RECORDING OF THE MONTH
Richard WAGNER (1813-1883) Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
(1868) - orchestral excerpts from Act 3 [15:27]
César FRANCK (1822-1890) Symphony in D minor (1888) [36:46]
Gabriel FAURÉ (1845-1924) Pelléas et Mélisande (1898)
– concert suite from the incidental music op.80 [18:15]
Boston Symphony Orchestra/Charles Munch
rec. Sanders Theatre, Harvard University, USA; 7 April 1959 (Fauré), 8 March
1960 (Wagner) and 14 March 1961 (Franck). ADD
ICA CLASSICS DVD ICAD 5015 [70:28] 
About twenty years ago I produced and presented a series of short features
on BBC radio that examined English domestic architecture and furnishings through
the ages.
One of the highlights for me was walking around an upper middle class Victorian
house, full from floor to ceiling with all the period characteristics that
we associate with that era’s interiors – heavy furniture in deep-toned woods,
overstuffed and over-patterned soft furnishings, an upright piano, doilies,
antimacassars and aspidistras - though, sadly, there were no covered-up piano
legs. Thus, when it came to selecting some occasional background music to
underpin the interviews, there seemed only one possible musical choice, that
most appropriately “mahogany” of symphonies, the D minor of Cesar Franck.
Franck’s masterpiece responds well to that dark, heavy, “organ like” - to
use a well-worn cliché - approach. But there is far more to it than that,
though its comparative rarity on concert programmes and in the recording studios
these days means that we need to go back to some classic older performances
on CD to find the most interesting and enlightening accounts.
On my own shelves, the versions I return to most were all recorded within
a period of just over twenty years though each remains entirely individual
and true to itself. They are from Beecham (with the Orchestre National de
l’ORTF in 1959), Monteux (Chicago Symphony Orchestra, 1961), Barbirolli (Czech
Philharmonic Orchestra, 1962), Van Otterloo (Concertgebouw Orchestra, c.1963?),
Stokowski (Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, 1970) and Bernstein (Orchestre
National de France, 1981). My own recording of Mengelberg in white hot form
with the Concertgebouw in 1940 is ruled out on sonic grounds, but Andrew Rose’s
restoration on his Pristine Classical label has apparently worked wonders.
Anyone who owns the Warner Music Vision DVD The art of conducting: legendary
conductors of a golden era will have seen a brief, tantalising clip of
Charles Munch conducting the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra in this work at
1957’s Prague Spring Festival. And now this newly released DVD account of
the conductor with his own Boston Symphony Orchestra in concert at Harvard
University’s Sanders Theatre in 1961 – film hitherto secreted away in the
vaults and unseen for legal reasons - elbows its way firmly into the select
band of must-hear (and the very much smaller band of must-see) performances
from that golden age of Franck D minor recordings.
From the very opening of the first movement, Munch builds up the tension inexorably,
emphasising dynamic contrasts and then, once the dam has burst, driving the
score along as if his life itself depended on it. After a flowing account
of the central Allegretto where the musicians are clearly listening
as intently to each other as if they were playing chamber music, the finale
starts with a bang and then never lets up. This is a tremendously exciting
account that knocks most of its rivals into a cocked hat.
The adrenalin may not be flowing quite so vigorously in the Wagner and Fauré
items, but these are both carefully constructed and beautifully played accounts
that show off the Bostonians’ talents much more effectively than some of the
vinyl discs they were making at the time. Once again, the level of concentration
among the players is quite apparent, to the extent that there were a few stretches
where everyone was keeping so still that I thought the TV picture must have
frozen.
But the charismatic, leonine figure of Munch – not for nothing referred to
by the grande dames of Boston as le beau Charles - is anything
but immobile. His craggy face communicates the widest range of moods to his
players and he wields his long and heavy-looking baton with both grand, sweeping
gestures and a rapier-like rapidity worthy of Errol Flynn at his finest.
Fortunately, the sound quality on these TV broadcasts from Boston’s WGBH public
station is remarkably good, allowing us to hear the superbly rich, deep tones
that Munch draws from the cellos at the opening of the Act 3 prelude to Die
Meistersinger as well as the notably beautiful sounds he coaxes from both
the brass and woodwinds shortly afterwards. The standard of sound reproduction
never thereafter falls from that standard in either the Wagner or the Franck,
although there is a slight but noticeable background crackling sound in the
earliest recorded item, the Fauré, dating from 1959. The latter is inexplicably
described as a “bonus” item on the disc, even though the other performances,
lasting just 52 minutes or so in total, can hardly be said to amount to a
full DVD ration.
Picture quality is, however, another issue. Once again, it is the Fauré that
comes off worst. This recording is far darker than either of the later ones
and the image is, quite frankly, sometimes rather difficult to make out amid
all the gloom. Matters are not helped, either, by the fact that the TV director
Whitney Thompson - and surely not, pace Richard Dyer’s generally
excellent booklet notes, the broadcast’s producer Jordan Whitelaw -
appears to have recently discovered the joys of superimposing images over
each other, resulting in even more visual confusion. A degree of horizontal
striation and, towards the end of the broadcast, one complete top-to-bottom
roll of the screen of the sort familiar to anyone old enough to recall the
days when television sets boasted horizontal hold and vertical hold dials,
are left in place.
The WGBH technicians were clearly learning from their experiences, however,
the 1960 Wagner recording is visually far better. They had increased the lighting
levels, to the extent that several members of the orchestra can be spotted
wearing dark glasses. In spite of the extra clarity, however, there are in
fact hardly any bright whites or dark blacks to be seen. This is an instance
where the term “black and white television” was a real misnomer as everything
is actually merely some sort of degree of grey. An additional characteristic
quite typical of the time is that the visual image sometimes disappears completely
towards the edges of the screen.
Once again, though, just a year later in the 1961 Franck there has been some
improvement and the black/white contrast is definitely more marked. Those
horizontal lines do, it’s true, make a brief appearance in the last movement
and there is also an odd moment, just before the musical focus switches to
the harp in the last couple of minutes, where the picture seems to freeze
for just a tiny fraction of a second. But those are not defects significant
enough to affect the overall impact of this incandescent performance.
The directors of these transmissions, not only the aforesaid Mr Thompson but
also David Davis and Greg Harney, do generally fine jobs. They are clearly
well aware of the course of the music and plot the sequence of images accordingly.
Apart from the Fauré’s annoying superimpositions and a too often repeated
back-to-front pan across the violin desks in the Franck, the television direction
never draws attention to itself which is the finest compliment one can make.
As I hope is apparent by now, this DVD amounts to a very significant musical
record and, given that we are told that more than a hundred such broadcast
performances from Boston, dating from 1955 to 1979 and led by Erich Leinsdorf,
William Steinberg and Seiji Ozawa, as well as Munch, have been preserved,
let us hope for even more to come.
Rob Maynard
A very significant musical record.