Karajan on Decca: 19th-Century Instrumental

Herbert von Karajan (from the booklet accompanying the collection being discussed)

The lion’s share of repertoire in The Complete Decca Recordings, a 33-CD box of recordings by conductor Herbert von Karajan, is focused on the nineteenth century. Indeed, in contrast to the collection of recordings of pianist Peter Serkin, which I have been following in parallel to the Karajan collection, there are so many nineteenth-century CDs that they are best divided into two subcategories. For want of better terminology, I shall these subcategories “Instrumental” and “Opera;” and this article will examine the first of those subcategories.

Readers may recall that, when writing about Karajan’s recordings of First Viennese School composers, I drew the most satisfaction from his interpretation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 492, The Marriage of Figaro. In this case it would be fair to say that the instrumental CDs did little more than pique my curiosity about the operatic offerings. For the most part the instrumental selections are “the usual suspects,” not only according to Karajan but also as approached by just about any conductor with a viable recording career.

As expected, there is a CD devoted to two members of the Strauss family, with five selections by Johann Strauss II and one, the Opus 212 “Delirien” (deliriums) waltz, by his brother Josef Strauss. The composer that receives the most attention is Richard Strauss, with the “dance of the seven veils” music from the Opus 54 opera “Salome” providing a “punch line” for four tone poems. This accounts for two CDs, the first devoted entirely to the Opus 30 “Also sprach Zarathustra” (thus spoke Zarathustra), while the second covers its three best-known predecessors, “Don Juan” (Opus 20), “Death and Transfiguration” (Opus 24), and “Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks” (Opus 28). These are all given perfectly satisfactory accounts, none of which rise significantly above the many other recorded interpretations of these pieces.

There are only three symphonies in this collection. Two are by Johannes Brahms, Opus 68 (first) in C minor and Opus 90 (third) in F major. The other is by Antonín Dvořák, Opus 88 in G major, a perfect complement to the spirit of Brahms; and Brahms himself is also represented by his Opus 81 “Tragic” concert overture.

The only other composer to be represented by multiple compositions is Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Three of the four compositions are suites from his best-known ballets: The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, and The Sleeping Beauty. The “overture-fantasy” “Romeo and Juliet” is also included. In addition an entire CD is devoted to the French ballet that is the most significant predecessor of the three Russian ballets with Tchaikovsky’s music. That ballet is Giselle, whose music was composed by Adolphe Adam. This is not quite a “complete score” recording (as can be seen from the sequence of Roman numerals in the accompanying booklet); but those that like Adam’s music may well find it the most satisfying of the the offerings in this subcategory. I happen to be one of those that likes the music, but I much prefer listening to it while watching the ballet. (In all fairness, I am inclined to say the same about the Tchaikovsky suites!)

The only other nineteenth-century instrumental composer included is Edvard Grieg, represented only by selections from the incidental music he composed for Peer Gynt. The pieces include all four of the movements in the first suite and two from the second. Curiously, these are presented as an “afterword” to Gustav Holst’s Opus 32 suite The Planets. Holst composed his suite’s seven movements between 1914 and 1916; but, considering what more adventurous composers were doing at that time, it would be fair to say that Holst’s heart was very much in the nineteenth century. As a result, this is probably the most satisfying recording in the category. Those that know the piece know that its dynamic range is extraordinarily wide. Karajan may be at his most admirable when he “pulls out all the stops;” but his command of a hushed rhetoric, particularly in the final movement, is just as impressive.

Profil’s Anthology of Conductor Hans Swarowsky

courtesy of Naxos of America

The latest conductor to be featured in an anthology of significant archival recordings produced by Profil is Hans Swarowsky. At the beginning of November, Profil released a collection of 11 CDs of Swarowsky leading a wide variety of different ensembles and several soloists of note. Swarowsky was born in Hungary but was active across much of Europe with particular attention to Austria and Germany. He began his career at the Stuttgart Opera in 1927. Opportunities then led him to the Vienna Volksoper, Hamburg, and eventually Berlin, where he succeeded Erich Kleiber at the Berlin State Opera in 1934.

Unfortunately, that prestigious job did not last long. In 1936 the Nazis imposed a ban on Jewish musicians. While Swarowsky was not Jewish, there were Jewish ancestors on his father’s side; and that was enough to subject him to the ban. Swarowsky was both wise and resourceful enough to get out of Germany and made Zurich his base of operations.

All of the recordings in the Profil collection were made after World War II. His first appointment after the war was as Principal Conductor with the Vienna Symphony. Through his relationship with Herbert von Karajan, he was invited to serve as conductor of the Vienna State Opera. While not the director (as Gustav Mahler had been), Swarowsky held a tenured position.

As a result, the number of recordings in the Profil collection made with the orchestra of the Vienna State Opera is relatively generous. Because those recordings were made in Vienna, it is not surprising that they are, for the most part, traditional. They include an entire CD of compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; and other composers represented are Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Johannes Brahms, Josef Strauss, and his older brother, Johann Strauss II.

