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Tragedy stalks this
disc. Leo Borchard was born of German
parents in Moscow in 1899 and spent
his early years there and in St Petersburg.
In Germany he studied with Hermann Scherchen
and Eduard Erdmann and became co-repetiteur
for both Walter and Klemperer whilst
earning the friendship of such as von
Einem and Blacher. Moreover he was active
in the resistance during the War, going
under the code name Andrik Krassnow.
He became part of the Kreisau circle
and managed to pass information from
Berlin to the Allies. His clandestine
activities were clearly considerable,
and such details as we possess – giving
private conducting lessons to a Jewish
student, meeting a Jewish document forger
– demonstrate the kinds of (capital)
risks he was running. After Berlin’s
liberation he gave the first of twenty-two
concerts he presented with the Berlin
Philharmonic but on August 23rd
1945 he was shot dead by an American
soldier as Borchard and his wife were
being driven home after curfew.
Borchard recorded very
little and in discographic terms he
is known, if at all, almost by default.
The reason is, in a double irony, that
for a number of years it was believed
that this performance of Stenka Razin
had been conducted by Furtwängler
with the Vienna Philharmonic. There
are certainly powerful reasons to think
it may be so – the freedom and power,
the flexibility and melodic elasticity,
the sense of almost improvisatory drama
is reminiscent of the older man – and
commandingly so. But Furtwängler
never conducted Stenka Razin (though
he may well have conducted the Concerto)
and this is all Borchard. His affinities
if anything deepen still further with
Romeo and Juliet which is notably sombre
and not at all exuberant, rising to
a peak of introspective perception and
visceral drama. He had earlier shown
promise in his Tchaikovsky with the
only commercial recording in Tahra’s
disc – selections from the Nutcracker,
recorded for Telefunken in 1934 - complete
with a dapper, deadpan wit, albeit some
is rather slow.
Collectors have looked
forward to this release for some time
and with some relish. The immediate
post-war tapes have survived in good
sound and the pre-war set was well recorded
in the first place. I think we can reasonably
say that, but for that cruel end, Borchard
would have taken a prestigious place
in the reclamation and regeneration
of post-War Germany. Tahra show us what
remains – and what we have lost.
Jonathan Woolf
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra/Leo Borchard
