In the dying days of
the LP you could pick up the most surprising
things at dirt-cheap prices. Thus it
was that I came to know these performances
– and also no.7, but not no.6, which
was also recorded – in rather dim-sounding
pressings on the Austrian Amadeo label.
Years earlier I remember seeing some
of them in a Woolworth’s store issued
by Allegro and wondering what they were
like.
At about the same time
as they were making these recordings,
Vanguard also began what was to be an
extensive Schubert series with Lili
Kraus. This was abandoned after a couple
of issues for lack of funds. Maybe a
complete Beethoven cycle was also projected,
but only four symphonies and four overtures
were set down. To judge from the present
reissue, it would have been a notable
achievement. Apart from these Vanguard
sessions Boult recorded few Beethoven
symphonies. There was an 8th
with the BBCSO on 78s, there is a recording
of the 1st and there was
another of the "Eroica" that
I know nothing about. His late "Indian
Summer" period with EMI only produced
a further "Pastoral". The
BBC Legends series has so far made little
attempt to investigate the biggest BBC
legend of all.
Those who have been
protesting recently about the iniquity
of issuing records with pseudonymous
orchestras might be amused to note that
for many years the doyen of British
rectitude had no difficulty in appearing
on record as the conductor of the "Philharmonic
Promenade Orchestra", on Pye-Nixa
as well as on Vanguard. This was because
his own London Philharmonic Orchestra
was contracted elsewhere. However, this
is a rather different matter from plagiary,
since the orchestra that played was
the one that got paid. And as for deceiving
the public, most people knew what the
"Philharmonic Promenade Orchestra"
was anyway.
The transfers under
discussion show quite startlingly what
a difference the sound picture can make
to our appreciation of a performance.
I have always admired this "Eroica"
for the justness with which the opening
movement unfolds, but it had also seemed
to me one of those cases where Boult,
having prepared an excellent interpretation,
didn’t fire up the orchestra to the
maximum.
It doesn’t sound like
that any more. What was originally a
rather recessed sound in an acoustic
like St. Pancras’ Station is now revealed,
particularly over headphones, as an
upfront, rostrum-view recording. The
strings have brilliance and you can
hear the rasp of their bows as they
dig into Beethoven’s many sforzandos.
The wind have character – the oboe is
unusually pungent for a London player
– and the brass have great impact. It
doesn’t sound entirely natural, but
it is exciting. Over loudspeakers the
sound polarizes rather, the violins
well to the left, all the brass and
lower strings crowded around the right-hand
speaker.
The lower strings?
Yes, this is an aspect which puzzled
me, and the Amadeo LP was the same.
Boult was famous for having his second
violins on the right and his cellos
in the middle, as was normal in his
younger days. He allowed himself to
be talked by Richard Itter into accepting
the "modern" arrangement when
recording the Elgar symphonies for Lyrita,
and it looks as though the Vanguard
team persuaded him here. In view of
the polarization between speakers I
did wonder if this is just electronic
jiggery-pokery with a mono recording,
but the positions of the instruments
seem too definite for that. In the trio
of the 5th Symphony’s 3rd
movement, where the strings enter fugally,
from the lowest to the highest, each
entry can be heard to the left of the
previous one, quite definitely, both
times. And yet … sometimes you get a
blast of high strings coming out of
the right-hand speaker. Strange.
Never mind. As I say,
it’s quite an exciting sound. Boult
takes the first movement of the "Eroica"
fairly broadly, but with trenchant string
articulation and whiplash accents. The
climaxes are quite thrilling. There
is one moment I have always found strangely
moving in this performance. As the coda
begins and the music swings back into
the home key after the last, dramatic
attempt to undermine it, Boult just
ever so slightly relaxes to give a sense
of grateful relief, as though the composer
has at last attained what he had been
reaching for over the long span of the
movement.
Boult’s conducting
of the Marche Funèbre seems
to anticipate the "authentic"
brigade by several decades. At 13:03
it must be one of the fastest performances
on disc – Toscanini’s 1939 recording
took 16:40. Here are a few others, beginning
with the slowest: Kubelik: 17:38, Furtwängler
(Rome): 16:50, E. Kleiber (Concertgebouw):
15:23, Weingartner: 15:11, Keilberth:
14:46, Klemperer (1955): 14:43, Harnoncourt:
14:35, Böhm (BPO): 14:25. Some
surprises here. Only one performance
known to me is actually faster than
Boult: that by Josef Krips. I have this
on LP but it seems to be about ten seconds
shorter.
In practice, what happens
is that Boult does not need to increase
his tempo in the contrasting sections
– which go at "normal" tempi
– and allows the return of the march
theme to emerge from the preceding crisis
perfectly naturally without any rallentando.
