Recordings take us back to a nearly forgotten era
Four box sets out now give the discerning CD collector a backwards glance at a nearly forgotten era.
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Four box sets out now give the discerning CD collector a backwards glance at a nearly forgotten era.
Eugen Jochum The Orchestral Recordings on Philips (15 CDs)
This Decca Eloquence set contains 15 discs encompassing a broad sweep across the German-Austrian repertoire, including a complete cycle of Beethoven’s symphonies recorded in Amsterdam with the Concertgebouworkorkest in the late 1960s, with the complete overtures and a performance of the first piano concerto coupled with Mozart’s No. 14 concerto featuring the conductor’s daughter Veronica Jochum von Moltke as soloist.
The Bavarian conductor had a strong affinity for the famous Dutch orchestra, dating back to the war years when Amsterdam was occupied by the Germans. As a non-Nazi, Jochum was the perfect choice for appeasing the Nazis’ insistence on appointing German conductors. In the early 1960s Jochum shared chief conductor duties with the younger Bernard Haitink and it’s from this era that four landmark recordings of Mozart symphonies – the Linz, Prague, Haffner and Jupiter – are included in the set, alongside Schubert’s Tragic and Schumann’s Symphony No.4.
Mono discs from the 1950s include some Richard Strauss tone poems and the Philips 1952 recording of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony and a 1951 performance of Beethoven’s Fifth with the Berlin Philharmonic. The highlight for me is a majestic 1964 live stereo recording of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 5 performed with the Concertgebouworkorkest at the Benedictine Abbey of Ottobeuren in Bavaria. The box set is a top-notch survey of one of the most important conductors of the last century and you can get it from Classicsdirect.com.au for $94.95.
Suzanne Danco The Decca Recitals (8 CDs)
Belgian soprano Suzanne Danco is not widely remembered these days but she recorded extensively from the late 1940s to the cusp of Mono and Stereo recordings in the late 1950s, and now Decca Eloquence has released a set of eight recitals, some of them appearing for the first time on CD. In her day she was considered an unrivalled exponent of Debussy and Ravel songs, but it is not only in the French repertoire that she shines, as this collection attests. She was equally at home in Mozart operas or Bach cantatas, and her performances of Schumann’s Dichterliebe and Liederkreis with Guido Agosti on piano are ones to treasure.
But the highlights are the recordings of Debussy, Faure and Ravel made with Ernest Ansermet and L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. A delightful addition is a recital she recorded near her home in Florence with her friend the conductor Francesco Molinari-Pradelli at the keyboard. The program is based around an album the composer Gioachino Rossini presented to Louise Carlier, daughter of a Parisian impresario, containing a collection or original manuscripts of melodies by celebrated composers.
You can get it from Classicsdirect.com.au for $44.95.
Andor Foldes Complete Deutsche Grammophon Recordings (19 CDs)
When he arrived in America in 1939 Hungarian pianist Andor Foldes had just two possessions – a $50 bill and a photocopy of the autograph score of Bartok’s second piano concerto. The former child prodigy, who was taught by the composer and conductor Erno Dohnanyi, found it hard to make ends meet at first, at one stage travelling west with his wife and a stranger who charged them $15 for the car journey. Although he knew Hungary’s top composers Dohnanyi and Zoltan Kodaly, it was Bartok who he most admired and his recordings of the piano sonata, second concerto and two discs of solo piano music form the backbone of this 19-CD box set of mono and stereo releases from his days with French Polydor, Mercury and Deutsch Grammophon labels.
Foldes piano “guiding star” was the German maestro Wilhelm Backhaus, and like him he was noted more for precision than imagination and sensuality. You get a sense of this with the bigger Romantic fare in the collection – a generous helping of Beethoven sonatas, some Brahms, Schumann and Liszt. The performances are engaging rather than emotionally transporting.
His temperament is perfect for Bartok and Kodaly – who gets a whole disc including Foldes’ own arrangement of excerpts from the Hary Janos orchestral suite – and there is an intriguing smattering of Bach which left this listener wanting to hear more of his take on that composer, as well as a tribute to composers from his adopted homeland – Samuel Barber and Aaron Copland. The majority of the recordings are from the early stereo era and the production quality is excellent throughout.
You can get it from Classicsdirect.com.au for $105.95.
The Legacy of Charles Munch (14 CDs)
If you were born in Strasbourg in Alsatia at the end of the 19th century you were a German citizen. After World War I and the Treaty of Versailles you became French, only to be annexed back to Germany by the Nazis, and then finally French again after World War II. The city’s troubled and much disputed past benefited the great conductor Charles Munch, who was born there in 1891, as he was able to bestride the rival French and German musical schools as a kind of cultural chimera. The downside was that he was called up to fight for the Germans in the Great War, being gassed at Verdun but managing to survive.
His twin identity is very much in evidence in the recordings he left us, spanning four decades from the mid-1930s to the dawn of the stereo era. This career is captured admirably in this 14-disc box set which comprises all his Decca recordings as well as those he made for the early music label L’Oiseau-Lyre, Deutsche Grammophon, Philips, Polydor and Vega.
You’ll find the German school represented by Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms and Schumann, but the gems in the collection are all French, including premiere recordings of Ravel’s Piano concerto for the left hand, some wonderful Debussy, Faure, Bizet and Saint-Saens. Munch’s recordings of works by Roussel are a standout and it’s sadly paradoxical that his last recording – a magnificent survey of Berlioz’s monumental Requiem – should be his last. He died shortly after its release, music stores decking the new double album in black crepe.
You can get it from Classicsdirect.com.au for $89.95.