In an age where the
orchestral product is becoming irretrievably
homogenised, historians of playing styles
are looking with increasing wonder at
the American scene in the 1950s and
early 1960s when each of the "big
five" orchestras had its own special
characteristics stamped on it by its
reigning Music Director – Chicago (under
Reiner), Philadelphia (Ormandy), Cleveland
(Szell), New York (Mitropoulos, then
Bernstein) and Boston (Munch).
Of these, perhaps none
was more individual than the last-named.
Unlike the central European martinets
favoured in the United States, Munch
was a warm-hearted, kindly man who galvanised
the orchestra, not by the crack of the
whip, but by communicating and sharing
his own irrepressible enthusiasm for
the music he was performing. He encouraged
the players to make their own individual
sounds, with a wide vibrato from the
wind and strings (listen to the opening
of the Honegger, so different from the
sleek response we usually hear today)
and braying brass. All the characteristics,
in fact, of a typical French orchestra
of the time, though with a corporate
virtuosity which was rarely attained
in France. His climaxes in Saint-Saëns
and Franck are not rounded, full-organ
affairs, but characterful, even over-the-top,
with each player allowed his head. There
is some dangerous living on these two
discs, but never a trace of a routine,
dulled response.
Though every centimetre
a proud Frenchman (in the few years
that remained to him after his departure
from Boston Munch conducted almost exclusively
his national repertoire), Munch was
actually born in Strasbourg when it
was still German territory, originally
spelt his name Münch and had his
most important formative experience
playing in the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra
under Furtwängler. However, with
the rise of Nazism he left Germany and,
though he remained in France during
the war he refused any collaboration
with the occupying forces and unstintingly
threw in his lot with the Résistance;
his country home became an escape route
for allied pilots and refugees and when
the war was over he was awarded the
Légion d’Honneur.
In many ways Munch
was the antithesis of the classically
restrained sort of French conductor
typified by Pierre Monteux; he could
be described as the ideal interpreter
of that part of the French repertoire
which leans towards the Germanic style,
whether because it is really Belgian
(Franck) or Swiss (Honegger), or plain
cosmopolitan (Saint-Saëns). The
Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony is about
as convincing as I have ever heard it,
thrilling when Munch is in full cry,
but full of heartfelt tenderness in
the slow movement. If Munch allows his
brass to bray out in the climaxes, the
balancing of the organ and piano is
as well done as I have ever heard; that
moment when the slow movement starts
and one realises there is an organ supporting
the strings is magical indeed, and the
emergence of the piano in the finale
is no less so.
In the Franck Munch’s
tempi are bracing and urgent, similar
to those of Sir Adrian Boult whose interpretation
was modelled on that of Franck’s pupil
Pierné. No doubt Munch had also
heard Pierné conduct the work.
However, while Boult goes for the big
architectural arch, Munch is more instinctive
and dramatic in his pacing. He allows
himself some big rallentandos, as well
as some impulsive surges forward, but
somehow it all holds together. In the
last resort I find a deeper satisfaction
in the Boult, who lacks nothing in gut
conviction even beside Munch (it really
is one of the finest records he ever
made), but I would not be without either,
for Munch also explores a range of colour
and offers much felicitous phrasing.
If these recordings
are good, that of the Ibert is quite
amazing. Sample the first upward rush
of the strings after the poetic opening
and you could almost believe the recording
was a new one. Most attractive music,
too, with plenty of bold primary colours
for Munch to relish.
When the recording
of the d’Indy is so fine orchestrally,
I wonder why the piano is so backward
and lacking in tonal bloom, although
I suspect the Mme Henriot-Schweitzer’s
playing is not remarkable tonally in
any case. I’m afraid I find d’Indy’s
inspiration as thin as the mountain
air which inspired it, a seven-minute
work puffed out to over twenty by playing
everything two or three times over,
in admittedly gorgeous orchestral drapery.
But for the joyous finale I forgive
the composer the rest.
The Roussel Suite was
one of Munch’s party-pieces and the
archives of most radio stations around
the world must be full of live versions
in which his tow-path shouts can be
heard goading often second-rate orchestras
to play as if their lives depended upon
it (as in Rome in 1963 and 1966). Nothing
second-rate about the Boston orchestra,
obviously, and they enable Munch to
explore much colour and poetry before
exploding into the orgiastic finale.
You do notice the passage from a stereo
recording to a mono, but the sound is
still remarkably good and the Honegger
is frankly incredible for its age.
The performance is
pretty incredible too. The symphony
had been completed only the previous
year and so I take it this was its first
recording, one of those pioneering recordings
in which the total identification of
the conductor with the composer and
his evident thrill of first discovery
produce results of burning conviction;
a historic document and I bet Honegger
himself was overwhelmed.
Munch’s no-holds-barred
interpretative style used to be regarded
with suspicion in England, but when
these recordings were new they reached
us in rather crude LP pressings which
lent credence to the idea that the finer
shadings passed Munch by. The engineers
of these transfers have done wonders
with them and it sounds as if Munch’s
Boston recordings need a general reassessment.
The package comes with
a brief and business-like note in French
only, but the unattributed pencil sketch
of Munch, with his shy but very human
smile, makes more than amends.
Christopher Howell
Boston Symphony Orchestra/Charles Munch,
with Nicole Henriot-Schweitzer (d’Indy) and
Berj Zamkochian, organist (Saint-Saëns)