Felix MENDELSSOHN (1809-1847)
CD 1
Overture: Ruy Blas, Op. 95 (1839) [8:07]
Overture: Die schöne Melusine, Op. 32 (1833) [10:52]
Overture: The Hebrides (Fingal's Cave), Op. 36 (1830-2) [9:39]
Symphony No. 4 in A, Op. 90 (Italian) (1833) [28:32]
CD 2
A Midsummer Night's Dream: Overture, Op. 21 (1826) [11:48]
A Midsummer Night's Dream: Incidental Music, from Op. 61 (1842) [16:14]
Franz SCHUBERT (1797-1828)
Die Zauberharfe, D. 644: Overture (1820) [9:46]
Rosamunde, D. 747: Incidental Music (1823) [24:37]
L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande/Ernest Ansermet
rec. Victoria Hall, Geneva, January 1960 (CD 2), November 1964 (CD 1)
DECCA ELOQUENCE 480 0382 [57:31 + 62:33]
Commercial discographies, geared as they are towards marketing a performer
or conductor's specialties, can inadvertently leave a skewed impression of
said performers' active repertoire. The casual listener could be forgiven
for thinking that Sir Adrian Boult, for example, conducted mostly the music
of British composers and fellow-travelers - with a liberal interpretation
of the latter category to include Brahms! - or that Wilhelm Furtwängler only
excelled at central Austro-German standards. A Music and Arts CD documenting
some first-class Debussy and Honegger should disabuse anyone of that latter
notion. In fact, the music director of a major orchestra is usually at least
conversant with all the standard repertoire: even that one-time enfant
terrible, Pierre Boulez, regularly programmed such non-"innovators"
as Handel, Haydn, Mendelssohn, and Schumann with the New York Philharmonic
in the 1970s, though not necessarily successfully.
So it went with Ernest Ansermet, who became famous through his recordings
of colourful French and Russian scores which, not coincidentally, constituted
an ideal vehicle for Decca's stereophonic recording techniques. In the course
of fifty years as music director of the Suisse Romande Orchestra, however,
he played the standard Germanic classics, and survived long enough to record
quite a few of them in stereo, including complete cycles of Beethoven and
Brahms symphonies and Haydn's Paris set, as well as the Mendelssohn
and Schubert collected here. That the recordings carry historic, documentary
value is unquestionable; that they might constitute essential consumer acquisitions
is another matter entirely, despite their incidental felicities.
Of the overtures on the first disc, only Hebrides comes off well. To
be sure, there are passages in both the others that demonstrate the conductor's
musical and stylistic understanding. The brass chorales at the start of Ruy
Blas are imposing - though they lack the full-throated tenuto sound
of German-trained players - and the liquid clarinets are lovely whenever they
intone the principal theme of The Fair Melusine. But the tuttis
sound unkempt, partly because the shallow-bright sonority is out of place
in music that wants to sound firm and grounded, partly because the players
aren't executing the rhythms precisely together. Hebrides, on the other
hand, builds its textures from the interplay of diverse musical strands, in
a manner similar to that of the French and Russian works that this ensemble
played so well, and, once past the nervous 'cellos accompanying the opening
theme, Ansermet delivers an evocative account.
This Italian Symphony, while competent and musical, never quite takes
off; yet it misses the rhythmic sturdiness and translucent tone of Colin Davis's
similarly earthbound Boston Symphony account (Philips). Only the third movement
Con moto moderato suggests some of the requisite elegance.
The recordings on the second disc display a surer sense of style, despite
the basses' occasional tendency to lumber. The Midsummer Night's Dream
overture succeeds at "bringing fairies into the orchestra," though
Ansermet has to drive the strings a bit to get them to keep things going.
There are some passing misco-ordinations - nothing major - but the unmarked
ritard for the false ending, at 9:46 is a bad idea: it seems a logical bait-and-switch
for the listener, but merely renders the coda anticlimactic. The Scherzo
is rather good, the Nocturne compromised by increasingly sour horn
entries; they're fine at the start. The Wedding March is festive, but
a horn bobble in the middle of the brass chord at 4:37 mars the coda.
The sprightly, infectious account of the overture -- really that for Die
Zauberharfe -- is the best thing in this Rosamunde sequence. The
Ballet Music No 1, not included on the original LP - presumably for reasons
of space - has a hearty swing, though the wind chording sounds wheezy from
time to time. The awkward reading of Entr'acte No 2 is no great shakes, while
an oozy, lumbering travversal of Entr'acte No 3 undercuts the tenderly phrased
theme. The Ballet Music No 2 recovers with its bouncy theme, even if the reeds
sound a bit whiny.
The sound is recognizably Decca's analog "house sound"; the bass
pre-emphasis is more obvious on CD than it was on vinyl - which doesn't do
anything for those string basses - and I was surprised to hear some distortion
in the first tutti chord of the Rosamunde Entr'acte No 2.
Stephen Francis Vasta
That the recordings carry historic, documentary value is unquestionable; that
they might constitute essential consumer acquisitions is another matter entirely,
despite their incidental felicities.