ANTHOLOGY OF THE ROYAL CONCERTGEBOUW ORCHESTRA, VOL. 5—THE RADIO RECORDINGS 1980–1990 • Carlo Maria Giulini,1 Kirill Kondrashin,2 Lucas Vis,3 Eugen Jochum,4 Bernard Haitink,5 Edo de Waart,6 Kurt Sanderling,7 Hans Vonk,8 Colin Davis,9 Neeme Järvi,10 Antál Doráti,11 Friedrich Cerha,12 Leonard Bernstein,13 Gerd Albrecht,14 Christoph von Dohnanyi,15 Riccardo Chailly,16 Nikolaus Harnoncourt,17 Wolfgang Sawallisch,18 Erich Leinsdorf,19 Iván Fischer,20 Charles Dutoit,21 conds; Royal Concertgebouw O • RCO LIVE 8005 (14 CDs: 1065:02) Broadcast: Amsterdam 1979–1989

CD 1: Brahms Symphony No. 4.1 Webern 5 Pieces for Orchestra.1 Nielsen Symphony No. 5.2 CD 2: Dallapiccola Commiato (Dorothy Dorow, sop).3 Bruckner Symphony No. 6.4 CD 3: Hindemith Clarinet Concerto (George Pieterson, cl).2 Rachmaninoff Symphony No. 2.2 CD 4: Schumann Symphony No. 1, “Spring.”5 Ravel Valses nobles et sentimentales.5 KodÁly Dances of Galanta.6 Schat Thema (Werner Herbers, ob).6 CD 5: Mozart Don Giovanni: Overture.7 K. A. Hartmann Concerto funèbre (Theo Olof, vn).7 Diepenbrock Lydische Nacht (arr. Reeser).8 Sibelius Symphony No. 6.9 CD 6: Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 2 (Martha Argerich, pn).10 Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6, “Pathétique.”11 CD 7: Schreker Vorspiel zu einem Drama.12 Scriabin Poem of Ecstacy.11 VarÈse Hyperprism.8 Escher Sinfonia in memoriam Maurice Ravel: Largo.3 Escher Univers de Rimbaud (Lode Devos, ten).3 CD 8: Mozart Piano Concerto No. 24 (Alfred Brendel, pn).5 Stravinsky Symphony of Psalms (Concertgebouw O Ch).9 Roussel Symphony No. 3.8 CD 9: Schubert Symphony No. 5.13 Beethoven Mass in C (Alison Hargan, sop; Carolyn Watkinson, alt; Keith Lewis, ten; Wout Oosterkamp, bs; Concertgebouw O Ch).9 CD 10: Berg 3 Fragments from Wozzeck (Dunja Vejzovic, mez).14 Mahler Symphony No. 1.13 CD 11: Debussy Images pour orchestre.11 Schoenberg Pelleas und Melisande.15 CD 12: Webern Im Sommerwind.16 Mozart Horn Concerto No. 4 (Jacob Slagter, hn).17 Beethoven Symphony No. 3, “Eroica.”17 CD 13: Rossini The Siege of Corinth: Overture.16 Stravinsky Le chant du rossignol.16 MARTInů Symphony No. 6.18 Strauss Die Frau ohne Schatten: Suite.19 CD 14: Strauss Till Eulenspiegel.20 Ravel L’enfant et les sortilèges (Jeanne Piland (L’enfant); Barbara Kilduff (Le rossignol); David Wilson-Johnson (Le chat), Netherlands C Ch; Boys Ch of St. Bavo Cathedral, Haarlem).21 Keuris Catena: Refrains and Variations6

Gramophone magazine recently polled music critics, asking: What is the best orchestra in the world? The verdict: the Concertgebouw. Although this is billed as Volume 5, it is the ninth such huge compendium of that ensemble, four others being devoted exclusively to Mengelberg, van Beinum, Haitink, and Chailly. Each set has been magnificent. Beginning in the 1930s, Dutch radio engineers have done superb work capturing the orchestra on discs, generally outclassing contemporary commercial recordings in each era. Each of the five volumes has been devoted to a decade of performances (the first went from 1935 to 1950). This set contains nearly 18 hours of music, averaging over 76 minutes per CD. The performances are presented in more or less chronological order, from January 1979 to November 1989.

