Scherchen left
two commercial recordings of the Requiem. There is a 1958
performance with Jurinac, Lucrezia West, Hans Loeffler and
Frederick Guthrie and there is the one under discussion, made
five years earlier, once more in Vienna. The soloists obviously
were entirely different.
The salient features
of Scherchen’s Requiem are steadiness, sonority and spiritual
intensity bordering on the operatic. Forces are large, the
conception is brooding and funereal and the absorption with
contrapuntal clarity leads to slight retardation of dynamism
in the interests of precision of entry points. Tempi naturally
are far slower than one could ever expect to find today. The
Kyrie for example, where one may have expected an increase
of speed after the monumental opening statements, holds its
nerve; it generates a powerful granitic and cumulative force.
Strict rhythm informs the Dies irae and the Ricordare
is affecting in a way seldom encountered today - so much the
worse for us. It’s in the Lachrymosa that Scherchen’s
more operatic instincts come into play – this is intensely
theatrical music making but never flashy or wanton. One senses
behind it a massive humanity and feeling, an intense spirituality
of utterance. With his first class singers he tends to sweep
away objections. Even where one may feel him dogged or too
concentrated on the stark humanity of it all - even at the
expense of underlying rhythmic incision – one tends to acknowledge
the overwhelming humanness of Scherchen’s conception. Seldom,
surely, has the Requiem been accorded such a sense of controlled
feeling.
Coupled with the
Requiem in this two disc set from Tahra are the two concertos
for two pianos that Scherchen recorded in Vienna two years
earlier with Paul Badura-Skoda and Reine Gianoli. The engineers
certainly gave the piano team some presence in the sound balance
and they make an engaging and successful pairing. The Adagio
of K242 is taken at a crisp tempo and there are some fluid
and superior orchestral solos along the way as well. There’s
also good timbral balance between the two pianos. The grazioso
element of the same concerto’s finale finds a witty champion
in Scherchen. The companion concerto finds real brio in the
opening movement and a fine military spring in the finale.
These are well-characterised performances, not ideally balanced
perhaps but rewarding examples of Scherchen’s way with Mozart
concertos. He left behind a recording of the Concerto for
flute and harp but Tahra 154 in which it was housed has now
been deleted.
In fact almost
all Scherchen’s Mozart on Tahra has fallen prey to the deletion
axe so I would urge you to make the acquaintance of this powerful,
spacious and profoundly human Requiem before it, too, goes
the way of all flesh. Especially when the transfer is so successful.
Jonathan Woolf
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Crotchet
Magda Laszlo (soprano);
Hilde Rossl-Majdan (mezzo): Petre Munteanu (tenor); Richard Standen (bass)
