Volume Two continues the good work I warmly welcomed
in my recent review of the first of Tahra’s
three big beautifully produced four-CD boxes devoted to Eugen Jochum.
Contained here, in place of the conventional notes – volume one contained
a mini biography – is Jochum’s discography minus a large number of as
yet unissued broadcast material (Bavarian Radio alone has some 210 unissued
items). Amongst the tantalising things awaiting issue are items missing
from his commercial discography – the Sibelius Violin Concerto, Honegger’s
Symphonie Liturgique, Janáček’s Sinfonietta,
Hartmann’s Fourth Symphony and Furtwängler’s Second
as well as things one might have assumed he would have recorded – Strauss’s
Ein Heldenleben and the Four Last Songs and Dvořák’s Cello Concerto
amongst them.
Volume 2 begins in 1948 with a live Berlin performance
of a favourite of Jochum’s, Mozart’s Symphony No. 33, the first of two
performances enshrined in this set – the other is a 1961 Amsterdam performance.
It may seem strange but this was the Mozart work Jochum essayed most
often and after a late start – he first played it in Hamburg in 1942
– he performed it in total no less than 121 times, which means it ranks
alongside a known Jochum speciality like Bruckner 7 in his list of his
most performed works. For the record above them in first place was Beethoven
7, followed by the Eroica, Bruckner 4, Brahms 4, Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel
and Brahms 1. This vests the Mozart with a considerable weight in performance
terms – and some indication is given by the fact that he performed it
twice as often during his career as the G Minor, a work he first performed
fifteen years before he first conducted the B flat. The wartime Berlin
performance is punchier in the outer movements than the Concertgebouw
traversal taped some 19 years later whilst in Berlin his Andante possessed
a special rapture that he couldn’t quite replicate in his more fluent
and fleet Montreux reading. The 1961 performance is attractively phrased
and affectionately spun with a pliant and well aerated finale – airborne,
full of ease and naturalness though not as fast as the wartime taping.
Coupled with the earlier Mozart is Beethoven’s Pastoral, a commercial
recording of 1951 that joins the Fifth and Seventh from the first volume
in presenting Jochum’s Beethovenian credentials. He opens the Allegro
ma non troppo first movement with a calculated, slowly articulated sense
of laziness but is soon marshalling some strong bass weight and encouraging
some particularly piquant and characterful wind contributions. Indeed
they are a defining feature of Jochum’s slow but not indulgent Andante,
which sports some really chewy cello tone and thrillingly trilled violins.
I enjoyed his persuasively lyrical way with the Symphony.
Brahms’ German Requiem was recorded live on 26 October
1951 in Munich with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and soloists
Clara Ebers and Karl Schmitt-Walter. Jochum elicits some expertly calibrated
choral entries (exceptionally quiet in Selig sind) and some stylishly
expressive oboe playing though it’s true that there’s a slight edge
to the violins’ tone. Some tentative ensemble problems crop up now and
again in Denn alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras and the brass can
be buzzy and occasionally brazen. This is though a broadly traditional
performance even though it lacks the invincible and majestic inevitability
of, say, Klemperer or of Furtwängler in his Stockholm performance,
taped three years earlier than Jochum’s. One can detect a slight strain
at the top of his compass in Schmitt-Walter’s voice but he is a cultivated
artist and whilst he may lose colour occasionally when forcing tone
he makes up for it in expressively contoured singing. The Bavarian choir
is good, strong, though once or twice lacking polish; they don’t always
blend optimally. Clara Ebers shines in Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit –
clarity and depth and insinuating use of portamento (she recorded
the Requiem commercially and was a noted exponent of the role) whilst
Jochum drives the conclusion home with considerable conviction.
Clara Haskil – a Mozartian to her fingertips – makes
a welcome appearance in the Jeunehomme, K271. Her piano unfortunately
sounds rather plummy whilst the orchestra sounds very bright and the
two are never reconciled, at least aurally. Nice lyrical string counter
themes decorate the first movement and Haskil is fluent with eventful
little left hand runs. The Andantino is probably the worst movement
to be affected by the congested sound because though one can appreciate
the orchestral gravity and the outlines of the rise and fall of the
dynamics, the lyrical "rightness" of the conception, the detail
is rather too often mired in indistinctness. Rhythmic freedom runs throughout
the finale and considerable ebullience from Haskil, as well as wit and
a sense of gallantry. One or two smudges from her hardly matter when
the playing is so full of high spirits. Jochum conducted Pictures at
an Exhibition, Boris Godunov and the Songs and Dances of Death so he
was not an inexperienced Mussorgsky conductor when in 1959 he accompanied
the splendid Kim Borg in the last named. His conducting sounds perfectly
idiomatic, black brass, flexible tempi and Borg in fine voice. The sound
is extremely good and catches the way in which Borg darkens and coils
his voice in Trepak and his strong sense of narrative, the vast changeability
and volatility of his characterization. The drama and conviction of
his hoarse toned Field Marshal is truly excellent.
Mozart completes the last disc in this set. Eine kleine
Nachtmusik is genial and suitably determined in the slow movement –
where necessary – even with one or two off stage noises. The rondo finale
is full of frivolous wit. In the Oboe Concerto Haakon Stotijn comes
to the fore. The Dutch oboist has a very individual tone and in terms
of a Concerto performance is not sympathetically recorded in this live
performance from the 1961 Montreux Festival – he sounds as if taped
in glorious if disconcerting spatial isolation. He is a neat and tasteful
player and comparison with Goossens and Colin Davis shows the Englishmen
are very much slower and more reverential – they also point a quasi-operatic,
distinctly vocalised profile here, which informs and characterises everything
they play. Stotijn and Jochum are very much straighter and less inclined
to linger. Both are – in their own ways – affectionate in the slow movement
but conceptions of the Allegro finale vary once again with Goossens
and Davis deciding to interpret it very much as "ma non troppo."
As a soloist I prefer Goossens but as a performance I prefer Stotijn
and Jochum.
Considerable care has gone into the production of this
series and the booklet is no exception. Don’t be put off by the centrality
of much of the repertoire in the discs. Jochum always had wise and important
things to say here as he did elsewhere. The combination of commercial
and off-air recordings continues to add spice to the mix and so another
warm welcome to Volume II in this splendid series.
Jonathan Woolf
Volume 1 Volume
3
Clara Haskil (piano)