The heart of this release
is a documentary biography of Wand conducted
by filmed interview toward the end of
his life. It’s composed of a biographical
overview and then a formal talk. The
biography traces his early life, Cologne
before and after the War and gives us
some snippets of rare concert footage.
One such is a 1956 performance of Zimmermann’s
Symphony in One Movement with the Gürzenich
Orchestra. He also conducts Stravinsky
and we learn of his championship of
Messiaen and his 1950 period in Paris.
There’s a treasurably embarrassing on-stage
interview (in front of the orchestra)
from the 1950s in which Wand talks of
his recent trip to Russia and how highly
he esteemed their orchestras – this
is followed by a segment of a rehearsal
of Brahms’ First Symphony. Sensibly
his revivifying effect in Cologne is
compared with that of the NDR’S Schmidt-Issertstedt.
Throughout, whenever an interviewee
hoves into view, the subtitles become
sur-titles to accommodate the name of
the interviewee so I advise English
speakers to grin and bear this mini-outrage
with equanimity. In truth the run-through
of Wand’s life here is rather superficial,
though not without incident or interest.
No, the meat of the
DVD is the last filmed interview with
Wolfgang Seifert, his biographer. It’s
moving to hear him recall Franz Allers,
his teacher, whose forced exit from
Nazi Germany is not glossed. Equally
so his early career. Wand began as a
conductor not of mighty Brucknerian
behemoths but of light opera in some
out-of-the-way opera houses in central
Europe, some in what is subtitled "Tchechia".
His admiration for the sheer professionalism
of the genre is evident nearly sixty
years on. He admits "it had to
be a certainty for me" regarding
repertoire and that he realised – understatement
of the week – that he "wasn’t an
easygoing conductor either in rehearsal
or performance." Everything had
to be in place in the rehearsals and
his ideas were fully formed before he
came to the rostrum. The salutary thing
about Wand was the sheer fixity of his
ideas. Von Karajan liked to say that,
great orchestra though it was, when
he conducted the Philharmonia in the
1950s he knew that magnificent though
they would be at the last rehearsal,
he knew that that’s how they would be
at the concert. For him it was a weakness;
I suspect that for Wand it would have
been a strength.
"Vanity is a vice"
is a mantra he followed assiduously,
and Wand was keen to take advice from
orchestral players he respected, even
though there were almost mutinies when
he over-rehearsed; there was a notorious
bust-up in 1974. There’s a witty anecdote
concerning Erno von Dohnanyi whose relaxed
approach to Haydn was the opposite of
Wand’s measured and plotted professionalism.
And one or two revelations as well;
he hated Schubert’s Great C major and
was 60 years old when he first conducted
it, by which time his opposition had
somewhat mellowed. Similarly he wasn’t
keen on Bruckner 5 for a long time,
calls the Schalk edition "an abomination"
scorning it as a mix of Mendelssohn
and Wagner. Flashes of anger still cross
his face, even in these, his last months.
Brucknerians will hope for some elucidation;
he sees symphonies 4 to 8 as representing
the external works, and 5 and 9 as internalised
"like a monk" turned away
from the world. Bruckner 1 is "a
sick piece, he was ill, like Schumann
2."
There are other things
upon which to reflect; his obvious sincerity
when he says how moved he was by the
audience’s response at a Proms programme
of Schubert and Bruckner. Then there’s
the complex question of tempo, by which
one feels he was much exercised but
which doesn’t emerge with great clarity
or blinding realisation (perhaps it
can’t. More intriguing is the wide question
of "interpretation" to which
his negative explanation will suffice
in all its philosophical abstraction;
"If I can feel the interpretation…then
it’s the wrong one." Or to follow
the Toscaninian analysis of Steinbach’s
Brahms – "the music just flowed."
It was just this aspiration to the level
of interpretative perfection that led
to a gradual reduction of his repertoire.
Like Carlos Kleiber he concentrated
on what was essential to him.
There’s invariably
a valedictory air to the interview,
which was conducted in his Swiss home
after his retirement. He remained analytical
and strong-willed to the end. It’s not
an interview that is strong on humour
– his was of the rather wintry, Thomas
Mann kind – but there’s a certain impressiveness
in his elegantly turned-out, rather
weary engagement with Seifert. As a
Last Testament it stands not so much
as a corrective but more as a retrospective.
The second disc includes
extracts from commercial recordings.
The Brahms, Schubert and Bruckner are
cannily chosen to support the remarks
in the interview. Note that the Brahms
is with the Chicago Orchestra and is
distinctly slower than his earlier 1982
NDR commercial recording. So maybe his
fixity was not always quite as absolute
as he maintained. Or maybe in Chicago
there were other fixities involved.
I’m sure admirers will find their appreciation
of Wand enriched – there has been no
English-language biography so far as
I’m aware – but the Wand-agnostic may
find parts of the documentary rather
turgid.
Jonathan Woolf
NDR Symphony Orchestra 
