It would be an exaggeration to suggest that the name of Dimitri
Mitropoulos has faded into complete obscurity. After all, given the rarity
of conductors of Greek origin, it at least enjoys the advantage of sheer
memorability. That said, I suspect that, if only because his recordings are
only spasmodically reissued and promoted, Mitropoulos remains something of a
cult figure to the select few, rather than widely appreciated. A
comprehensive Toscanini edition has been available on CD for a couple of
decades now. Just this year a complete Fritz Reiner RCA edition has
appeared. Stokowski collections proliferate and I hope that it won't be long
before someone collects George Szell's Cleveland
oeuvre in a box. I
wouldn't hold my breath for a Mitropoulos edition.
It isn't that he didn't record much. As Stathis A. Arafanis's
The
complete discography of Dimitri Mitropoulos (Athens, 1990) makes plain,
Mitropoulos, whose rather under-characterised bust stands in pride of place
outside the headquarters of the Athens State Orchestra (see here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dimitris_Mitropoulos_bust_Athens.jpg.) was
actually quite at home in recording studios - usually those of the American
Columbia label. When the indefatigable John Hunt subsequently compiled his
own discography, he significantly included it as part of a volume he
entitled
Back from the shadows, in which he bracketed Mitropoulos,
Mengelberg, Abendroth and van Beinum as conductors in some need of
reputational rehabilitation (John Hunt,
Back from the shadows ?,
1997).
Poor Mitropoulos, by all accounts quite a saintly but personally
tortured soul, died too soon. In retrospect, his nine years (1949-1958) as
Director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra - billed here under its more
formal and cumbersome name - is regarded as artistically distinguished. He
was eventually forced into resignation by such venomous critics as the
New York Post's Howard Taubman who asserted outright that the
conductor had been "overmatched by the requirements of the post" (quoted in
Joan Peyser,
Leonard Bernstein, London, 1987, p.215). There was, too,
an unspoken personal subtext to the criticism: Norman Lebrecht, for one,
believes that Mitropoulos was "crucified for his [gay] sexuality rather than
his musicality" (Norman Lebrecht,
The maestro myth: great conductors in
pursuit of power,London, 1991, p.261.)
After his departure from New York, Mitropoulos simply had no time to
rebuild his reputation before his sudden death just three years later. His
successor at the Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, was, moreover, a
consummate showman with a canny gift for reinvention, self-promotion and PR
that soon erased his far less user-friendly predecessor's memory from the
public consciousness. Whatever the cause, Mitropoulos's output is unlikely
to feature to any great extent these days on most CD collectors' shelves.
This Guild release is therefore a welcome opportunity to reacquaint
ourselves with his artistry as applied to mainstream repertoire, rather than
the more modern works that he personally preferred to programme.
From a musical point of view, these performances make a generally
positive impression even in a crowded marketplace. The first two movements
of the fifth symphony come off particularly well. Mitropoulos exercises an
almost tangible degree of control over his players and, within just a few
minutes, one gets a clear impression of listening to a group of musicians
who are concentrating intensely in a collaborative exercise, especially in
slower passages that are, in general, taken very deliberately. Once the
opening movement's
allegro con anima gets under way, though,
Mitropoulos's overall approach clearly puts the stress on the "con anima",
for he is purposeful, direct and driven. Those same characteristics are
apparent in the slow movement, too, where he resists any temptation to swoop
and swoon over Tchaikovsky's full-blooded romanticism. The occasional
idiosyncratic slowing down or acceleration adds a distinctive note to hold
the listener's attention, as does the conductor's careful control of
dynamics. That can be sampled to excellent effect in, for instance, the
first 40 seconds of the
andante cantabile, a passage which often
comes across as no more than a relatively unmemorable introduction to the
great romantic horn theme. Here it makes, on the contrary, a striking - if
brief - impression in its own right.
As Robert Matthew-Walker, author of the useful booklet notes,
observes, both the third movement valse and the finale, while perfectly
acceptable, fail to maintain the high standard established so far. They come
across instead as quite routine and even anonymous, in need, perhaps, of an
injection of Mravinsky-style colour and excitement to lift them out of the
ordinary. Perhaps that Athens sculptor was listening to this recording as he
produced his under-characterised memorial bust?
Matters perk up noticeably again, though, with the filler.
Capriccio Italien benefits from appropriately sparkling stereo
recording and succeeds here in demonstrating what an effective piece it can
be. Mitropoulos conducts the score in a way that brings out both its
"Italian" and "Russian" elements and the performance is thoroughly engaging.
Individual passages - such as 2:41-3:32, where the conductor carefully
builds up tension - and the overall achievement are undeniably impressive.
Some fifty years ago, on the basis of an uncharacteristically superficial LP
account from Constantin Silvestri and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
(EMI Studio 2 Stereo, TWO 139), I dismissed
Capriccio Italien as
pot-boiling tosh. This Mitropoulos performance has, I concede, caused me,
albeit at an embarrassingly late stage, to at last revise that crass teenage
misjudgement.
The mid-1950s NYPO was clearly a very competent band. The woodwinds
make particularly strong impressions on these recordings, as do the brass -
although, just once or twice, I yearned for the knife-like qualities of
Soviet style playing to cut dramatically through the orchestration in the
way that we associate with the likes of Mravinsky or Svetlanov. The New York
violins can, unfortunately, sound a little raw and undernourished at times,
too. What of the engineering? The symphony's 1954 mono recording - skilfully
remastered, like its coupling, from clearly well-preserved vinyl - initially
makes a positive impression. The very opening, for instance, impressively
combines rich, full warmth with clarity and plenty of detail. In passages
for the full orchestra, however, the sound can become a little congested and
opaque in places and important detail - though never entirely lost - is
somewhat obscured.
To sum up, then, the performance of the symphony is unlikely to top
anyone's list. It offers, nonetheless, an interesting opportunity to listen
to the work of a gifted - but now sadly overlooked - conductor from what, in
retrospect, we can now appreciate as a golden age of recording.
Rob Maynard
Masterwork Index:
Tchaikovsky symphony 5
