuperable burden to. One searches
in vain for signs of mezzo piano in her playing of the
Moonlight; it’s slow, halting and doughty. What this
actually conveys, to me at least, is not breadth or significance
but an almost self-willed sense of containment – limited dynamics,
reduced internal contrasts and in the Waldstein a stifling
sense of the agreed limits of expression. Her Appassionata
is alternately static and brusque.
She was famous for
her Beethoven of course and for performances of the last sonatas,
Op.111 in particular. There’s a performance of her self-communing
slow movement (only) of the Hammerklavier from the last
year of her life. Op.109 witnesses the refined beauty and colour
she could evoke – the Molto espressivo variation is remarkable
for its beauty – as well as some peculiarities of pedalling
and articulation. She rather indulges metrical shifts in the
slow movement of Op.110. but its finale has a certain leonine
and implacable nobility. The same could just be said of Op.111
of which she made multiple recordings. There are two such here;
one is from 1968 and the other from 1965. We need really only
concern ourselves with the later recording, which is spacious,
considered, technically still in control, and deserving of respect.
The 1965 performance comes from a disc of pieces recorded on
Beethoven’s own Graf piano. This is of documentary interest
only as it was in dire condition and makes a horrible racket.
The concertos were
recorded with her husband Willem van Hoogstraten. The C minor
is an exercise in deliberate note placement rather than any
sense of generating any viable sense of dynamism – this can
be possible even at a slow tempo but not here. The orchestra
is so-so, the piano over-recorded in relation to it. Her responses
to the orchestral statements in the G major are achingly protracted
and intensely pliant. Her performance of the finale is possibly
the most acceptable of any of the concerto movements. The E
flat major concerto is splashy with a lot of covering pedal
– more Corporal than Emperor.
When we listen to
her in other composers’ music we find much the same virtues
and weaknesses. Her Schumann Symphonic Etudes is heavy,
stentorian but at least up to tempo for much of the time. She
lacks Kempff’s colour and mercurial touch. She plays the so-called
Appendix, which is valuable. There are two Mozart sonatas here.
K331 is – but you’ve guessed – ponderously done. This is internalised
not externalised playing. The young Ney took risks in the studio;
here things are turned to weight and also, as here, to dust.
There’s not much sparkle in the finale, nor in K330 which is
almost entirely inert.
Brahms’s Op.5 sonata
was taped in 1961. It has a good sense of grandeur and nobility
but it’s again weighted down too much for any real freedom of
expression. Her playing of the smaller pieces is intriguing
and better – deeply solemn in the E flat major Intermezzo for
instance. Her F sharp major Chopin Nocturne is a Germanic lullaby
and has slipped entirely its stylistic moorings. The disc of
small pieces, some less than a minute long, is full of such
heavy booted moments, though ones not without their own very
personal concentration.
There’s also a Mendelssohn-Schubert-Chopin
disc [CD 9]. I can’t understand why the G flat Impromptu is
so catatonically slow or why it has no sense of drama other
than she didn’t feel any for it. The companion A flat is docile
with a very self-limited range of emotive response – an ”all
passion spent long ago” performance. The Mendelssohn Andante
con moto Op.19 No.1 is lovely but exhausting and pallid,
despite the tonally luminous playing.
I think my views
on Ney’s late recordings are more than clear but their presentation
here has been accomplished with care and dedication. They’ve
been out of print for forty years now and collectors, whether
pro or contra (or a mixture of both), will find nothing less
than first class restoration from Colosseum.
Jonathan
Woolf
Elly Ney (piano)
