For most music-lovers, the name of Sir Adrian Boult is most
closely associated with his compatriot composers; Englishmen
like Elgar, Holst and Vaughan Williams. However, as Martin Cotton
points out in the excellent booklet note for this set, he never
planned it that way. In fact, in the early stages of his career
his primary musical sympathies were with the German Romantics,
something cemented by his studies at Leipzig and his observations
of Arthur Nikisch. That side of his output has been rather neglected
in the light of his advocacy of English composers, so EMI have
set about putting this right by re-releasing and re-packaging
this set of Boult’s recordings of German music, all performed
with British orchestras. In doing so they have not just done
a service to the reputation of the composer, but to music-lovers
as a whole who can pick up this set at a super bargain price
and find a treasure trove of forgotten recordings inside.
In his
review of this set for The Guardian, Nicholas Kenyon
mentions that the set documents “performance styles in
transition”. That’s undoubtedly true, but the first
thing that struck me in listening to Boult’s performances
of the Brandenburg Concertos is just how fleet-footed they are!
He isn’t someone you would naturally associate with period
performance, but in fact he isn’t that far away from it,
with tempi for Bach that never drag, and are a world away from
the elephantine scale of, say, Karajan’s Bach with the
Berlin Philharmonic. He still goes for a fairly large scale
approach on modern instruments and the sound is undoubtedly
cloudier than we have become used to hearing in Bach - “no
daylight between the notes”, to use Boult’s own
phrase. That’s particularly true in the thick-set string
tone which, therefore, makes Nos. 3 and 6 the least successful,
but elsewhere the set scores winners with, say, the sparkling
trumpets in No. 2 and the pungent recorders of No. 4, and I
found the pervasive lilt of No. 1 to be very winning.
The “Classical” symphonies all progress with scale,
grandeur and bags of personality. Beethoven’s Pastoral
benefits from luscious string tone and a vision of the symphony
which has the long view, culminating in a spiritual account
of the Shepherds’ Hymn. Mozart’s Jupiter
also radiates style, the first movement bustling with life and
the Andante feeling like the still, meditative centre of the
work. It’s also exciting to hear the clarity of vision
with which Boult realises the extraordinary counterpoint of
the finale. Schubert’s “Great” C major is
also a treat, given the full symphony orchestra treatment and
sounding all the better for it. Put next to Mozart’s Jupiter,
and given performances which are so similar in style, the listener
is left in little doubt about how big an influence the earlier
work had on Schubert, probably not something Boult consciously
intended (the recording sessions were two years apart) but nonetheless
convincing and well argued. Oddly, though, the overtures (Magic
Flute and Coriolan) don’t display as convincing
a sense of architecture in their reduced scale. In both works
Boult seems to take his finger off the pulse at certain key
moments and they tend to run away with him, something which
also mars Wagner’s Rienzi overture. No such problems
with the Viennese excerpts, though, Strauss and Suppé’s
brief appearances sparkling with charm.
Towards the end of his career Boult said that one of his major
regrets was that he hadn’t spent more time in the opera
house, and in the 1970s HMV treated Boult to a set of Wagner
recordings that are reissued here. When they first appeared,
they so impressed no less a Wagner authority than Deryck Cooke
that they inspired him to write that Boult “reveals himself
as a ‘perfect Wagnerite’, and a thrilling one too.”
I wasn’t quite as convinced. There are triumphs here,
but patchy performances too. Boult’s inexperience in the
opera house pit shows in some rather unsuccessful pacing: the
Tristan excerpts are too fast, rushing through to the
end with little opportunity to relish the sound world, and he
gets carried away with the faster sections of Rienzi.
However, the Ring excerpts do undoubtedly work, and the
Meistersinger preludes exude a lavish sense of scale
which would surely have led into lush, architectural performances
in the theatre. It’s the quality of the playing that impresses
most often, with twinkling Philharmonia strings in the Lohengrin
prelude, and fantastic LPO brass in Tannhäuser.
The Parsifal excerpts, on the other hand, are well paced
but not so well played.
That leads us to the question of orchestras. The band that is
used overwhelmingly often in this set is, unsurprisingly, the
London Philharmonic, Boult’s musical home and base for
much of his recording career. The Philharmonia and New Philharmonia
step into the breach for some of the extracts, and even the
LSO for the Siegfried Idyll (beautifully played) and
Brahms’ Third Symphony, the first of the set that Boult
recorded. The sound worlds are fairly similar, though, and,
depending on your point of view, that either pays tribute to
the strength of Boult’s musical vision or shows how overly
uniform was his approach to working with different musicians.
In the contents list below, the orchestra is the London Philharmonic,
unless I’ve said otherwise.
