It was almost two months ago that I first learned that ICA Classics had released a third volume in its BBC Legends series of recordings taken from the BBC archives. Some readers may recall that I had written about the second volume in December of 2017, and I had encountered the first volume during my tenure with Examiner.com in October of 2013. Each volume consisted of 20 CDs, all accounting for performances that had originally been broadcast by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).
My writing about the first two volumes in the series was enabled through my downloading all of the tracks, which had been provided by Naxos of America. However, when I visited the Naxos database for the new release, all I encountered was a track listing. Figuring that, due to the rush of the holiday season, I would have to wait for the upload, I kept my patience all the way through the first half of December. As I write this, the tracks are still not there; but on December 16, I decided to go to the Amazon.com Web page for the new release.
My first attempt was to select the MP3 download option. However, I quickly discovered that downloading 20 CDs seemed to involve biting off more than Amazon could chew. As a result, I cancelled the download and ordered the CD box. I was then informed that delivery was likely to take at least a month! Given the Amazon reputation for rapid turn-around, I was a bit puzzled. Nevertheless, the package arrived at the end of last week; and the first thing I realized was that it had been sent by a distributor in Germany!
In accounting for the first two volumes, I basically provided a “blanket” approach, enumerating the contributing performers and singling out what I felt were the most memorable listening experiences after having traversed all of the content. However, since performance activities are just beginning to come back up to speed this month, I am hoping that I can provide a disc-by-disc account of the new volume. Thus, I shall “begin at the beginning” with the CD presenting Karl Böhm conducting the London Symphony Orchestra in a performance that took place in the Royal Festival Hall on June 28, 1977.
During my time as an undergraduate, the Music Department was run by a man named Klaus Liepmann, who was the first full-time Professor of Music at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He wrote a textbook for the Introduction to Music course that did not offer very much. My only personal contact with him was when he ran a seminar on the operas of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Very early in that seminar he started to play a recording of one of the opera overtures; and, in less than a minute, he proclaimed, “Another boooring Böhm performance!”
By that time I had learned to take such comments with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, more by accident than by intent, it turned out that my encounters with Böhm recordings has been very limited. As a result, I never really made a “deep dive” into his recordings until January of 2018 when Deutsche Grammophon released a 70-CD box set of all of the vocal recordings Böhm had made, most of which were opera performances. What struck me was how many fresh insights Böhm could provide into so many works that I had thought were familiar by composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss, and particularly Alban Berg. More recently (a little over a year ago) that spectrum was further expanded with a CD of the Vienna Philharmonic playing Anton Bruckner’s seventh symphony, which was preceded by Paul Hindemith’s concerto for woodwinds, harp, and orchestra.
In that context the BBC CD initially appealed to me, simply because it provided me with new “territory” in Böhm’s repertoire to explore. The program he prepared for his Festival Hall performance basically provided “bookends” for the nineteenth century. It began with Franz Schubert’s D. 125 (second) symphony in B-flat major, which he completed in 1815. This was followed by another “second symphony,” this one Johannes Brahms’ Opus 73 in D major, composed during the summer of 1877.
I have to confess that I have a soft spot for conductors that are willing to explore Schubert’s earliest symphonies. I had a field day when cpo released its Complete Symphonies & Fragments album with Michi Gaigg conducting the L’Orfeo Barockorchester in thoroughly refreshing accounts of those early efforts. For that matter, back in my Examiner.com days I discussed a box set by Lorin Maazel conducting the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in performances of all eight symphonies (without the fragments). Maazel was definitely in the same league as Böhm in recognizing the youthful vigor that Schubert brought to D. 125, and all I can do is hope that I shall encounter a concert performance of this little gem.
The Brahms symphony, on the other hand, has held “everybody knows” status for as long as I can remember. In my case that goes back to high school, when I listened to a performance by a youth orchestra that took place in the Philadelphia Academy of Music. For all of those decades of familiarity, I found that I could relish many, if not most, of Böhm’s approaches to phrasing. He could endow the listener with a sense of suspense involving what would happen next, even if that listener had lost count of all previous encounters with the music.
All this accounts for listening to the first of the twenty CDs in the new ICA release. I have no idea where the remaining 19 CDs will lead me. However, I am definitely eager to continue my journey through this new collection.
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