When Guido Cantelli
died in an air crash on 25th
November 1956 he was only 36; had his
lifetime spanned that of most conductors
(usually a long one) he would have been
84 this year, and quite possibly the
conductor with the greatest reputation
of them all. He was preternaturally
gifted – and insecure and volatile with
it – with an ear for inner dynamics
and intonation that was almost unique.
An almost obsessive care for taking
a composer’s note values as written
could have led to performances that
were dry in character but Cantelli galvanised
orchestras into playing of wanton electricity,
especially in the studio where – despite
the intensive rehearsals – they played
as if in the concert hall. Where for
many conductors bar rests are exactly
that, for Cantelli they are atmospherically
intense with the notes either side of
the rest miraculously conjoined. Put
simply, a Cantelli performance is always
a gripping journey and Testament’s reissue
of two of the conductor’s greatest records
is ample evidence of that.
Cantelli conducted
the Philharmonia Orchestra in the concert
hall twenty five times between September
1951 and July 1956, his final concerts
being two incandescent performances
of Verdi’s Requiem (never broadcast,
like so many of Cantelli’s concerts
with this orchestra). This performance
of Romeo and Juliet was recorded
in October 1951, just fourteen days
after Cantelli’s first public concert
with the Philharmonia where the work
appeared in the first half of a concert
that included Mendelssohn, and in the
second half Busoni and Ravel (a typical
Cantelli programme). The recording is
a performance of considerable impact
– at times it is really explosive –
and gives as good an impression as any
of the ‘time-bomb’ that hit the orchestra
at the time. Musicians who played with
Cantelli have spoken of a talent that
was physically uncontrollable, emotional
to such a degree that the conductor
frequently had to leave the podium to
recover. In every way, Romeo and
Juliet shows Cantelli at his most
fiery and inspired.
But what makes this
recording the greatest performance of
the work ever committed to disc is the
symbiosis between a great conductor
and a great orchestra working at one.
Compare the Philharmonia with the NBC
Symphony Orchestra (on a 12 disc set
on Music & Arts) in a performance
of the work made in February 1952 -
and very marginally quicker than this
studio performance – and the sense that
the Philharmonia are more galvanised
by their conductor than their American
counterparts becomes self-evident. The
great trumpet solo (11’32 on Music &
Arts, 12’00 on Testament) is a case
in point. Harold Jackson’s peerless
playing for the Philharmonia has an
almost unhinged, free-flowing wildness
to it; in contrast, the NBC trumpet
player seems almost held back and inhibited.
And, even allowing for the comparative
boxiness of the NBC recording the Philharmonia
woodwind are so much more characterful
in their phrasing. The very opening
of the work – on low clarinets and bassoon
– has the Philharmonia players (the
incomparable clarinets of Frederick
Thurston and Bernard Walton and the
warm, majestic bassoon of Cecil James)
playing with brooding intensity, a near
perfect harmonic mirror to the dark
playing Cantelli conjures from the ‘cellos
and basses at bar 11. In contrast, the
phrasing of the NBC woodwind is almost
perfunctory. Listen to the growling
low strings at 16’00 in the Testament
reissue and you are hearing not just
string playing of uncommon tautness
but also string playing of uncommon
depth. The entire performance is overflowing
with touches such as these. One listens
to it with not just a sense of awe but
with a sense of magical bewilderment.
The sheer technical brilliance of the
orchestral playing – such as the ascending
violin scales at 12’22 – put the performance
in a class of its own.
The recording of Tchaikovsky’s
B minor symphony – made a year later
– is perhaps not quite so fabulous as
the Romeo and Juliet, although
it is still remarkable. If the latter
work shows Cantelli to be more akin
to Furtwängler – a sense of desolation
mixed with the sheerly inspirational
– then the symphony reveals Cantelli
as being closer to his mentor, Toscanini.
Cantelli’s performance of the work is
unsentimental to an almost desultory
degree yet Furtwängler achieved
similar results in his incomparable
1938 recording (Naxos 8.110865)
with greater expansiveness and expressivity
(Cantelli is almost four minutes quicker
in the opening movement). Cantelli’s
achievement, however, is to remain irreproachably
close to Tchaikovsky’s note values and
dynamic markings without actually drawing
attention to them. Architecturally,
there are few recorded performances
that flow so naturally as Cantelli’s
with the Philharmonia giving it a sense
of unity over the four movements that
is masterly. One may quibble at the
way Cantelli takes the first movement’s
collapse into despair but, as with his
treatment of the brass and percussion
in Romeo and Juliet, there is
never any sense that we are being treated
to an existential drama of orchestral
dynamics that isn’t in the score. Cantelli’s
approach is certainly a valid one –
and with wondrously expressive and technically
inspired orchestral playing one of the
more keenly wrought performances on
disc – but somehow the sublime tragedy
of this symphony is underwhelming, the
lack of interpretation almost anti-Romantic
to an obsessive degree. Listen to Takashi
Asahina in a 1997 performance with the
Osaka Philharmonic (Pony Canyon PCCl-00558)
and you have a performance that remains
both fastidiously close to Tchaikovsky’s
markings as well as being successfully
able to embrace the innate Romanticism
of the symphony.
The Cantelli performances
have only once before appeared on CD
– back in 1989 on EMI’s Great Recordings
of the Century. Those transfers did
as best they could with EMI’s rather
disappointing recording (especially
for the Romeo and Juliet) but
the Testament reissue is simply glorious.
The Romeo and Juliet is now much
more atmospheric (though I suspect some
will find what blossom there was in
the upper strings has been sacrificed
for a much greater emphasis on the surrounding
bass). The performance has never sounded
darker than it does here, nor more thrilling.
Climaxes have much more restraint than
in the EMI CD – and both are an improvement
on the original LP. The B minor symphony
was made in the Royal Festival Hall
(a much better acoustic to record in
when empty where the dryness is less
noticeable) and again Testament’s transfer
is darker in quality than the 1989 issue
(and at times rather less stark than
I remember the recording sounding).
Although I have not been able to detect
any significant changes in the pitch
given to the transfer Testament’s timings
are radically different from EMI’s.
EMI time the first movement of the symphony
at 16’07, Testament at 16’20 and in
the final movement EMI at 9’01 and Testament
at 9’12.
This disc is a mandatory
purchase for anyone interested in great
conducting and great orchestral playing.
Together, Cantelli and the Philharmonia
reach levels of inspiration most conductors
and orchestras – even great ones – can
sometimes only dream of. The performance
of Romeo and Juliet alone would
have confirmed Cantelli as one of the
very greatest conductors. I doubt it
will ever be surpassed, and only very
rarely will you ever hear anything as
thrilling.
Marc Bridle
Philharmonia Orchestra/Guido Cantelli 