To say the presentation
here won’t do would be to pay Archipel
a compliment, because there isn’t any.
You get the titles of the works and
the individual movements, with the track
numbers, the names of the performers,
the venue, the date, a photo of Joseph
Keilberth (taken quite a few years later
than these performances, I would suggest),
plus the information that the recordings
are "previously unpublished"
and "issued from original sources".
And that’s all.
And yet, considering
that Joseph Keilberth (1908-1968) is
hardly a cult figure – he tends to be
regarded as the archetypal Kapellmeister
– you would think it in Archipel’s interests,
since they presumably want to sell the
disc, to try and make a cult of him
with some hyperbolic presentation, suggesting
that it is time for a reassessment (which
it quite probably is). Well, at least
you can look Keilberth up, but neither
of the two Italian musical dictionaries
in my house mention Danilo Belardinelli.
An Internet search reveals that a conductor
of that name was active in the 1960s
and 1970s so I suppose this must be
the same person.
And as for the "issued
from original sources" bit, in
the wake of the recent Capitol v. Naxos
judgement, I suggest that any hawk-eyed
New York State cop grubbing around Fifth
Avenue basement stores in search of
compromising material is going want
to know to what the original sources
were, who made them and who owns them.
There can be little
doubt about who made them. If our NY
sleuth is at all musically inclined
he will quickly note that this is not
a ladies’ handbag recording, it’s been
made from proper microphones, though
rather too close for atmospheric results
(and ridiculously close to the violinist
in the concerto), and he will hear from
the swish – fairly well tamed and noticeable
mostly in pauses and very quiet passages
– that it has been preserved on acetates.
The sound has that slightly harsh, glassy
and top-heavy sound characteristic of
late acetates compared with the softer
sound of early tapes, and there is none
of the warping or print-through which
would demonstrate a tape origin. For
most of its post war history the RAI
(Italian Radio) has been in the habit
of broadcasting the Sunday afternoon
concerts of the Santa Cecilia Orchestra,
and in 1952 it was still recording on
large acetates, or else on tape but
transferring the results to large acetates
and not necessarily keeping the tapes
(as happened with the Furtwängler
Tchaikovsky 5th). Just to
settle any remaining doubts, over the
last decade the RAI has been restoring
its historical material, transferring
it to digital support and broadcasting
the results. Our hardworking detective
can now plug into the Internet and discover
that the RAI’s series Archivio storico
della RAI re-broadcast this pair
of performances on 3rd February
2003.
Now, far be it from
me to insinuate that someone at Archipel
taped that broadcast (and since broadcast
performances come out of copyright in
Italy after a mere 20 years maybe it
would be perfectly legal to do so, though
I should have thought that your own
taping would have to have been made
at least 20 years ago before you could
issue it); it is perfectly possible
that duplicates of the original material
were made at the time of the concert
for the artists or for the Santa Cecilia
archives and Archipel have worked from
those. But I do feel that historical
issues like this should be properly
documented. Mind you, however above
board this record is, I suppose that
Belardinelli (if still alive) or his
heirs, plus the heirs of Joseph Keilberth
and probably the RAI too could now claim
royalties on any sales in the State
of New York, but that’s another story.
Well, having got that
off my chest, what are the performances
like? I have already praised Keilberth’s
recording of the Dvořák
cello concerto with Hoelscher and noted
on that occasion that he was maybe the
only German conductor of his day to
perform Rusalka. He certainly doesn’t
sound like a Kapellmeister,
he conducts with plenty of upfront vitality
in the outer movements, alternating
with a lighter lilting touch for the
lyrical moments. Second subject material
relaxes more than is customary today,
but rather less than was usual then.
The slow movement is very slow, but
the melodies are phrased with great
expressive freedom and genuine depth
of feeling. The closing pages of this
movement often seem to drag on a bit
too long; here I was quite entranced
by the heartfelt response Keilberth
extracts from the orchestra. There is
an unusually wide contrast between the
tempi in the scherzo; authorized or
not, Keilberth thus obtains an irresistibly
seductive sousedská-like
lilt in the trio. This is a performance
I shall come back to, but how important
it is in the pantheon of recorded New
Worlds depends on a question to which
I don’t know the answer: does Keilberth’s
Telfunken recording of the work with
the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra (unavailable
on CD as far as I know) have all the
virtues of the present one in better
sound, or did studio conditions and
a German orchestra bring out the Kapellmeister
in Keilberth? In the latter case,
the present recording has a place, though
the ragged and sour opening might not
lead you to suppose so – don’t let that
put you off.
As for the Sibelius,
Belardinelli has the right feeling,
but some of the most taxing passages
result in flawed intonation; this, and
the tiresomely close recording, would
only be worth ignoring for the sake
of some special insights into this much
recorded work, and I can’t say any are
on offer. Romans unfamiliar with the
piece in 1952 (Sibelius has little or
no appeal for the Italian public who
even today dismiss him as a minor exponent
of the nationalist schools) got a good
idea of it but the performance need
not detain us today. For his part, Keilberth
is punctual and provides some thrilling
moments when on his own, mainly in the
first movement.
This disc certainly
demonstrates that the art of Keilberth
would be worth further investigation;
the trouble is that it also gives the
idea that such investigation, properly
carried out in the archives of European
(and other?) radio stations, might yield
far better results than here.
Christopher
Howell
see also review
by Jonathan Woolf
Danilo Belardinelli (violin)* 
