This disc usefully gathers together all the recordings made
by Ernst von Dohnányi (1877-1960) during two visits to
London in 1928 and 1931. He paid the first of these visits with
the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra, of which he was music director
from 1919 until the orchestra was disbanded in 1941. The recordings
appear here in new transfers by Mark Obert-Thorn.
The recording that I was most keen to hear is of the piece that
is Dohnányi’s best-known, the Variations on
a Nursery Tune in which the composer plays the solo piano
part. He recorded the work again - also in London - in 1956
for EMI when he was partnered by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
and Sir Adrian Boult. By a nice piece of serendipity the producer
of that 1956 recording was Lawrance Collingwood, who wielded
the baton - very effectively - for Dohnányi’s 1931
LSO recording, preserved here. The recording, made in the Kingsway
Hall, is not the greatest in terms of sonics; the sound is,
inevitably, a bit shrill and boxy. However, once my ears had
adjusted - which didn’t take too long - I enjoyed the
performance very much. It’s full of good humour and no
little brilliance. The composer is a good soloist and the contribution
of the LSO is equally good. The waltz, Variation VII, has a
good swing to it and the Presto, Variation IX, sounds akin to
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. The concluding fugato
fairly skips along. Mark Obert-Thorn has done a fine job of
restoration and we hear far more detail than we have a right
to expect from a recording that’s now over eight decades
old.
Directing his Budapest orchestra from the keyboard in 1928,
Dohnányi gives a good account of K.453. The Budapest
band isn’t in the same class as the LSO - the rather stodgy
introduction to the slow movement confirms that - but they support
Dohnányi loyally. As soloist, Dohnányi is graceful
in the first movement. He performs his own cadenza (9:01 - 10:43),
which I enjoyed. His cadenza in the slow movement (7:45 - 9:07)
is a thoughtful re-examination of that movement’s material.
The finale, one of Mozart’s most engaging rondos, finds
the orchestra on more deft form and Dohnányi offers spirited
playing, especially in the concluding presto.
The remaining contents of the disc aren’t as noteworthy.
However, there’s an interesting opportunity to compare
two recordings of the Berlioz Hungarian March. The first
recording was made on 16 June 1928 in an unknown but clearly
acoustically confined location. That recording was for Columbia.
Just two days later Dohnányi and the Budapest Philharmonic
decamped to the Queen’s Hall to record the same piece
and other material but this time for HMV. As Mark Obert-Thorn
points out, the first recording is pretty constricted and, frankly,
it’s not a very pleasant listening experience. The Queen’s
Hall recording is much better and offers a more flattering -
or, perhaps, fairer - representation of what the orchestra could
do. It’s also interesting to compare the two excerpts
from Ruralia Hungarica. Both as a performance and a recording
the piece set down in 1931 with the LSO (Op.32b, No 2) is superior
to the 1928 traversal of Op.32b No 5 with the Budapest Orchestra.
Ernst von Dohnányi was a considerable, all-round musician
and these recordings are welcome as they give us a good representation
of him as composer, conductor and pianist. Mark Obert-Thorn
has done a fine job in giving a new lease of life to these recordings
some eighty years after they were made.
John Quinn
See also review by Jonathan
Woolf
Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra/Ernst von Dohnányi (and piano¹)