Exploring Koussevitzky Performances in Boston

Some readers may recall that, exactly one month ago, I wrote about a two-CD album of Serge Koussevitzky conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Since both my undergraduate and graduate school years were spent in the greater Boston area, I realized that It would be more than a little unfair to Koussevitzky’s legacy for me to overlook his tenure with the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) between 1924 and 1949. With only a little poking around, I found a ten-CD box set of recordings of Koussevitzky and the BSO entitled Maestro Risoluto. This was packaged as five two-CD albums, each of which addressed a different aspect of the conductor’s repertoire.

This morning I finished listening to the first of those albums. This basically covered the First Viennese School with each of the four composers represented by a symphony. In “order of appearance,” those composers were:

1. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: K. 338 in C major
2. Joseph Haydn: Hoboken I/102 in B-flat major
3. Franz Schubert: D. 759 in B minor (“Unfinished”)
4. Ludwig van Beethoven: Opus 93 in F major

The second CD couples the Beethoven symphony with Robert Schumann’s Opus 38 (“Spring”) symphony in B-flat major. Schumann was, of course, never based in Vienna; but his coupling with Beethoven is at least moderately compatible. That CD also includes the overture from Beethoven’s Opus 84 set of incidental music for the play Egmont by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

These recordings were made between December 29, 1936 and April 2, 1947. Given the limitations of technology during those decades, the quality of remastering is at least consistently satisfactory and provides more than ample opportunity to appreciate how Koussevitzky handled the contour of the dynamics for each symphony movement. From a personal point of view, I hope that at least some readers recall that one of my favorite topics is Beethoven’s sense of humor. Where the symphonies are concerned, I have always felt that Opus 93 was the most jocular. I would say that there are few signs that Koussevitzky shared my opinion!

Nevertheless, when it comes to both dynamics and tempo, the conductor definitely had clear and firm ideas of how each movement of each symphony should unfold before the attentive listener. I would say that the collection was well-titled, because Koussevitzky was clearly resolute in establishing how both dynamics and tempo contribute to the unfolding of those movements. It would probably be fair to say that he felt that if those “nuts and bolts” were kept in order, then any subjectivity could be left to the listener, rather than any of the performers.

It remains to be seen whether that assessment of Koussevitzky’s practices as a conductor will stand up to the repertoire presented on the remaining four albums in this collection!