Barbirolli at Hallé: 19th-Century Assortment

The remainder of the nineteenth-century repertoire performed by the Hallé Orchestra conducted by John Barbirolli amounts to a relatively mixed assortment. Indeed, in the Sir John Barbirolli: The Complete Warner Recordings collection, many of the nineteenth-century selections share CDs with either the eighteenth century or the twentieth. On the basis of the reproduced images of LP album covers on the CD sleeves, I would hazard a guess that these colocations have more to do with Warner Classics trying to fill individuals CDs as efficiently as possible, rather than providing collections of “good neighbors.”

Consider the twentieth CD in the box. It begins with the Viennese Gemütlichkeit of Franz von Suppé and Johann Strauss (both father and son), which then segues across the Atlantic Ocean to the fourth of the Bachianas Brasileiras suites by Brazilian Heitor Villa-Lobos. The listener is then shuttled back across the Atlantic to the Finland of Jean Sibelius for “The Swan of Tuonela” from his Opus 22 Lemminkäinen Suite. The journey then ends at the 1952 Salzburg Festival, which hosted the world premiere of Richard Strauss’ opera Die Liebe der Danae (the love of Danae). Barbirolli conducts two symphonic fragments from this opera arranged by Clemens Krauss, who had conducted that premiere.

To be fair most of these recordings were made during a single two-day recording session in January of 1955. Nevertheless, the organization of recording sessions rarely takes into account how appropriate listening experiences should be planned. Thus, when the LP albums were released, one grouped together Villa-Lobos, Sibelius, and Richard Strauss, while the other was the Gemütlichkeit collection.

An illustration of Peer Gynt for an 1896 book of Norwegian folk tales (by Peter Nicolai Arbo, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

Only two of the CDs are devoted to a single composer. The composer on one is Edvard Grieg; and it makes for an appealing departure from the ordinary, particularly where the music for Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt play is concerned. Rather than confine himself to the two suites that Grieg prepared, Barbirolli extended those eight selections with another four, arranging the twelve tracks in their “order of appearance” in Ibsen’s narrative. This includes vocal solos by sopranos Patricia Clark and Sheila Armstrong and the Ambrosian Singers chorus adding to the frenzy of the Mountain King episode. The other composer to fill an entire CD is Hector Berlioz, whose album couples the Opus 14 “Symphonie fantastique” with three instrumental excerpts from the Opus 24 “dramatic legend” La damnation de Faust (the damnation of Faust).

Sadly, only two of the Brahms symphonies are included in this collection, Opus 90 (third) in F major and Opus 98 (fourth) in E minor. Curiously, each is introduced by one of Carl Maria von Weber’s opera overtures, coupling the early nineteenth century to its latter decades. The good news is that Barbirolli would later record the entire cycle of Brahms symphonies with the Vienna Philharmonic. Similarly, Mahler is represented only by his first symphony in D major; but most of his symphonies were composed in the twentieth century. The Mahler tracks are preceded by the overture to Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel opera (whose premiere in Hamburg, following its first performance in Weimar, was conducted by Mahler).

Taken as a whole, this is a “what you get is what you get” assortment. The performances are consistently perceptive, often providing the attentive listener with new approaches to old chestnuts. There is also one twentieth-century offering that allows Barbirolli to exercise his sense of humor, the divertissement that Jacques Ibert composed in 1930. Sadly, I have never heard this performed in concert; and I have not heard a recording of it since my undergraduate days. I was glad to discover that the music is still as funny as it was when I first encountered it.