Béla BARTÓK (1881-1945)
Concerto for Orchestra, Sz116 (1943) [37:05]
Walter PISTON (1894-1976)
Symphony No.3 (1947) [30:23]
Boston Symphony Orchestra/Serge Koussevitzky
rec. 30 December 1944 (Bartók) and 31 December 1948 (Piston), Symphony Hall, Boston
PRISTINE AUDIO PASC463 [67:34]
The Concerto for Orchestra was one of Koussevitzky’s
most significant commissions. Premičred by the Boston Symphony on 1 December
1944, it was reprised the following day. A third performance followed and
then, at the end of the month, the fourth performance of the six Koussevitzky
directed of the original version. This is what has been preserved on discs
cut from the broadcast and which Pristine now presents in fine sound. It is
thus the first-ever recording of the work – as indeed is the case with
the Piston Symphony, with which it is coupled.
Koussevitzky’s intuitive appreciation of the music’s tensile energy
and character - even if the Shostakovich raspberry is somewhat downplayed
- is established grippingly from the first moments. His orchestra’s
French heritage and his own immersion in Parisian culture draws some strikingly
personalised tonal responses, notably from the brass and winds. The Boston
trumpets were not infallible, any more than their confrčres elsewhere, but
all the orchestra’s choirs are on magnetic and profoundly energized
form throughout. Tempi accord with ones taken by today’s conductors
– Koussevitzky had an inbuilt rectitude about most tempo decisions –
and this, allied to the virtuosic dynamism of the music-making, means that
the performance sounds, if one can put it this way, very modern and there’s
nothing half-assimilated or tentative at all about it. Individual interpretative
decisions inevitably sound right - such as ritenutos and accelerandos
– but the expressive high points are the Elegia and the
corruscatingly executed finale – testimony alike to the orchestra and
conductor’s synergetic relationship, however much some of them may have
hated him.
It’s not the first time that it’s appeared – it can be found
on Naxos 8.110105 yoked to the conductor’s performance of Mussorgsky’s
Pictures - but its presence here as a part of a dual-premiere disc
is both pertinent and valuable.
Piston’s Third Symphony was premiered in January 1948 in Boston and
performed another nine times in a year by the conductor. The eighth performance
was recorded on tape and is the subject of this release - and what a stunner
it is. The orchestra has the piece well under its fingers by now and its corporate
virtuosity and tonal finesse can be savoured in this tremendous reading. The
winds’ tracery in the opening Andantino and the incremental ascent to
the movement’s pivotal drama are marshalled with great skill, whilst
the succeeding Allegro’s jagged, charged, brassy paragraphs are laced
with percussive outbursts. Seldom can the Adagio have sounded so movingly
expressive and deeply etched or the whooping trenchancy of the finale so celebratory,
its exultation accompanied by some fresh-faced neo-classical vitality.
It's not merely for historical associations that listeners will want
to acquaint themselves with these outstandingly vivid performances. How fortunate
we are to be able to enjoy them.
Jonathan Woolf
|
Availability
|