Like the sixth, discussed yesterday, the seventh CD in the third installment of the BBC Legends series is devoted to a conductor. Here in the United States the name of Jascha Horenstein is considerably less familiar than that of Leopold Stokowski; but, as I wrote back in 2020, he was one of the first conductors to seize my attention seriously. Through a hand-me-down record club album, I encountered my first LP recording of Beethoven’s Opus 125 (“Choral”) symphony. Horenstein was the conductor, and it was the first time I began to appreciate just what made that symphony tick. It was also the first time I really paid attention to the vocal soloists: soprano Wilma Lipp, alto Elizabeth Hoengen, tenor Julius Patzak, and bass Otto Wiener.
Where the BBC Legends series is concerned, Horenstein had the honor of showing up on the very first CD in the first release. That CD was a recording of Gustav Mahler’s eighth symphony in E-flat major, often known as the “Symphony of a Thousand.” Ironically, I had previously purchased the two-CD BBC release of this performance, which included a “preface” of Horenstein in conversation Alan Blyth. This surveyed his past experiences as a conductor with a variety of eye-opening insights (those of Richard Strauss being the most memorable).
Jascha Horenstein on the cover of his Profil anthology (courtesy of Naxos of America)
My 2020 article accounted for Profil’s release of a ten-CD collection of performances conducted by Horenstein. One of those performances involved a “Faust project” recording made in 1956 with the Southwest German Radio Symphony Orchestra. Richard Wagner’s “Faust Overture” served as an “introduction” to Franz Liszt’s “Faust Symphony.” Horenstein’s CD in the latest BBC Legends release revisits the Liszt symphony in a recording made on April 23, 1972 at the University of Salford (in England). For this performance he conducted the BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra, the men’s voices of the BBC Northern Singers, and tenor John Mitchinson.
The “Faust Symphony” is one of a generous number of compositions that establish Liszt as one of the “founding fathers” of program music (if not the founding father). Liszt committed a generous amount of time away from his piano keyboard to achieve that reputation. The fact is that, in addition to his “musical profiles” of Faust, Gretchen and Mephistopheles, he composed thirteen works that he called “symphonic poems,” each of which had its own narrative foundation. However, as other composers began to develop their own approaches to program music, Liszt’s early efforts tended to fade into the background.
Having more than one recording of the “Faust Symphony” may remind many of the old joke about Mount Fuji. For those do not already know it, the Japanese believe that there are two kinds of fool in the world. The first applies to anyone that has never climbed Fuji. The second is anyone that has climbed Fuji twice!
The fact is that, for better or worse, I now have three recordings of “Faust Symphony” in my collection. In addition to the two Horenstein recordings, I also have a more recent release. This is part of the Warner Classics 70-CD box set of recordings made by conductor Kurt Masur, which includes an account of Liszt’s orchestral compositions that was more generous than I previously could imagine.
Given that I am unlikely to make frequent visits to any of these three recordings, I have to say that I continue to be drawn to Horenstein’s achievements as a conductor. The fact that he made two recordings suggests that his opinion of the music is deeper than any that I have achieved through my own experiences. Perhaps Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen will decide that this composition deserves a San Francisco Symphony subscription program, if not under his baton than led by a visiting conductor of his choosing. Perhaps the physical experience of the concluding “Chorus mysticus” will convince me that there really is a “there” there!
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