Gustav MAHLER (1860-1911)
Symphony No. 3 in D minor [89.37]
Helen Watts (contralto)
Highgate School Choir, Orpington Junior Singers, London Symphony Chorus
London Symphony Orchestra/Jascha Horenstein
rec. London, 16 November 1961
Johannes BRAHMS (1833-1897)
Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op.15 [51.16]
Claudio Arrau (piano)
French Radio and Television Orchestra/Jascha Horenstein
rec. Montreux, 17 September 1962
ARCHIPEL ARPCD 0557 [64.20 + 76.23]
This CD preserves a “never before released” live recording
of the first professional British performance of Mahler’s Third
Symphony in 1961. It was given under the baton of Jascha Horenstein,
who did much to spearhead the revival of the composer’s music during
the 1960s. In 1970, three years before his death, Horenstein returned
to the score for a famous studio recording of the same work with the same
orchestra as here. That version on Unicorn remained as one of the principal
recommendations both on LP and CD for many years.
This live performance does not get off to a very promising start, with
a fluffed note from one of the horns on the very opening beat, and it
cannot be pretended that the sound is anything like as good as on Horenstein’s
studio recording, with the low brass at 1.02 growling rather indistinctly.
That said, the internal balance of the orchestra is good, and they deliver
the music with the real joy of players discovering a new and unfamiliar
score. The CD insert — it would be unduly charitable to call it
a booklet — gives no information at all regarding either the music
or its performance, but the acoustics are rather dry and leads one to
deduce that the venue was the Royal Festival Hall; the 1970 recording
was made in Fairfield Halls. The solo violin at 4.45 is placed very forward
in the mono sound, which leads me to suspect close microphone placement
presumably originating from a broadcast source. Dennis — spelt Denis
on the CD cover credit — Wick’s trombone solo at 5.55 is very
stentorian; the same player was more nuanced in 1970. Later on the internal
balance of the orchestra becomes less than ideal, with the chirruping
and squawking woodwind at 20.00 badly masked by the brass and what sounds
suspiciously like panic-stricken recording engineers reducing recording
levels. Unexpectedly the audience bursts in with applause at the end of
the movement; maybe at the original concert the interval was taken at
this point.
The second movement, with its much lighter scoring, produces fewer problems
for the engineers. In the third movement Mahler wrote an extensive solo
for an offstage brass instrument which he originally designated for the
flugelhorn. In later revisions he changed the description of the instrument
to “posthorn”, but this seems to have been a purely poetic
change of title and the part is invariably played on the flugelhorn –
as in Horenstein’s 1970 recording – although on the CD cover
it is stated that Dennis Egan plays a posthorn. The balance between the
offstage instrument and the onstage players is not ideal, but it does
not appear that Egan manages all the notes with total accuracy, and there
is a horrible trumpet error at 15.43 which sticks out like a sore thumb.
Horenstein makes no pause before the fourth movement — the audience
coughing between the second and third movements is given full measure
— but the entry of Helen Watts is sheer balm. She recorded the part
again in the studio for Solti some years later, in what is otherwise an
unpleasantly blatant reading; Solti re-made the work for his complete
Chicago cycle. Here in the very earliest days of her notable career she
is firm as a rock and as implacable as granite in her declamation of Nietzsche’s
Midnight Song from Zarathustra. And thankfully Horenstein
has no truck with the exaggerated portamento in the woodwind
phrases which Mahler may possibly have intended to imitate the wood birds
of the night but which sound horribly and inauthentically modern in other
performances. The orchestral deep brass sound murkier than might be ideal,
and there are a couple of horn notes that are not perfectly steady; but
this are minor blemishes in an enchanting performance.
Unfortunately there is a CD break between the fourth and fifth movements
— Mahler asks that they should be played continuously — but
this does avoid the sudden interruption in mood which would otherwise
have been perpetrated by the very loud and forwardly-placed bells at the
beginning of the Knaben Wunderhorn song. The choirs on the other
hand are rather backward and far from distinct – although noticeably
below pitch at 1.49 – but Watts is once again a tower of strength.
This is a difficult movement to bring off in performance, and it is at
this point in the recording that one is aware of a lack of familiarity
with the score. The solemn entry of the strings at the beginning of the
last movement brings a real sense of engagement even though the violin
tone could be warmer. It is nice to hear the period style in the use of
string portamento as specified by Mahler, an effect which became
unfashionable for a time but is an essential part of the composer’s
sense of line. Horenstein sometimes presses forward in a manner which
he avoided in his later recording, but not beyond the bounds of acceptability;
and although another trumpet glitch in the chorale theme at 16.09 is most
unfortunate, Horenstein generates a real sense of white heat in the closing
pages. The audience cheers at the end are well deserved.
Horenstein does not appear to have changed his view of the score much
over the years; comparisons of timings in the movements show the first
three rather slower on Unicorn nine years later, while the last three
are slightly quicker. Overall he took some seven minutes longer over the
score in 1970, a fairly minimal difference in a work of this length. Those
who want to hear his interpretation of Mahler’s Third Symphony
will gravitate towards the better sound and less accident-prone playing
in 1970. But they will have to sacrifice Watts’s singing of the
alto solos, richer and more nuanced than Norma Procter on Unicorn. On
the other hand the singing in 1970 of the Wandsworth School Boys’
Choir and the Ambrosian Singers in the fifth movement is more assured
and better balanced than the assembled choral forces were in 1961.
The Unicorn issue however comes without any coupling spread over two CDs,
while here we are also given a very substantial bonus in the shape of
Claudio Arrau’s performance of the Brahms First Piano Concerto
again with Horenstein conducting. Although the reading has plenty of fire
from the opening bars, the recorded sound is much less satisfactory than
in the Mahler with the orchestral playing decidedly thin in places, and
the acoustic is unpleasantly boxy in the tutti passages. Recording
engineers in the studio were getting much better results at this period.
Mercifully Arrau is not placed too forward in the recorded balance, and
we get a good impression of the sound of his piano. At this stage in his
career Arrau was a more volatile and less monumental player than he became
in his later years, and he forms a dramatic partner for Horenstein who
– as in his contemporary recordings with Earl Wild of the Rachmaninov
concertos – is a sympathetic accompanist. But the horn in the first
movement at 9.31 is a particularly bad example of the weak and watery
tone of French instruments at this period, sounding for all the world
like a tremulous saxophone. If you like this sort of ‘national’
style of playing, you’ll love it; although you may be less impressed
with the squeeze-box effect of the woodwind at the beginning of the slow
movement. This was clearly a very great performance indeed, with which
one is delighted to make acquaintance; but the orchestra and the recorded
sound do rather let the side down.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
Masterwork Index: Brahms
piano concerto 1 ~~ Mahler
symphony 3
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