CD 1: Giulini’s Brahms is typical of his work, slow (42:46) but full of life; this orchestra always played beautifully for him. His ability to make any music sound lovely extends even to Webern’s Five Pieces. Kondrashin was a big favorite with Amsterdam audiences; his Nielsen Fifth (the same performance that appeared on Philips) is rich and colorful, its second movement reeking of Prokofiev and Shostakovich. Bernstein’s white-hot, explosive New York recording represents the music more faithfully, but it is not as much fun.

CD 2 opens with an extended vocal scream, leading into Dallapiccola’s five-movement Commiato (“Farewell”), a dirge-like piece for soprano and chamber orchestra. No one could realize 20th-century avant-garde vocal music like Dorow, and she was still in superb voice in 1979. Abetted by some of the Concertgebouw’s great instrumentalists, she makes atonal music shine with radiant beauty. Bruckner’s Sixth, like the Fifth but unlike the Fourth, does not play itself. Jochum led the Concertgebouw in some great performances during the 1960s, but the bond may have loosened by 1980; despite some gorgeous playing, none of the movements gel.

CD 3: This is the same performance of Hindemith’s Clarinet Concerto that appeared on an Etcetera CD; the recorded sound is now so much more alive and bright that it sounds quite different. This is not the same performance of the Rachmaninoff Second Symphony that appeared on a pirate CD-R; that was from Royal Albert Hall, this is in the Concertgebouw 11 days earlier. Kondrashin creates a lush, Slavic atmosphere, but this is a rare case of sloppy playing in Amsterdam, and a private off-the-air recording loses much detail and impact. It is also the highly cut score common in the 1940s but seldom heard by 1980. A few uniquely lovely moments make the performance worth hearing, but in the end it disappoints.

CD 4: Orchestra and venue would seem ideal for the “Spring” Symphony, but Haitink pushes it too hard; heavy strings, blaring brass, and thundering timpani awaken the hall’s excess reverberance—which had lain untroubled by Bruckner. Conductor, orchestra, and hall are in more congenial territory with Ravel, although the recorded sound is still a bit distant. De Waart’s Kodály is warm and charming, but Mackerras infuses the Dances of Galanta with more spirit in a luminescent Linn recording. Peter Schat’s Thema, for solo oboe, guitars, organ, and winds, “helped pave the way for the Hague School with its loudness, obsessively repetitive wind parts, throbbing bass guitar, and block-like instrumentation.” Oboe and organ are “amplified and electronically altered.” The piece achieves the difficult feat of making the Concertgebouw sound ugly.

CD 5: This set comes alive with Sanderling’s dramatic reading of the Overture to Don Giovanni, superbly executed by the orchestra. The abrupt, awkward concert ending takes us and the audience by surprise; we were ready for the segue into the dark doings of scene 1. Hartmann’s Concerto funebre makes a strong impression in this 1983 performance by co-concertmaster Theo Olof, an equal of the classic 1968 Gertler/Ančerl recording. Alphons Diepenbrock wrote music for the stage, most of it including the voice; Diepenbrock scholar Eduard Reeser transcribed the suite Lydische Nacht, removing a speaking part. The notes say this 1984 performance was its premiere, but that was only of Reeser’s final version—the Concertgebouw included this piece in its first American concert in 1954. It is a lush, colorfully scored late-Romantic tone poem, beautifully realized by Vonk. Colin Davis’s Sibelius Sixth is swift (25:43), smooth, and slick; the playing and the sound are gorgeous, but Sibelius is not present. Thanks to Richard A. Kaplan’s gargantuan Sibeliusaurus in Fanfare 30:3, I now listen only to Karajan’s 1955 mono recording, which is, as Professor Kaplan stated, sublime.

