The title is optimistic
but the recordings are little known.
Damrosch is by several furlongs the
best known of this trio of Silesian-born
musicians and his prestigious American
career included numerous important local
premieres (Parsifal, Brahms’ Third and
Fourth and Tchaikovsky’s Fifth and Sixth
Symphonies and the world premieres of
Gershwin’s Concerto in F and An American
in Paris). Given that eminence his discography
is disappointingly slim, with only Brahms’
Second Symphony and some Ravel and Pierné
to his name, apart from the pieces collated
here. It’s good to have these 1929 New
York sides but the repertoire will not
really advance Damrosch’s claims on
the record collector. True the Gluck
dances are attractive, big and buoyant,
but also sensitive with fine wind playing.
And the Saint-Saëns is full of
saucy wit, not quite reflected in this
slightly-too-heavy performance. There’s
a slightly higher ration of surface
noise as well, from the Miller of Dee
quotations, through the gypsy dances
and the cod Scottish snaps of the Gigue
and Finale. Elsewhere there’s a touch
of the municipal orchestra repertoire
about the Moszkowski; the Fauré
isn’t quite refined enough.
Leopold Reichwein is
pretty much a forgotten name now but
he succeeded Bruno Walter at the Vienna
Court Opera in 1913, giving the local
premiere of Parsifal to considerable
acclaim. Between 1926 and 1938 he conducted
in Bochum in Germany but returned to
Vienna in 1938. The brief notes don’t
mention it but he committed suicide
in 1945 after allegations of collaboration
with the Nazis. The two overtures here
are part of a series made in Vienna
in 1938 though he is probably best known
to collectors from the live recordings
preserved at the Vienna State Opera
and issued by Koch over the past decade
or so. The Vienna horns have an idiosyncratic
approach to intonation in the Flotow
– very uncomfortable – but Reichwein
drives his way through the Rossinian
Suppé attractively enough. We
end with Herbert Sandberg who, like
Reichwein, was born in Breslau though
a generation later. He was Blech’s assistant
in Berlin and Walter’s at the Charlottenburg
Opera but soon after moved to Sweden
where he spent the rest of his career.
Not inappropriately then we have some
Scandinavian music – I’m not sure he
left any other examples of his musicianship
on disc other than this 1955 DG. He
tends to be rather strait-laced and
robust in the Prelude but saves up the
expression for the Air. Not a performance
to please admirers of, say, Scherchen,
but an aural souvenir of another little
known conductor otherwise lost to us.
The copies used are
in pretty good shape, a few ticks and
scratches apart on the Suppé.
I have a strong feeling that greater
depth and brightness could be extracted
from some of the 78s – the 1938 discs
sound a bit murky to me. Still, though
a miscellaneous collection of no great
depth, it does reasonable justice to
a trio of conductors unjustly forgotten.
Jonathan Woolf
VMS 116 [76.06] 