A downside, though, is that the march
passages sound a little square at times,
and paradoxically the closer transfer
emphasizes this. The more distant Amadeo
transfer lent more apparent poetry to
a performance which is mighty impressive
but digs less deep than some.
The scherzo is fierily
articulated though not exceptionally
pacy. The horn-led trio emerges without
a change of tempo and without any of
Furtwängler’s long-drawn-out romantic
glow at the end. The sudden 2/4 bar
near the end of the movement is hammered
out to great effect.
The finale starts a
shade deliberately but with much forceful
articulation. The Poco andante,
however, is fairly swift, and so we
realize that Boult is aiming to present
the movement as a single unfolding argument.
A powerful coda caps a performance which
has a lot to tell us about the symphony.
The Fifth had never
seemed to me underpowered even in the
Amadeo version, and it emerges as magnificent.
Boult is particularly good at presenting
a relaxed view of the secondary material,
and yet with the motto theme muttering
threateningly in the lower strings we
realize the actual tempo has not slackened
at all. A strongly argued first movement
is followed by another swiftish slow
movement. Again, here are some timings:
Furtwängler (Rome): 11:54, Kubelik:
11:02, Munch: 10:46, Koussevitzky: 10:43,
Keilberth: 10:12, Klemperer (1955):
10:07, Harnoncourt: 9:54, Rodzinski:
9:53, Boult: 09:17, E. Kleiber: 9:15,
Weingartner: 8:46. As in the "Eroica",
Boult’s swifter basic tempo enables
him to hold it, so many passages don’t
actually sound that fast. In this case,
though, I would not have any reservations
about a lack of poetry. Some of the
wind phrasing is beautifully managed.
The menacing references to the first
movement’s motto theme are very finely
done.
Like Klemperer, Boult
finds a single tempo for the scherzo
and the finale, with the result that
there is no loss of impulse when the
scherzo suddenly returns. There is considerable
suppressed tension in the strange reprise
of the scherzo with its pizzicato strings
and ghoulish bassoon, while the famous
crescendo builds into a tremendous explosion.
Though not exceptionally fast, the symphony
rises to a fiery, triumphant conclusion.
"Coriolan"
is another example of Boult’s Beethoven
at its tautest, and "Leonore no.3"
is perhaps even more than this. Boult
was a rare visitor to the opera house,
but he did conduct "Fidelio"
occasionally and in the later stages
of the overture his usual objectivity
gives way to an unexpected narrative
ability. The coda had seemed to me a
little sedate in the Amadeo version,
but hearing it more vivid sound I realize
that Boult is relating it to the final
scene of the opera, jubilant rather
than urgent.
Boult’s ideal in Beethoven
was probably Weingartner, whose lean
orchestral sound and objective approach
he made his own. Onto this he grafted
certain features derived from Toscanini
– the whiplash accents and fierce articulation
– though without going to extremes.
He admired Furtwängler and was
a personal friend of Bruno Walter but
was never attracted by more romantic
methods. These performances show that
a Boult cycle would have held up its
head in exalted company. If he had been
given the opportunity to return to this
music late in life, we would have had
better recording and more repeats –
the first movement of the "Eroica"
and the finale of no.5 lack them. But,
as the ups and downs of his late Brahms
cycle show, it is perhaps to these 1957
recordings that we would have to return
to hear his Beethoven at his best.
Vanguard make a virtue
of the fact that in this series they
provide "the entire original LP
liner notes for each CD release".
A nice trip down memory lane. Or maybe
not. I leave the reader to judge whether
this sort of thing needed to be resurrected,
replete with the original misprints
– or did they creep in more recently?
The slow movement
(of Symphony no.5) is an
interim of warm, gracious lyricism,
full of the "boldest harmonic
effects" to which Berlioz’
ears were still sensitive, and to
which the ears of our century have
probably become hopelessly iured
[sic]. It is succeeded by
one of the most capricious and glowering
of his orchestral "jokes".
Few moments in Beethoven have produced
such an effusion of literary fantasy.
The reader has a wide choice from
the heavy hand of fate battering
down the walls of the world, to
the heavy hand of the double bass
section, vibrating with full bow
the very floor beneath our feet;
a choice of an earthly comedy, or
an unnatural farce enacted by the
denizens of the sub-earth (who live
within us, by the way); between
an unflatteringly realistic self
portrait of the man, Beethoven (ill-tempered,
ungracious, gross and fantastic),
and a surrealism of inspired malignancy
recovered form [sic] the
recesses of primeval myth. A strange
movement it is indeed, however one
construes it – all the more so for
being compounded out of clichés
that are made to sound convincingly
like fresh discoveries, and in the
peculiarities of their use are indeed
just that. …
Wow!
Christopher Howell
"Philharmonic Promenade Orchestra
of London" [really the London Philharmonic
Orchestra]/Sir Adrian Boult 
