Max Fiedler (conductor)
German Radio Recordings - Volume 1
Johannes BRAHMS (1833-1897)
Tragic Overture, Op. 81 (incomplete) (1880 rev 1881) [12:00]
Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART (1756-1791)
Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K.466 (finale incomplete) (1785) [26:54]
Pyotr Ilyich TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893)
Nutcracker Suite, Op. 71a (1892) [22:03]
Robert SCHUMANN (1810-1856)
Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 97, “Rhenish” (finale incomplete) (1850) [27:48]
Ludwig van BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op 67 (1807) [34:01]
Heinrich Steiner (piano)
Orchester der Reichsenders Berlin
Hamburg Radio Symphony Orchestra (Beethoven)
rec. 1936
PRISTINE AUDIO PASC547 [60:47 + 66:56]
Max Fiedler’s compact discography has been immeasurably
augmented via surviving broadcasts. Much relates to Brahms, the composer
with whom his name is most often bracketed, such as the First Piano
Concerto with Alfred Hoehn in a 1936 radio broadcast on Arbiter
160. There is a Brahms and Schumann disc on Music
and Arts CD1092 and Pristine itself has been busy with its twofer
devoted to the commercial Brahms legacy; see PASC
363 though other labels past and present have also delved into the
studio inscriptions as well. These reviews will fill in biographical
and interpretative matters.
Now Pristine ventures into the German radio recordings with this inaugural
twofer covering the year 1936. Brahms’ Tragic Overture is enveloped
by a powerful hall acoustic with plenty of reverb. The reading is well-sprung,
strong but not over-personalised or subject to metrical displacements
or to reckless freedoms. There is breadth and nobility though sadly
the performance is truncated, the music finishing at 11:54 with around
two minutes still left on the clock, as it were. A similar situation
occurs in the finale of Mozart’s D minor Concerto, K466 with soloist
Lubka Kolessa (1902-97), the Ukrainian who was, apparently, the last
classical pianist to make Welte-Mignon piano rolls, in 1928. Her art
can be pursued elsewhere – see for example Doremi DHR7743-5 where
you’ll find a live April 1936 broadcast recording of her with
Fiedler in the C minor Concerto, K. 491. In the D minor the Orchester
der Reichsenders Berlin make a luscious showing – perhaps rather
too much so in the slow movement - and Kolessa proves a fine, assured
guide, a few trivial slips aside, deploying the Hummel cadenza in the
first movement. There’s a loss of around 2 ½ minutes at the end
of the finale. These torsos are regrettable, but I am sure collectors
would rather have the large amount that does remain rather than condemn
what is missing, about which nothing very much can be done, in any case.
The first disc ends with Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite,
Op.71a which was given at the same radio concert as the Mozart. It’s
a strongly committed performance – Fiedler seems to have been
incapable of slacking – and evocatively coloured. There is some
surface scuffing on the shellac (not acetate or aluminum) discs but
the frequency response is, in strong compensation, excellent –
pizzicati are explosive, the spectrum is wide, the winds very forward.
It was Pfitzner who premiered Schumann First, Second and Fourth symphonies
on 78 but Fiedler turned to the Rhenish in his December 1936
broadcast. It’s a diverting reading; quite stately in places,
powerfully rhythmic in others, sometimes reluctant to flow. For all
that it is trenchant and emphatic, full of contrasts with an affectionately
phrased scherzo. This too cuts off at 5 minutes into the finale. Yet
it should be compared and contrasted with the First Symphony broadcast
performance preserved on Music and Arts given at the same all-Schumann
concert. The final work is the small matter of Beethoven’s Fifth,
recorded at some point in 1936 – no specific date is noted in
the track listing. This is the most striking and unanswerable example
of Fiedler’s propensity for rhetorical polemic in performance.
This is a massive, outsize reading, notes stretched elastically in the
opening movement, truculent outbursts in the slow movement; a reading,
in short, of visceral intensity, surging power and torrid, almost operatic
super-intensity. This is late nineteenth-century performance practice
that makes both Furtwängler and Mengelberg seem positively rectitudinous.
The Hamburg Radio Symphony Orchestra reading is, fortunately, complete.
Fiedler (1859-1939) is an important figure who was, along with Weingartner,
a direct link to Brahms on disc. There will be one more release in this
series that will present the remaining broadcast survivors, other than
those already issued by other labels. There are some inevitable frustrations
in regard to lost music, but no one seriously interested in conductors
of Fiedler's generation can afford to miss this release.
Jonathan Woolf
Recording details
Brahms – 17 April 1936
Mozart – 26 October 1936
Tchaikovsky – 26 October 1936
Schumann – 11 December 1936
Beethoven – 1936, no date given
Note
Last week, Pristine received this message from Noel Klauser regarding
our recent Max Fiedler German Radio Broadcasts set (PASC 547): "I would
just like to draw to your attention that the pianist who plays Mozart KV
466 on your Max Fiedler release is not Lubka Kolessa: this mistake was
made many years ago in an article about Fiedler, published in a magazine
about historical recordings. If you check the radio listings and the RRG
gramophone catalogue (something that the Germans were meticulous about),
you will find that the pianist was most definitely Heinrich Steiner."
Further inquiries made to the archive which holds the original
recordings verified this, and also gave a corrected broadcast date
of December 5, 1937. The mistaken attribution will be corrected on
future copies. Those who currently own the CD set can print out a
corrected cover and inlay card by downloading the artwork from the
webpage on the Pristine website devoted to this release.
