Robert SCHUMANN (1810-1856)
Manfred - Overture Op.115 (1852) [11:15]
Symphony No.2 in C Op.61 (1845-46) [33:51]
Symphony No.4 in D minor Op.120 (1841 rev 1851) [24:05]
NBC Symphony Orchestra/Arturo Toscanini, rec. 10 October 1946 (Manfred) and
17 March 1946 (Symphony)
NBC Symphony Orchestra/Bruno Walter, rec. 2 March 1940
GUILD GHCD 2362 [69:22]
The rubric under which this disc flies is the 200th anniversary of Schumann’s
birth, but that’s a rather tenuous celebratory tag. The real fulcrum is the
NBC Symphony and three impressive performances from the 1940s. Obviously one
should expect Toscanini to preside, and he does, over the Manfred overture
and the Second Symphony. But we also hear Bruno Walter’s 1940 broadcast of
the Fourth Symphony.
Manfred was recorded live in October 1946 and is subject to Toscanini’s purposeful,
characterful and Egmont-evoking splendour. Lines are clear and dynamic, and
the music-making is serious, directional and intensely driven. The Second
Symphony was performed earlier in the year and shares the qualities that make
Manfred so impressive a document, though some may perhaps feel the rather
unrelieved symphonic argument too thrusting and intense. In this respect,
then, many will prefer the surviving 1941 performance. The 1946 is brisk but
has a relatively relaxed finale, though it’s not as metrically flexible as
the earlier account. Nevertheless though there is some brusque phrasing in
the slow movement – taken characteristically unsentimentally and quickly –
there is still much to admire in the leanly phrased string playing and rhythmically
charged strength. I happen to feel there are insufficient contrasts between
movements and that Toscanini is too inflexible. He also amends the score,
which is not a matter dealt with in the notes. There are some amendments in
the first movement coda and in the finale, where trumpet parts are re-jigged,
though this was by no means, as we know, an unusual practice then – or indeed,
sometimes, now.
Bruno Walter didn’t record the Second Symphony and Toscanini didn’t record
the Fourth, so there is symmetry at work in this compilation. Walter’s Fourth
(March 1940) has a vibrant, no-nonsense directness not entirely unrelated
to Toscanini’s own sense of motoric cohesion. Walter conducts the 1851 edition
of the score, and does so with a vigorous and purposeful sense of line. He
retains his youthful thrust and dynamism in this performance, one that abjures
the more adamantine and etiolated approaches of such as Furtwängler – an approach
deeply impressive on its own terms.
The transfers have been well effected, but whether symphonic performances
from two such disparate conductors appeals as a compilation is a matter only
you can decide.
Jonathan Woolf
Walter didn’t record the Second and Toscanini didn’t record the Fourth, so
there is symmetry at work here.