Willem Mengelberg’s long and highly regarded
service as conductor of Amsterdam's Concertgebouw Orchestra (1895-1945)
has largely overshadowed the years 1920-1930. That was when he spent
considerable time also working in the USA with the National Symphony
Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra (NYPO).
Those years have not been entirely forgotten. Mengelberg’s 1928
NYPO recording of Richard Strauss’s
Ein Heldenleben - recorded
at the same sessions as the Wagner
Forest murmurs included here
-
has, in spite of its inevitable sonic deficiencies, long been accorded
classic status. On my own shelves it is the chronologically earliest
inclusion in a 1992 RCA Gold Seal two-disc set appropriately entitled
Legendary Strauss Recordings (09026 60929 2).
Inevitably, given the economics of the recording industry in the 1920s,
the primitive recording technology of the time and less adventurous
public taste, such artistically ambitious projects were the exception
rather than the rule. Any wider assessment of Mengelberg’s work
in that period must also include, therefore, his recordings of popular
and/or less challenging, listener-friendly material such as that included
here from Pristine Audio.
Nevertheless, recordings of even such apparently short and “simple”
works can often be instructive. They may, for instance, demonstrate
a conductor’s special attributes and skills - his ability to discover
something special even in the apparently trivial or mundane: think of
Beecham with his famous “lollipops”. Equally, they can sometimes
bring out an unanticipated side to a particular
maestro. When,
for example, Karajan recorded a disc of popular opera
intermezzi,
one player described it as “a real eye-opener for me ... I had
never felt [he] was a particularly emotional conductor. There were none
of those great surges of emotion you had when, say, Furtwängler
was conducting. But on this occasion he was completely 'sent'. I don't
think he'd have noticed if a bomb had gone off beside him.” [Sidney
Sutcliffe, quoted in Richard Osborne
Herbert von Karajan: a life
in music (London, 1998) p. 362].
So what do we learn from these New York recordings? They certainly confirm
that Mengelberg - who was well known for his thorough preparation of
both scores and orchestras before concerts and recordings - took immense
care over performances. Nothing here is at all slapdash: even hoary
old warhorses like the Meyerbeer and Mendelssohn marches are taken seriously
when it comes to establishing orchestral balance and controlling dynamics.
Audio restorer Mark Obert-Thorn’s expert removal of clicks and
hisses enables us to appreciate, for instance, the superbly nuanced
control that Mengelberg exercises over his forces in Mahler’s
arrangement of Bach’s
air on the G string - a completely
riveting account that compels the listener to concentrate on every carefully
sculpted note.
This disc also demonstrates that the NYPO was very much an orchestra
of its time. The most obvious evidence is a degree of
portamento
that sounds quite odd to modern ears - though far less so to anyone
familiar with the few remaining recordings of that era that are still
listened to today, such as Elgar’s recordings of his own scores.
The baroque pieces are also performed on 20
th century instruments
and by rather larger orchestral forces than we tend to encounter in
our more historically informed times. That will be no deterrent to those
of us sympathising with Sir Adrian Boult who, when he used the full
London Philharmonic Orchestra to record the
Brandenburg concertos
in 1974 (
see
here), reminisced fondly about the style in which Bach’s music
had been played in the innocently “uninformed” pre-war era.
What about the quality of the sound? These tracks are, after all, more
than eighty years old and were originally set down in the very earliest
period of electrical recording. Mark Obert-Thorn’s notes point
out the difficulties he faced with source material that exhibited “a
comparatively high degree of hiss” even in the best surviving
copies. That was, it seems, not his only problem, for the Mozart, Beethoven
and Humperdinck tracks were originally rather “dry” sounding,
having been, probably for reasons of economy in the Great Depression,
recorded with reduced forces and in a comparatively small venue. Consequently,
in an attempt to match the other tracks, Mr Obert-Thorn has added some
digital reverberation and has certainly, thereby, created a bright and
comparatively substantial sound.
This disc will be of interest primarily to Mengelberg devotees, if for
no other reason than that he left no other surviving studio recordings
of the Handel, Mozart, Meyerbeer, Wagner and Humperdinck tracks. Nevertheless,
even a casual listener is likely to appreciate a degree of quality in
the performances that, even eighty years later, offers a potent reminder
of one of the great figures of a golden age of conducting.
Rob Maynard