Among these alternatives, it is worth calling attention to that Mozart CD. It includes recordings of two of the piano concerto, K. 467 in C major and K. 595 in B-flat major, both made in June of 1963. The pianist is Friedrich Gulda, who is one of the few pianists to have made a lasting impression in recordings of both the classical and jazz repertoires. In the former domain his specialties were Mozart and Beethoven (and his recordings of all of Beethoven’s piano sonatas were released in the United States by the Musical Heritage Society). However, in 1956 Gulda established his jazz credentials at both Birdland in New York City and the Newport Jazz Festival. In his sessions with Swarowsky, Gulda’s head is definitely in Mozart’s domain; but his cadenza performances are definitely more adventurous than those taken by many of his contemporaries and could easily have been spontaneous improvisations.

From a personal point of view, I was particularly drawn to a concert recording of Gustav Mahler’s third symphony made with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra in January of 1963. Swarowsky had a long history with this symphony, having heard it conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler in Vienna when he was barely out of his teens. Those who know their Mahler known that this symphony’s first movement is one of his longest uninterrupted episodes of music, usually clocking in at more than half an hour. Swarowsky approached this movement with a solid command of its overall architecture, delivering a performance so convincing that one can forgive the recording glitch that missed out on the opening measures of the following movement.

The entire symphony is divided across two CDs. The first three movements are on the first, filling about one hour of time. The remainder of the symphony lasts only about half an hour. Profil decided to fill out that CD with three compositions by Arnold Schoenberg. Two of these were recorded at two performances of a program that included two pieces for speaker and chorus, the Opus 39 “Kol Nidre” and the Opus 46 “A Survivor from Warsaw.” (The concerts took place on October 28 and 30, 1952 in Vienna.) These were the first recordings ever made of those two compositions; and, while Schoenberg’s handling of the narration is a bit clunky, both pieces present a heartfelt account of Schoenberg’s approach to Judaism.

The other Schoenberg selection is the Opus 8 set of six songs with orchestra accompaniment. These were also recorded at two performances of the same concert program, this time in Cologne on December 16 and 20, 1961. Those six settings get far too little attention, which is unfortunate in light of the insights they provide regarding Schoenberg’s approaches to instrumentation.

For the record, Swarowsky studied with both Schoenberg and Anton Webern. Both of these composers can be found on the AllMusic Discography Web page. It is a pity that Webern did not “make the cut” for the Profil collection; but the Schoenberg recordings are definitely a major factor to consider when evaluating that collection.

Dances without the Dance

It is often the case that the act of writing a negative review is followed by an extended period of soul-searching over why I was so negative. In the case of the opening concert of the 2009 Salzburg Festival with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt, I suspect that my negative account had much to do with the first step being such a false one. In this case that first step was Anton Webern's orchestration of Franz Schubert's D. 820 collection of six German dances. I was familiar with this music in two ways. First, I knew the source material from having worked my way through the two volumes of the Wiener Urtext Edition of the Sämtliche Tänze für Klavier. However, I was also familiar with Webern's orchestration by virtue of the notorious Nuova Era CDs of pirated recordings of performances conducted by Sergiu Celibidache. The performance of the Webern took place in Milan on February 22, 1960, with Celibidache conducting the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano della RAI.

Before hearing this recording, my knowledge of Webern's orchestration technique had been limited to his treatment of the six-voice fugue in Johann Sebastian Bach's Musical Offering BWV 1079. This might be described as pointillist orchestration, since Webern often goes as far as to change instrumentation on a note-by-note basis. The result is, as they say, a piece of work. His approach to Schubert, on the other hand, is far less radical and much more workmanlike. He has an accurate sense of how the piano score breaks down into voices, and those voices are then allocated to suitable instrumentation. I listen to my Celibidache recording frequently, and I continue to enjoy the Schubert and the Webern in equal measure.

Indeed, I am so fond of this music that it had never occurred to me that it could be boring. Sadly, that is precisely what Harnoncourt did with it. Where Celibidache recognized that this was dance music and knew exactly how to make it dance (so to speak), Harnoncourt preferred to examine each note as if it were under a microscope. It was as if he was trying to perform it in the spirit of Webern's Bach orchestration, even if that approach was the furthest thing from Webern's mind. The result ended up confusing even the audience. As I wrote in my Examiner.com review, the audience did not even greet the conclusion of the set of dances with applause, holding back until the more "certain" ending of the next work on the program, Josef Strauss' "Frauenherz," which had some interesting eccentricities of its own by trying to synthesize a polka with a mazurka.

My first encounters with Harnoncourt were recordings of his "authentic" approaches to Baroque music. I still have and enjoy many of those recordings. However, I am beginning to wish that he had never ventured beyond his scholarly pursuits based primarily in the seventeenth century!