As I work my way through the Warner Classics Remastered Edition of recordings of conductor Otto Klemperer, I should probably begin with a personal confession, which is that, where orchestral performances of the “Three Bs” are concerned, I have a very strong personal bias towards Johannes Brahms. My thoughts about the catalog of Johann Sebastian Bach have slanted in preference for “historical” performances for many decades; and, where Ludwig van Beethoven is concerned, as the years go by, I just get pickier and picker about the performances I attend and the recordings being released.
On the other hand my attention to Brahms is the result of one of those autobiographical anecdotes. Those of my generation may recall The Miniature Score Series publications edited and devised by Albert E. Wier. Wier basically took European pocket scores (probably those published by Ernst Eulenburg) with public-domain content and reprinted them using a single page to provide a layout of four of the original score pages. My first encounter with this edition was the collection of the nine symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven, which I purchased during my secondary school years in a suburb of Philadelphia.
So it was that, when my parents took a weekend off in New York City, my mother returned with another Wier publication she had found in a music store: The Symphonies of Brahms and Tschaikowsky in Score. This was a nice addition to my score collection, particularly since I had recently acquired a Vox box set of Tchaikovsky’s fourth, fifth, and sixth symphonies. On the other hand there were no recordings of Brahms symphonies in the house! As a result my father and I visited my favorite record store and came away with the box set of all four of the symphonies recorded by Klemperer conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra. (The collection also included the Opus 80 “Academic Festival Overture” and the Opus 81 “Tragic Overture”). My mother’s reaction was to recall Klemperer’s nasty behavior when he was conducting children’s concerts in Los Angeles!
That Wier publication remains with me today. I used it heavily during the music classes I took as an undergraduate. I still remember my delight in discovering that the Un poco sostenuto introduction to the first symphony (Opus 68 in C minor) served as an outline of the thematic material for the first movement; and the introduction to the fourth movement exercised that same device. For all of the background material I had encountered about Brahms’ personality, his attention to structure was what got me hooked on his compositions; and, to this day, I find that I am almost always mining new perspectives when I listen to performances of Brahms’ music.
As readers may guess, the recordings I had purchased as a box set have now found their way to the Warner anthology; and it is hard to resist feeling as if I have encountered a long-lost friend. I remain as attached to those four symphonies as I had been as a student. Sadly, there not many additional Brahms recordings in the anthology; but the ones that are there have their own distinguishing merits. The only other all-Brahms CD in the collection is the Opus 77 violin concerto in D major. This is a gem, however, since it marks one of David Oistrakh’s tours outside the Soviet Union. He recorded the concerto with the Orchestre national de France, known at the time of his tour as the Orchestre national de la Radiodiffusion française (French Radio National Orchestra).
There are also two CDs on which Brahms “rubs shoulders” with other composers. The CD that includes the Opus 53 “Alto Rhapsody” is actually an album of performances by mezzo Christa Ludwig. As might be guessed, the other composers on the album are Richard Wagner and Gustav Mahler. On the other hand the Opus 56a orchestral version of the “Variations on a Theme by Haydn” is both preceded and followed by the music of Paul Hindemith! Finally, there are the “historical” tracks of 78 RPM recordings of both Opus 68 and Opus 80, both of which were made in Berlin (back when it was still safe for Klemperer to live in that city).
I suspect that my attachment to these Brahms tracks may have something to do with the fact that Klemperer was more aware of the cerebral side of Brahms’ compositions than many other conductors were (or are); and, for better or worse, that perspective may influence how I listen to the remaining CDs in the collection.
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