This is fascinating. On the face of it, tempi for the first three movements are just too damned slow! But somehow…somehow, the loving attention to texture and rhythmic detail suspends disbelief. Mine, at any rate, for the duration. That said, it did amuse me when more than once he chides the players for apparently getting slower (e.g. at 25’12”)…I couldn’t hear that! It’s hard not to wonder what a top-flight orchestra would have made of him in these, his last years, or whether he’d have had coached them so vigorously. But we’ll never know. I daresay that such ensembles would have balked at the financial implications of the many rehearsals he always demanded. And would their self-esteem have put up with such a regime? I’m amused that his several entreaties in this rehearsal footage to play softer appear to have had little effect from this relatively undistinguished ensemble. Imagine, say, the Berlin Philharmonic’s magical response to such exhortations! But educating, coaching was clearly a essential impulse. For a sobering contrast, look at Celibidache’s post-war film of Beethoven’s Egmont Overture with the Berlin Philharmonic. Matinee-idol swarthy with unruly black hair (no wonder the late Ida Haendel swooned in her autobiography ‘Woman with Violin’), he is a man possessed, the playing similarly incandescent. A different artist altogether.
We watched the same film, Andrew. I didn’t hear the ‘getting slower’ bits or those meant to be softer/quieter either. That said I was very moved by the slower than usual second movement (Andante cantabile I think). And, with the LSO, late-1970s, Celi created an astonishing Debussy La mer that still haunts me; and, a different LSO concert, his Verdi Force of Destiny overture and Prokofiev Romeo & Juliet selections are not easily forgotten. Nor Sibelius’s En saga (Jack Brymer’s long-breathed clarinet envoi a highlight) or an epic Brahms German Requiem, 90 minutes! Col
For an antidote I choose the wonderful Philharmonia recording with Markevitch. Pure bliss on my opinion.
Ignored in the recent BBC Record Review assessment.
I agree to an extent, Edward. While, like you no doubt, I sometimes find myself shouting at the radio during ‘Building a Library’ on a Saturday morning, especially when a treasured recording is not even mentioned, one which perhaps was part of one’s musical/record-collecting awakening, I have to acknowledge that the catalogue of central-repertoire pieces on record is these days a vastly more crowded one than in, say, the 1950s or 1960s, making the task of comparison so much easier in those days. In the current climate, where do you draw the line in a mere 45 minutes? Compare the number of recordings of, say, Rimsky’s Scheherazade in the 1960s with what’s before us now, and maybe you’ll see my point. I agree that some critics in this BaL slot seem barely to scratch the surface with facile or ill-informed comments on both the work and its recorded interpreters down the years (the marvellous Marina Frolova-Walker among several surely being a superb exception), I think that nowadays it’s unrealistic to expect a comprehensive overview of a work’s recorded history through some eight decades. Prokofiev Symphony 1? I grew up with the EMI/Melodiya Svetlanov. So fast, so thrilling! And I suspect that you agree that Markevitch is sadly among the huge gallery of overlooked conductors of the past. I grew up with his stereo remake of Le sacre with the Philharmonia. In the first flushes of adolescence and discovery of this piece, I was blown away by that recording (but would it have quite the same effect on me now, in comparison with, say, Salonen or Chailly?). Discuss!
This is fascinating. On the face of it, tempi for the first three movements are just too damned slow! But somehow…somehow, the loving attention to texture and rhythmic detail suspends disbelief. Mine, at any rate, for the duration. That said, it did amuse me when more than once he chides the players for apparently getting slower (e.g. at 25’12”)…I couldn’t hear that! It’s hard not to wonder what a top-flight orchestra would have made of him in these, his last years, or whether he’d have had coached them so vigorously. But we’ll never know. I daresay that such ensembles would have balked at the financial implications of the many rehearsals he always demanded. And would their self-esteem have put up with such a regime? I’m amused that his several entreaties in this rehearsal footage to play softer appear to have had little effect from this relatively undistinguished ensemble. Imagine, say, the Berlin Philharmonic’s magical response to such exhortations! But educating, coaching was clearly a essential impulse. For a sobering contrast, look at Celibidache’s post-war film of Beethoven’s Egmont Overture with the Berlin Philharmonic. Matinee-idol swarthy with unruly black hair (no wonder the late Ida Haendel swooned in her autobiography ‘Woman with Violin’), he is a man possessed, the playing similarly incandescent. A different artist altogether.
We watched the same film, Andrew. I didn’t hear the ‘getting slower’ bits or those meant to be softer/quieter either. That said I was very moved by the slower than usual second movement (Andante cantabile I think). And, with the LSO, late-1970s, Celi created an astonishing Debussy La mer that still haunts me; and, a different LSO concert, his Verdi Force of Destiny overture and Prokofiev Romeo & Juliet selections are not easily forgotten. Nor Sibelius’s En saga (Jack Brymer’s long-breathed clarinet envoi a highlight) or an epic Brahms German Requiem, 90 minutes! Col
For an antidote I choose the wonderful Philharmonia recording with Markevitch. Pure bliss on my opinion.
Ignored in the recent BBC Record Review assessment.
I agree to an extent, Edward. While, like you no doubt, I sometimes find myself shouting at the radio during ‘Building a Library’ on a Saturday morning, especially when a treasured recording is not even mentioned, one which perhaps was part of one’s musical/record-collecting awakening, I have to acknowledge that the catalogue of central-repertoire pieces on record is these days a vastly more crowded one than in, say, the 1950s or 1960s, making the task of comparison so much easier in those days. In the current climate, where do you draw the line in a mere 45 minutes? Compare the number of recordings of, say, Rimsky’s Scheherazade in the 1960s with what’s before us now, and maybe you’ll see my point. I agree that some critics in this BaL slot seem barely to scratch the surface with facile or ill-informed comments on both the work and its recorded interpreters down the years (the marvellous Marina Frolova-Walker among several surely being a superb exception), I think that nowadays it’s unrealistic to expect a comprehensive overview of a work’s recorded history through some eight decades. Prokofiev Symphony 1? I grew up with the EMI/Melodiya Svetlanov. So fast, so thrilling! And I suspect that you agree that Markevitch is sadly among the huge gallery of overlooked conductors of the past. I grew up with his stereo remake of Le sacre with the Philharmonia. In the first flushes of adolescence and discovery of this piece, I was blown away by that recording (but would it have quite the same effect on me now, in comparison with, say, Salonen or Chailly?). Discuss!