Bruno Walter: Between Beethoven and Bruckner

It should not surprise anyone familiar with the history of conductors that Bruno Walter’s preferences resided almost entirely in the nineteenth century. That period is defined with Ludwig van Beethoven and one end and Gustav Mahler at the other. Readers probably already know that, in writing about Bruno Walter: The Complete Columbia Album Collection, I chose to treat the recordings of music by Beethoven as a category unto itself. I plan to take a similar approach by treating the music of both Anton Bruckner and Mahler as a separate category, meaning that almost everything that remains is situated between these two “bookends.”

As might be expected, Johannes Brahms gets the most attention. Furthermore, as was the case with the canon of Beethoven symphonies, each of the four that Brahms composed was recorded twice, once on the East Coast with the New York Philharmonic and once in Hollywood with the “West Coast version” of the Columbia Symphony Orchestra (probably involving members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic). Here, again, I cannot say that I was able to detect any significant changes in interpretation between the recordings made in New York (between February of 1951 and December of 1953) and those made in Hollywood (between February of 1959 and January of 1960).

Photograph of Johannes Brahms taken at the time he was working on his Opus 45 (photographer unknown, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

However, what I value most among the Brahms recordings are the two vocal selections. Most important are the three sessions in December of 1954 during which Brahms’ Opus 45 A German Requiem was recorded with soprano Irmgard Seefried, bass-baritone George London, the Westminster Choir, and the New York Philharmonic. I have lost count of the number of recordings I now have of Opus 45; but this one is definitely a “dream team” performance, particularly since this was a time that was early in London’s career at the Metropolitan Opera. (At the time of this recording, London had already worked with Walter on an album of vocal music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.)

This “East Coast” offering is complemented by a recording of the Opus 53 “Alto Rhapsody” made in Hollywood in 1961. The soloist is mezzo Mildred Miller, singing with the Occidental College Concert Choir and the Columbia Symphony Orchestra. Much as I appreciate this recording, I have to confess that it will be almost impossible to wean me away from Kathleen Ferrier’s approach to this composition!

On the other hand another real treat comes with a recording of soprano Lotte Lehmann singing two of Robert Schumann’s song cycles, the Opus 42 Frauen-Liebe und Leben and the Opus 48 Dichterliebe. These recordings are particularly valuable, since they give the attentive listener a chance to consider Walter’s talent as an accompanist at the piano. The rest of the Schumann repertoire in this collection, the Opus 54 piano concerto with soloist Eugene Istomin and the Opus 97 (“Rhenish”) symphony with the New York Philharmonic, is far too sparse; but, where historical recordings are concerned, we have to take what we can get.

However, if most of the nineteenth-century selections are devoted to “sure-fire familiar favorites,” there is one “ringer” in the collection, distinguished by having been composed in the twentieth century! It is a recording of Samuel Barber’s Opus 9 (first) symphony, recorded in Carnegie Hall in January of 1945. This is so much of an “outlier” that it is clear that Sony Classical had trouble figuring out where to put it. It ended up as the “second half” of a CD featuring a Carnegie Hall recording of Antonín Dvořák’s Opus 88 (eighth) symphony in G major along with the orchestral version of the first of the Opus 46 Slavonic dances.

The bottom line is that, where this selection is concerned, there is far more to be gained by enjoying what this collection offers, rather than grousing over what is lacking. We need to remember that Columbia Records was, first and foremost, a commercial endeavor that had RCA (Radio Corporation of America) as a serious competitor. They both chose to sail under a flag that President Calvin Coolidge had hoisted with the following words:

After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world.

It is all very well and good to praise the more profound values behind Walter’s approach to conducting, but it was only by following in Coolidge’s footsteps that Columbia could convey those values to a geographically diverse audience, many of whom could appreciate that life was about more than buying and selling.