I found Boult’s Brahms wonderfully convincing. The symphonies
bristle with life and show themselves consistently unwilling
to be weighed down. No. 1 is particularly strong. It proceeds
with majestic dignity, culminating in a splendid finale: the
appearance of the horn call in the finale, and its subsequent
restatement by the flute, is truly radiant, buoyed up by a shimmering
bed of strings, and the coda remains exciting even if it is
slower than many would take it. The rich, velvety sound of the
slow movement, does credit to the LPO strings, as does the dark
brown texture of the Second Symphony. No. 4 is argued with tremendous
vigour, the slow movement paradoxically combining almost funereal
dignity with lightness of touch, and the unfolding of the finale
feels inevitable and unarguable. Only No. 3 feels a little less
convincing, though that could be because it was the first of
the set. I’ve owned and enjoyed Boult’s recordings
of the Serenades for many years, and I love them as much now
as I did when I first heard them. Even though many will prefer
this delectable music to be played by a chamber orchestra, the
LPO sound is remarkably lean and, for me, wholly convincing,
not least in the way Boult carries the whole thing off with
a smile and a twinkle. Janet Baker’s Alto Rhapsody
remains a classic, her voice radiating emotion and setting the
cap on string playing of drama and intensity. The overtures
and Haydn Variations demonstrate the same air-bound feel
of the symphonies with excellent playing and a sparkle in the
interpretation, even in the darker moments of the Tragic
Overture, but especially in the old-school charm of the
Haydn Variations.
No set like this is ever perfect, but for me it succeeds on
so many levels that it’s easy to recommend. It succeeds
in broadening our understanding of Boult’s conducting
vision and, what’s more, it’s available at super-duper
bargain price, so even if you’re just curious you can
pick it up for a song. I doubt you’ll be disappointed.
Simon Thompson
Masterwork Index
Brandenburg concertos
~~ Beethoven
Symphony 6 ~~ Brahms
symphonies
Mozart Symphony
35 ~ Mozart
Symphony 41
Contents (London PO unless indicated)
Bach, Johann Sebastian
Brandenburg Concerto no.1 in F major, BWV1046 [20:23]
Brandenburg Concerto no.2 in F major, BWV1047 [12:41]
Brandenburg Concerto no.3 in G major, BVW1048 [11:34]
Brandenburg Concerto no.4 in G major, BWV1049 [15:42]
Brandenburg Concerto no.5 in D major, BWV1050 [20:18]
Brandenburg Concerto no.6 in B flat major, BWV1051 [16:28]
Beethoven, Ludwig van
Coriolan Overture, op.62 [7:43] (New Philharmonia)
Symphony no.6 in F major, op.68 'Pastoral' [42:09]
The Ruins of Athens, op.113: Overture & Turkish March
[5:49] (Philharmonia)
Brahms, Johannes
Academic Festival Overture, op.80 [9:46] (with Dame Janet
Baker and male voices of the John Alldis Choir)
Alto Rhapsody, op.53 [11:47]
Serenade no.1 in D major, op.11 [38:10]
Serenade no.2 in A major, op.16 [25:38]
Symphony no.1 in C minor, op.68 [45:00]
Symphony no.2 in D major, op.73 [42:57]
Symphony no.3 in F major, op.90 [37:00] (London Symphony Orchestra)
Symphony no.4 in E minor, op.98 [39:16]
Tragic Overture, op.81 [13:56]
Variations on a theme by Haydn, op.56a [17:30]
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus
Die Zauberflote (The Magic Flute), K620: Overture [6:50]
Symphony no.35 in D major, K385 'Haffner' [16:30]
Symphony no.41 in C major, K551 'Jupiter' [39:22]
Schubert, Franz
Symphony no.9 in C major, D944 'The Great' [54:14]
Strauss, Johann
Radetzky March, op.228 [2:45]
Suppe, Franz von
Dichter und Bauer (Poet and Peasant) Overture [10:15]
Wagner, Richard
Das Rheingold: Entrance of the Gods into Valhalla [8:44]
Der fliegende Holländer Overture [10:53]
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg: Overture & Prelude
to Act 3 [16:29] (New Philharmonia)
Die Walküre: Ride of the Valkyries [5:21]
Faust Overture [11:30]
Götterdämmerung: Dawn and Siegfried's Rhine Journey
[9:14]
Siegfried’s Funeral March [8:16]
Lohengrin: Prelude to Act I [8:23] (New Philharmonia)
Prelude to Act III [3:20] (New Philharmonia)
Parsifal: Good Friday Spell [8:46]
Prelude to Act 1 [12:43]
Prelude to Act 3 [5:16]
Transformation music (Act 1) [5:04]
Transformation scene (Act 3) [4:37]
Rienzi: Overture [10:27]
Siegfried: Forest Murmurs [7:35]
Siegfried Idyll, op.103 [16:47] (London Symphony Orchestra)
Tannhäuser: Overture [14:24] (New Philharmonia)
Entrance of the Guests [6:29]
Tristan und Isolde: Preludes to Act 1(New Philharmonia)
& Act 3 [18:15]
Wolf, H
Italienische Serenade (Italian Serenade) in G major [6:46]
(Philharmonia)
London Philharmonic Orchestra 