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Felix MENDELSSOHN (1809-1847)
Hebrides Overture (Fingal’s Cave), Op.26 (1830, 1832) [10:00]
Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt (Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage), Overture, Op.27 (1828, 1834) [12:02]
Die schöne Melusine (The Fair Melusine) Overture, Op.32 (1833-35) [11:24]
Ruy Blas Overture, Op.95 (1839, 1844) [7:46]
Wiener Philharmoniker/Carl Schuricht
rec. 26 April 1954, Grosser Saal, Musikverein, Vienna. ADD/mono
Franz SCHUBERT (1797-1828)
Rosamunde, D797 (Incidental music to Helmina von Chézy’s play) (1823, from earlier material):
Overture (Die Zauberharfe, D644) [9:50]
Entr’acte No.3 – Andantino [6:27]
Ballet Music No.1 [5:53]
Ballet Music No.2 [6:13]
Wiener Philharmoniker/Pierre Monteux
rec. 25 November 1957, Sofiensaal, Vienna. ADD/stereo
ELOQUENCE 4824955 [69:30]

The Australian arm of Decca and DG continues to delight us with some fine reissues. As I write up this review, for example, I’m enjoying their reissue of Richard Bonynge’s LSO recording of Adam’s Le Diable à quatre and some shorter pieces (4828603 – review). That’s a fine successor to their reissue of the same forces in Giselle, reissued in 2007 – review.

Those are both in 1960s stereo sound and, while they couldn’t be mistaken for modern DDD, they require little tolerance. The Mendelssohn overtures date from 1954 and are in mono, while the Schubert comes from only slightly later, in early stereo, so this album, inevitably, requires a deal more tolerance from the modern listener. On the other hand, it’s possible still to enjoy recordings of this era, as in the case of Anatole Fistoulari’s Swan Lake and excerpts from The Nutcracker, dating from 1952 and 1951 respectively, which Jonathan Woolf thought presented in ‘the best possible (mono) light’ – review. I would be a little less forgiving of the thin sound of that recording, but I completely agree that the performances were well worth reissuing.

Collections of overtures, by Mendelssohn or whoever, are far less popular now than they were. There’s an album from Claudio Abbado with the LSO, released in 1988 (DG 4231042, the same four as from Schuricht, plus the Midsummer Night’s Dream overture, Harmoniemusik and the Trumpet Overture, available for around £8.50). These performances are also included in DG’s very worthwhile budget-price 4-CD set of the five symphonies and seven overtures (4714672).

The overtures Ruy Blas, Calm Sea and Hebrides, plus the complete Midsummer Night’s Dream music, also feature as part of Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s LSO Live series of recordings of the Mendelssohn symphonies, now collected as a set (LSO0826, 4 SACDs + blu-ray audio, around £24 or download from hyperion-records.co.uk for £12/£18, 16-/24-bit). Those recordings have met with general approval here and elsewhere, including a Recording of the Month accolade from David Barker for Symphony No.3 and The Hebrides (with Schumann Piano Concerto – review).

The most complete set of recent years, however, comes from Edward Gardner as part of his series of recordings of Mendelssohn with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (Chandos CHSA5235 – review). That collection includes Schuricht’s four plus St Paul, Athalie, Midsummer Night’s Dream and the Trumpet Overture: all that I could add to my colleague’s praise of that, as heard in 24/96 sound from chandos.net, in Summer 2019/2 was to echo it. Listening to that recording again only confirms that opinion.

Clearly, Schuricht in 1954 mono, cannot hope to compete sound-wise with Abbado or Gardner, but the conductor had a special penchant for Mendelssohn, and this recording achieved something like legendary status in its time. There are also some off-air recordings of his Mendelssohn from Stuttgart on Hänssler (HAEN93155), but these Decca recordings are the ones to have. The Vienna Philharmonic are at their best, and the recording still sounds much more than bearable. The Eloquence reissue is well worth its modest price for these alone, especially bearing in mind that the Mendelssohn LP cost 36/5½ when first released on LXT2961 (£1.83, but equivalent to at least £50 today).

Gardner makes the music a tad more exciting than Schuricht, with tempos typically a shade faster. The difference is most marked in Melusine, where he knocks a whole minute off the latter’s 11:24. That doesn’t mean that Schuricht is too slow – the extra time which he allows makes this especially charming.

Schubert’s Rosamunde music is the exception in that the rest of his theatre music is mostly forgotten. Though labelled as for the play of that name, it was largely cobbled together from earlier compositions: the overture, sometimes given the title Die Zauberharfe, came from his opera Alfonso und Estrella. The incidental music was composed at the same time as the ‘Unfinished’ Symphony; Entr’acte No.1 has sometimes been pressed into service as the putative finale of that work. In the hands of Sir Charles Mackerras in his recording of the Newboult reconstructed finished ‘Unfinished’, with the Symphony of the Age of Enlightenment, it receives a performance that almost convinces me of the theory (Erato Veritas 5618062, Symphonies Nos. 5, 8 and 9, download only, around £12 in lossless).

It’s a shame that Pierre Monteux didn’t include that Entr’acte. His recording offers the Overture, here labelled Zauberharfe, Entr’acte 3 and Ballet Music 1 - its first CD release on Decca – and 2. The Overture receives a fine performance, with close attention to the dotted rhythms required in the score, and the other excerpts are also conducted convincingly. Trevor Harvey, reviewing the original release, on RCA, thought the Entr’acte a little too sentimentalised, preferring Szell, whose recording, also coupled with Mendelssohn, was released around the same time. My own preference is exactly the oppositive: Szell is a little too brusque for me in Schubert and Mendelssohn – I owned his recording of the latter when it was released later on CBS Classics – whereas Monteux here is ethereal, with shades of the heart-stopping slow movement of Schubert’s String Quintet in C.

Though made in stereo, the Monteux recordings remain a little thin, but more than tolerable. Rather oddly, the booklet claims a release on the lower-price Decca SPA label as the first outing for the Schubert. In fact, it was one of a number of RCA releases made by Decca engineers and subsequently reissued by them after the partnership was dissolved. Monteux’s 1958 LSO recording of Scheherazade, another result of that collaboration, was also first released on RCA and subsequently by Decca on their Weekend label and later on Eloquence 4808899. Some dealers still have copies of the latter and there’s a download release on 4501322 – well worth acquiring, albeit that both are now much more expensive than the Weekend release when it cost £4.99. But don’t forget the Ansermet Scheherazade, of roughly the same vintage (Beulah 1PS52, with Ravel and Debussy – Autumn 2019/1, or 1PDR15, with Easter Festival Overture, etc.: Reissue of the Month – DL News 2015/7).

Would I consider the new Mendelssohn and Schubert release as well worth obtaining as those other Decca vintage recordings? Overall, the answer has to be in the affirmative, for the vintage quality of the performances and the perfectly tolerable sound. Only those who insist on the latest hi-res recordings need steer clear.

Brian Wilson

Previous review: Jonathan Woolf



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