CD 6: Never one to follow consensus, Argerich gives a luminous, expansive yet exciting performance of Beethoven’s Second Concerto, lighting up the hall with a dazzling reading of the long, late cadenza. The piece has seldom seemed so “major Beethoven.” A merely good finale comes as a slight letdown. Dorati keeps to old-time tempos in Tchaikovsky’s “Pathétique,” his 45:50 closer to Mengelberg’s 43:23 than Haitink’s 48:42. The performance has many problems: At 1:41 of the opening Adagio, it sounds as if someone drops a mute on the stage. Woodwinds are not always tuned together. At 8:05 into the third movement, the bass drum hits a fff half a measure late (bar 293), a shocking disruption that could have been patched from an identical passage 54 bars earlier. How did such a recording get past all the auditions that must have been held to determine this set’s contents?

CD 7: Schreker was almost exclusively an opera composer, but his 1914 Vorspiel zu einem Drama is a prelude to an imaginary one. It is not one of his better works, its only drama being in the title, and the orchestration lacks his usual delicacy and finesse. Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy, written six years earlier, is surprisingly similar to the Schreker work. The Concertgebouw’s always-sharp first trumpet was retired by 1984; this unaccredited soloist is unusually restrained, in a lovely but less than inspired performance. The switch to Varèse is an alarm in more ways than one. The late Hans Vonk was a superb conductor who could do everything well; only a total absence of podium personality kept him from becoming a star. Two pieces by Rudolf Escher (1912–1980) close CD 7; a 10-minute Largo from an unfinished early symphony, a memorial to Ravel, is not very interesting by itself. The late Univers de Rimbaud is a 21-minute song cycle for tenor and orchestra. In a touch reminiscent of French 78-rpm vocal records, the title to each of the five songs is announced by the singer. Rich, imaginative music employs the orchestra sparingly, but the tenor’s voice has very little juice. It’s difficult to evaluate without song texts, which have been a consistent lack in this series.

CD 8: Pianist and conductor are mismatched in this performance of Mozart’s C-Minor Concerto; Haitink’s dark, stormy introduction contrasts with Brendel’s clarity and finesse. He is unable to hold the line through the slow series of isolated notes in the Largetto, however, and some solo passages in the finale are mannered. The no-nonsense collaborations of Casadesus and Szell do this concerto more justice. Poor balances and excess resonance spoil the Colin Davis-led Symphony of Psalms; winds are distant and the chorus is feeble and muddy, reducing the impact of Stravinsky’s deliciously acrid scoring. A masterpiece becomes a bore. There are plenty of fine recordings available: Ančerl, Bernstein, Craft, the composer. Vonk returns to lead an excellent Roussel Third; he lacks Munch’s fire, but the superior orchestra is a worthwhile trade-off—the dissonances here are those of the composer, not the performers.

CD 9 opens with Schubert’s Fifth Symphony, from June 24, 1987. The combination of Bernstein verve and Concertgebouw elegance is irresistible. It sounds fresher here than on a Deutsche Grammophon CD, which includes edits from repeat performances the next two days; the Symphony has never been so winning. Colin Davis leads an equally fine Beethoven C-Major Mass. His soloists are superb, individually and in ensemble; there’s not an operatic breath anywhere. The Chorus is extremely subtle—the choral fugue in the Sanctus is pristine. The big moments soar, with the Concertgebouw brass storming the heavens. Most important, Davis holds our interest throughout, at slow tempos; the hushed moments are consistently intense. A few details fail to emerge—a Fidelio theme rising up through the woodwinds in the final measures of the Gloria—but that doesn’t matter. This matches or surpasses the best previous recordings: Robert Shaw and, for period instruments, John Eliot Gardiner.

CD 10 is equally stunning. Orchestra and hall work their magic on Wozzeck, turning Berg’s atonal writing into pure gold; credit Albrecht, too, a conductor who specializes in Viennese music of the early 20th century. Vejzovic is a convincing Marie, creating a character as lost as her Wozzeck. Bernstein’s Mahler First has never been as sunny and pastoral as in this October 9, 1987, performance. Again, a DG issue combines this performance with two others, replacing some almost-out-of-control moments in the finale with safer but less exciting takes.

