Audite’s Cologne
Broadcasts series has at its focus
here Karl Böhm in performances
given at the Funkhaus in April 1963.
He conducted the Cologne Radio Symphony
Orchestra, now better known as the WDR
Symphony, in one work with which he
was strongly associated – the Brahms
– and in another with which he would
have had, at best, only a fleeting acquaintance.
So let’s start with
the Vieuxtemps A minor concerto where
he partners the Romanian violinist Lola
Bobesco (1920-2003). Bobesco was best
heard live when she brought a genuine
intensity to her playing that even the
best of her relatively small commercial
performances could not quite reach.
She left behind no studio recording
of the Vieuxtemps which makes this survival
all the more valuable to admirers. The
sound can be a little congested and
Böhm doesn’t do all he could to
clarify orchestral textures. One imagines
him content with an all-purpose heavyweight
sonority – and this he duly gets, one
that lacks Mackerras’s finesse for Zukerman
and Sargent’s for Heifetz (both recordings,
1947 and 1961). Some of Bobesco’s passagework
sounds a touch smeary under pressure
but this is a live performance after
all and compensation comes from her
powerful commitment. In the final resort
whilst Bobesco may lack the studio perfection
of such as Perlman, Zukerman, Grumiaux
or Menuhin (with Fistoulari) she digs
deeply into the string and makes something
valuable of the first movement cadenza.
In a work that’s barely eighteen minutes
long there’s not much time to stake
one’s claim but she assuredly does;
and a rougher hewn one than all the
players already noted. She plays the
central movement with great lyric and
tonal generosity – with more allure
than the more aristocratic Zukerman
for example – and is suitably dashing
in the sliver of a finale.
There’s not as much
to be said about the Brahms. If you
know Böhm’s 1975 Berlin Philharmonic
DG studio recording, or the contemporaneous
Vienna traversal, then you will know
what to expect. Maybe he relaxes just
a fraction more in the Cologne opening
movement but otherwise both tempi and
more importantly tempo relationships
are consistent. The BPO performance
however is both better recorded and
better played and various other performances
– from Berlin in 1959 and the on-tour
Vienna Philharmonic Tokyo reading -
probably have as many claims on the
collector as this one. Furthermore Audite
blots its copybook by muddled banding.
Band three includes the Scherzo and
the Adagio opening of the finale,
leaving band four to take over at the
Piu Andante Allegretto of the
finale. Bizarre!
The constituency for
this will be mixed. Bobesco admirers
have a new discographical entrant but
it’s conjoined with what will be for
them an expendable Brahms symphony.
Admirers of the conductor will find
the performance of the symphony "straight
down the middle" but will have
an unexpected though not always insightfully
conducted concerto adjunct to their
discographies.
Jonathan Woolf
Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra (WDR
Symphony)/Karl Böhm 
