These are performances licensed from Vox and made,
I would guess, in the early to mid seventies. Their appearance in a
single budget price set, with notes about the works but nothing about
performers or dates, is nevertheless welcome and the hero of the discs
is Walter Susskind. It’s often forgotten that Susskind was born in Prague,
in 1913, and studied in an essentially Austro-Czech tradition; with
Josef Suk from 1928-33 and as a piano student of George Szell, then
a prominent visitor to Prague until the events in continental Europe
forced him to turn first to Britain and then, eventually, to America.
In these Dvorak performances his great gifts as accompanist to elite
soloistic talents is abundantly evident – he was one of the great concerto
conductors of his generation – and the soloists respond in diverse ways,
emotional, technical, expressive to the differing demands of the concertos.
In the best known, the concerto for Cello, the soloist
is Canadian Zara Nelsova, student of Barbirolli and Herbert Walenn amongst
others. As a youthful member of the Canadian Trio, with the eminent
partnership of pianist (and conductor) Sir Ernest MacMillan and Auer-pupil
violinist Kathleen Parlow, Nelsova had a richly experienced background
in chamber and solo work and experience, moreover, with musicians considerably
older than she and from whom she learned much. She brings to the concerto
remarkably sensitive qualities of intimacy and control. Susskind’s opening
tutti allows us to hear the leanly focused tone of the fine St Louis
Orchestra. It’s a fleet but not inflexible opening and presages the
performance to come; incipient tension is conveyed through taut phrasing,
with Susskind alive to the orchestral superstructure. Nelsova’s entry
is disciplined and her articulation precise in passagework. Some staccato
playing may not be to all tastes but hers is a remarkably cohesive and
musical traversal of the first movement with tempo relationships firmly
established and flexibility sought within them and not imposed upon
them. If you are an admirer of Rostropovich and Karajan in this work
you will find Nelsova undemonstrative and cool; if you have heard and
like the Du Pré and Celibidache performance, one of almost Brucknerian
stasis, you will find Nelsova and Susskind too fast and unyielding.
I find Nelsova and Susskind immeasurably superior to either. Listen
for example to the desolate passage for cello in the first movement
with the flute’s ghostly counter-theme and how Susskind has so adroitly
worked on the string tone colouring in the preceding tutti to prepare
the ground for Nelsova’s entry here. True, the drama isn’t so opulently
expressive as it can be but this is a genuinely musical performance,
alive and understanding. We can appreciate Nelsova’s nicely equalized
tone in the second movement and it’s here that her chamber music instincts
are most evident – phrasal sagacity, the rise and fall of her rubato,
her interplay with orchestral solos. To some this phrasing may seem
matter-of-fact but to me this unwillingness to emote, the refusal to
indulge self-pity, is not a limitation but an architecturally acute
understanding of the work’s trajectory in which the finale’s musing
of the second movement is the crux. Susskind’s woodwind are impressive
here as elsewhere. Maybe Nelsova’s phrasing at 7’50 here seems somewhat
metrical, shorn of inflexion, but she is saving it up for the passage
at 8’04 where the transitional passage receives perfectly judged rubato
from the soloist. The finale begins with a firm but not over forceful
opening with the scurrying passages as Czech as I’ve ever heard from
a non-Czech orchestra. There is much subtle flexibility in phrasing
and equally so in matters of tone and dynamics – listen to the oboe
and clarinet figures with their admixture of affective plangency. The
reminiscence of the second movement, as will have become obvious by
now, is well prepared and there is no self-indulgence, no easy gestures,
no heart-on-sleeve emoting. Instead there is a steady sense of the music’s
skeletal material and the finale emerges as less sectional and disruptive
as it so frequently can in the hands of more indulgent cellists. As
I hope I’ve made clear I admire Nelsova’s performance. No one will throw
away Casals and Szell, or Rostropovich with Boult and Talich (don’t
bother with the Karajan or Giulini) or Gendron or Fournier or others.
But you will gain a great understanding of the work’s strength and meaning
when you listen to Nelsova and Susskind and much more besides.
The textual problems surrounding the Piano Concerto,
whilst not as complex as matters Brucknerian, are still fairly murky.
Wilem Kurz’s edition is published in the complete Dvorak edition and
Firkusny studied with Kurz. This was the pianist’s third recording of
the Concerto and he had moved steadily away from simple Kurz to more
a mélange of Dvorak-Kurz but with the former predominant. Much
admired by Horowitz, Firkusny was the ideal champion of this under appreciated
work. His triumphant and limpid passagework animates the first movement’s
Brahmsian moments effortlessly mitigating some of the more discursive
passages at a tempo rather quicker than that of Sviatoslav Richter who
recorded the concerto, with Carlos Kleiber in the original edition,
at around the same time as Firkusny. As they had for Nelsova the St
Louis Orchestra are equally attentive here; there is a sheen on the
violin tone and a quick responsiveness to their soloist that is admirable.
There is some really memorable and blistering passagework in the central
section of the first movement from Firkusny and listen at 10.50 to the
strutting and braying trumpets (good dynamics too) as they blaze the
orchestral material onwards. Firkusny’s phrasing meanwhile is the perfect
mixture of affectionate lyricism and aristocratic control – the restatement
of the opening theme is superbly passionate in his hands and magnificently
delineated leading to a cadenza of seemingly limitless finesse, with
lines brought out, architectural integrity maintained and a virtuoso
technique put to the service of musical argument. In the slow movement
I defy you not to find his treble lines of such limpid beauty that you
will despair of hearing them played as well again. Yet the underlying
momentum is always there, the impulse to linger firmly controlled and
Firkusny’s variance of repeated material on the highest level of musical
understanding. In the finale the often-criticised passagework comes
alive in the soloist’s hands. Reflective, imitative, fascinating – it
is extraordinary to listen to Firkusny extracting such a rich vein of
meaning from a score so frequently derided. Susskind meanwhile, ever
alert and ever superb, restrains the burgeoning con fuoco, vesting it
with the chirping woodwind properly brought out and now leading, now
following the piano’s line. Closely related thematically to the second
of the three op 45 Slavonic Rhapsodies this is a real Czech dance, sprightly
and confident, and leads to a tremendously effective conclusion sustained
with heroic brio to the very end by Firkusny and Susskind.
Don’t be confused by the typo on the CD box. Even Ruggiero
Ricci can’t play the Violin Concerto in 20.03, though doubtless he could
if he wanted to. His is a characteristically febrile, coiled and intense
performance of a work that has received a number of admirable recordings
in recent years. It wasn’t Ricci’s first attempt either, as he’d earlier
taped it with Malcolm Sargent, regrettably a performance not currently
available. Susskind shapes the bass lines of the orchestral tutti in
the first movement with effortless skill; there is crisp articulation
and a flexible approach to rhythm but Ricci’s passagework can be brusque
and aggressive and his phrasing a little prosaic. At 10.02 his playing
in the higher positions is excellently maintained and affectionately
so but elsewhere I found him oversentimentalized in phrasing and tone
and his characteristically intense vibrato – powerfully individualized
though it may be - as rather too violently oscillatory for a work of
this kind. He is far more successful at conveying the folk passage in
the finale from 4’15 and in the real head-of-steam finale built up by
Susskind. A useful and individual performance to have but vintage performances
– Prihoda, Suk, and more recently Perlman – are unchallenged.
To complete the pleasure of this attractively priced
box there are four well-known miniatures, two each for cello and violin
and they reflect entirely the characteristics of the two soloists –
Nelsova adroit and Ricci feverish.
Jonathan Woolf
Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra/Walter
Susskind