Second Box of Remastered Klemperer Available

I first learned that there would be a second “volume” in the Warner Classics Remastered Edition of recordings of the conductor Otto Klemperer late in the summer of last year. Readers may recall that I had wrapped up accounting for the first volume at the end of August of that summer. When Amazon.com created a Web page for this new release, it gave October 27 as the release date. That date was then updated seven times: November 5, November 26, February 2, February 16, March 1, March 15, March 29. Today that second volume is finally on that Web page with the cautionary remark: “Only 4 left in stock - order soon.”

Readers probably know by now that, when I am encountered with a massive undertaking, the first thing I do is break the whole thing down into more manageable parts. When this is applied to working memory, psychologists call this technique chunking (which has its own Wikipedia page); and, during my student days, I often heard the phrase “mind-sized chunks.” The result of my applying this technique to the first 95 CDs in the first Warner volume amounted to nine such chunks, with Johann Sebastian Bach at one end and “Klemperer Conducts Klemperer” at the other.

The second volume, whose subtitle is Operas & Sacred Works, is far more modest. This time I found it best to work with only four chunks:

1. Bach-Handel
2. Mozart
3. Beethoven-Brahms
4. Wagner

That third category may raise some eyebrows. However, neither of those two composers had made either opera or sacred music a “strong suit” (as they say in contract bridge). Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel, on the other hand, were contemporaries. While Bach never composed an opera, both of them made significant marks in the genre of sacred music; and, in fact, there are no operas in this first category.

In this new release Handel is represented only by his HWV 56 oratorio Messiah. He is coupled with Johann Sebastian Bach, who is represented by the BWV 232 setting of the Mass text in B minor and the BWV 244 St Matthew Passion. There is also a separate CD which consists of thirteen of the choral movements from BWV 232.

Readers probably recall that none of the Bach recordings in the first volume showed any signs of “historically informed performance.” This will probably make for difficult listening, since the idea of performing Bach the way Bach would have done has now elevated to “mainstream” status. Thus, where listening to BWV 244 used to promise little more than spending a long period of time on an uncomfortable church bench, ensembles such as American Bach Soloists have presented thoroughly engaging accounts that make for a much more vivid narrative.

BWV 232, on the other hand, receives much more attention and, for the most part, no longer strikes listeners as an unpleasant ordeal. What Bach thought was another matter, since he was a devout Lutheran setting a Roman Catholic text. The last time I found myself writing about this composition was in February of 2022, when it was performed here by the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Chorale. On that occasion I suggested that BWV 232 was a “pedagogical project,” which had nothing to do with the rites of any religion. In other words, just as the manuscript for the BWV 1080 (given the title The Art of Fugue) was, as I put it, “a document of ‘pure notation,’ demonstrating the wide diversity of approaches that one could take when composing a fugue or a canon,” BWV 232 was a similar “study” in composing for both choral ensembles and solo vocalists.

Given that Klemperer was from a Jewish family, I suspect that he saw little, if any, religious significance in the texts for both BWV 232 and BWV 244. He performed these compositions because they were strongly associated with Bach to the point that audiences were as eager to listen to them in concert halls as they would be to attend a church service. The same can be said for “public opinion” regarding HWV 56. Nevertheless, Klemperer did know a fair amount about how to bring enough expressiveness to a piece of music that an avid listener would sit through the occasion without squirming. Thus, even if the words were “sacred writ,” Klemperer could afford them the same respect and sensitivity that he would bring to working with an opera libretto.