Profil’s Anthology of Conductor Hans Swarowsky

courtesy of Naxos of America

The latest conductor to be featured in an anthology of significant archival recordings produced by Profil is Hans Swarowsky. At the beginning of November, Profil released a collection of 11 CDs of Swarowsky leading a wide variety of different ensembles and several soloists of note. Swarowsky was born in Hungary but was active across much of Europe with particular attention to Austria and Germany. He began his career at the Stuttgart Opera in 1927. Opportunities then led him to the Vienna Volksoper, Hamburg, and eventually Berlin, where he succeeded Erich Kleiber at the Berlin State Opera in 1934.

Unfortunately, that prestigious job did not last long. In 1936 the Nazis imposed a ban on Jewish musicians. While Swarowsky was not Jewish, there were Jewish ancestors on his father’s side; and that was enough to subject him to the ban. Swarowsky was both wise and resourceful enough to get out of Germany and made Zurich his base of operations.

All of the recordings in the Profil collection were made after World War II. His first appointment after the war was as Principal Conductor with the Vienna Symphony. Through his relationship with Herbert von Karajan, he was invited to serve as conductor of the Vienna State Opera. While not the director (as Gustav Mahler had been), Swarowsky held a tenured position.

As a result, the number of recordings in the Profil collection made with the orchestra of the Vienna State Opera is relatively generous. Because those recordings were made in Vienna, it is not surprising that they are, for the most part, traditional. They include an entire CD of compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; and other composers represented are Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Johannes Brahms, Josef Strauss, and his older brother, Johann Strauss II.

Among these alternatives, it is worth calling attention to that Mozart CD. It includes recordings of two of the piano concerto, K. 467 in C major and K. 595 in B-flat major, both made in June of 1963. The pianist is Friedrich Gulda, who is one of the few pianists to have made a lasting impression in recordings of both the classical and jazz repertoires. In the former domain his specialties were Mozart and Beethoven (and his recordings of all of Beethoven’s piano sonatas were released in the United States by the Musical Heritage Society). However, in 1956 Gulda established his jazz credentials at both Birdland in New York City and the Newport Jazz Festival. In his sessions with Swarowsky, Gulda’s head is definitely in Mozart’s domain; but his cadenza performances are definitely more adventurous than those taken by many of his contemporaries and could easily have been spontaneous improvisations.

From a personal point of view, I was particularly drawn to a concert recording of Gustav Mahler’s third symphony made with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra in January of 1963. Swarowsky had a long history with this symphony, having heard it conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler in Vienna when he was barely out of his teens. Those who know their Mahler known that this symphony’s first movement is one of his longest uninterrupted episodes of music, usually clocking in at more than half an hour. Swarowsky approached this movement with a solid command of its overall architecture, delivering a performance so convincing that one can forgive the recording glitch that missed out on the opening measures of the following movement.

The entire symphony is divided across two CDs. The first three movements are on the first, filling about one hour of time. The remainder of the symphony lasts only about half an hour. Profil decided to fill out that CD with three compositions by Arnold Schoenberg. Two of these were recorded at two performances of a program that included two pieces for speaker and chorus, the Opus 39 “Kol Nidre” and the Opus 46 “A Survivor from Warsaw.” (The concerts took place on October 28 and 30, 1952 in Vienna.) These were the first recordings ever made of those two compositions; and, while Schoenberg’s handling of the narration is a bit clunky, both pieces present a heartfelt account of Schoenberg’s approach to Judaism.

The other Schoenberg selection is the Opus 8 set of six songs with orchestra accompaniment. These were also recorded at two performances of the same concert program, this time in Cologne on December 16 and 20, 1961. Those six settings get far too little attention, which is unfortunate in light of the insights they provide regarding Schoenberg’s approaches to instrumentation.

For the record, Swarowsky studied with both Schoenberg and Anton Webern. Both of these composers can be found on the AllMusic Discography Web page. It is a pity that Webern did not “make the cut” for the Profil collection; but the Schoenberg recordings are definitely a major factor to consider when evaluating that collection.