CD 11: Dorati’s Images pour orchestre is heavy-handed and inconsistent, at times going for its blockbuster moments and at other times losing the thread of the music; the orchestra’s usually silken tones suffer. Dohnanyi’s Pelleas und Melisande is marvelous. The complex scoring of Schoenberg’s 1903 late-Romantic tone poem has always been thought something of a muddle—there has never been an ideal studio recording. This performance, and that by Karl Böhm in Andante’s set “Vienna Philharmonic: 20th Century Music, Volume 1,” capture every nuance and reveal the scoring to be masterful. It helps that each was recorded in one of the world’s finest acoustic venues.

CD 12: Im Sommerwind (1904) is another late-Romantic tone poem, written when Webern was 20. Most performances bathe it in rich, warm colors; Chailly gives it a welcome edge that hints at the Webern to come. A great orchestra must have great players; one could swear this was Dennis Brian playing Mozart’s Fourth Horn Concerto—until Slagter plays his own first-movement cadenza, in which he leaps hurdles unknown to the English hornist. I once read about producing three-note chords on a French horn, but I have never heard it done before. This “Eroica” combines the best of modern and period practices; tempos are swift, attacks crisp, the playing elegant. Harnoncourt crosses the finish line at 46: 03—Munch time, but with all the repeats! I first heard this music on the radio as a teenager, commenting to my fellow listener: This is the greatest music I’ve ever heard. Six decades have not budged my opinion, and this performance reinforces it.

CD 13: Chailly brings tremendous élan to The Siege of Corinth; crisp opening attacks suggest another “Eroica,” brass chords are sumptuous, woodwinds perky, and the racing strings pure and fine. Rossini never heard an orchestra like this; I bet he would have loved it. Chailly’s Le chant du rossignol is all about sparkle and color, without a backward glance at the opera that led to it. Sawallisch and the Concertgebouw give Martinů’s “Fantaisies symphoniques” a potent, almost Germanic performance; the opening and closing Lento movements are glorious. Need I add that the orchestral playing is magnificent? Not to mention the acoustics. I prefer this recording to the classic ones by Munch’s BSO and Ančerl’s Czech Philharmonic. Leinsdorf’s own 21-minute arrangement of music from Die Frau ohne Schatten captures the beauties of Strauss’s music, but I am seldom happy with suites drawn from operas; in this case, I miss a sense of dramatic continuity.

CD 14: In keeping with the old folk tales, Iván Fischer brings out the dark, nasty sides of Till Eulenspiegel’s humor; heavy brass and punchy attacks outweigh the customary woodwind pleasantries. Dutoit’s well-sung L’enfant et les sortilèges comes across as a sonic showpiece rather than as Colette’s charming drama. Ravel’s music, so closely tied to the action, needs its visual counterpart. (We are not told to what extent this performance was staged.) Listening at home, the orchestra outshines the vocalists, who would have benefited from some spotlighting. Part II, beginning with Wilson-Johnson’s Cat, comes across better than part I, as its music contains less orchestral majesty and more sound effects. It is fitting that the set end with a Dutch piece: Tristan Keuris’s Cantena (“Chains”), commissioned for the Concertgebouw’s 1988 centennial, is for 31 wind instruments, percussion, and celesta—the entire orchestra minus strings. Its tightly constructed harmonies are dominated by seventh chords, often piled so densely as to submerge any sense of tonality. The variations eventually calm down to p, and a sudden, dynamic coda rouses the audience’s enthusiasm.

This set makes it clear that the major reconstruction of the Concert-Gebouw in the late 1980s in no way harmed the renowned acoustics of its main hall; if anything, the post-renovation recordings are even finer than the earlier ones. One cannot help being swept away by the beauties found on these 14 discs; there are only about a dozen less-than-stellar items among the 41 performances. Bring on Volume 6 (1990–2000), before CDs disappear!

FANFARE: James H. North