Willy Pragher’s photograph of Hans Rosbaud on the cover of the album being discussed (courtesy of Naxos of America)
This Friday SWR Classic, the “house label” of the Southwest German Radio (SWR) Symphony Orchestra based in Baden-Baden, will release the eleventh installment of its Hans Rosbaud Edition series of albums. Rosbaud was the founding conductor of that ensemble, beginning his tenure in 1948 and remaining until his death in 1962. Following the end of World War II, he had served as Music Director of the Munich Philharmonic during the United States occupation of that city; but Rosbaud’s interest in new and recent repertoire did not sit well with prevailing conservative tastes. Before World World II Rosbaud had championed the works of composers such as Arnold Schoenberg and Béla Bartók, and SWR provided him with a platform from which he could continue to exercise his adventurous tastes. Indeed, his ensemble was welcomed at many contemporary music festivals; and their performances of the music of Alban Berg, Anton Webern, and Igor Stravinsky can be found in the recorded archives of Pierre Boulez’ Domain Musical concert series.
The latest SWR Classic release in the series consists of eight CDs of the music of Gustav Mahler. Six of those CDs were recorded in Baden-Baden. The remaining two were recorded at the Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) studios in Cologne. This is, by no means, a “comprehensive” release of Mahler’s music. The only vocal selection is the orchestral song cycle Das Lied von der Erde (the song of the earth), one of the two albums recorded in Cologne. The remainder of the collection is devoted to the “almost purely instrumental” symphonies: the first in D major, the fourth in G major (whose final movement requires a soprano), the fifth in C-sharp minor, the sixth in A minor, the seventh in E minor, and the ninth in D major. As usual, Amazon.com is currently processing pre-orders for this collection.
Given how many recordings of Mahler’s music I have accumulated, I no longer care very much about whether any particularly collection is “complete” in any sense of that word. As a faithful collector of Schwann catalogs, I first became aware of Rosbaud as one of the few conductors to have recorded Mahler’s seventh symphony. (My own first recording was a hand-me-down from a relative that could not stand the music. The conductor on that album was Hermann Scherchen.) My first Rosbaud acquisition was a Westminster LP of the three compositions that SWR had performed for Le Domain Musicale. Where current listening is concerned, I tend to restrain myself due to shortage of shelf space; but this was a collection that was almost impossible to overlook.
Having now listened to the entire collection, I can say with conviction that nothing disappoints me. One of Mahler’s favorite tempo indications was “nicht schleppen” (do not drag). There is a story (perhaps apocryphal) that music critic Julius Korngold would vent his frustration with the music of his composer son Erich Wolfgang by telling him “Don’t bathe!” This was his variation on Mahler’s injunction: Let the music proceed at its proper place, and don’t linger to smell the flowers!
Rosbaud consistently homes in on the best pace for every episode in each symphony movement (including the vocal “movements” of Das Lied). This is particularly evident in those movements that Mahler had conceived as marches (whether or not he labeled them that way). Those movements play significant roles in establishing rhetorical frameworks for the fifth, sixth, and seventh symphonies, each of which unfolds its own unique perspective on the nature of the march itself. Indeed, Mahler may be the only composer skilled enough to endow a march with a sense of nuance; and Rosbaud conveys that sense of nuance better than many of the other conductors I have encountered, particularly the more recent ones.
In the few vocal offerings the only name that registered with me was that of tenor Ernst Haefliger in Das Lied. Two of his three songs are about drunkenness, and he delivers them in such a way that the spirits behind the text do not undermine his ability to convey that text. The other three Das Lied songs are taken by soprano Grace Hoffmann, whom I had previously known only by name. She has the heaviest burden, since the duration of the last of the six songs is almost as long as the string of the five preceding songs. She is required to deliver a relatively simple narrative, whose individual episodes come between long orchestral interludes. This recording of that song, “Abschied,” could not be a better example of Rosbaud’s awareness of the complementary roles of the vocalist and the orchestra. Far more straightforward is the final movement of the fourth symphony, sung by soprano Eva Maria Rogner. Her name was totally unfamiliar to me; but, through her engagement with Rosbaud, she delivered one of the most convincing accounts of a child’s view of heaven that I have encountered either in performance or on recording.
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