What possible purpose does a disc like this serve? Carl Schuricht recorded a very good Eroica with the Paris Conservatory Orchestra in the late 1950s for EMI. That group certainly was a better band than this 1941 Berlin orchestra, and Schuricht accordingly turned in an interpretation far more appealing than this pedestrian effort. On EMI the opening movement has tensile strength and energy; here it simply jogs along. The later recording features a gaunt and grave funeral march; this one is swifter and far less emotionally pointed. With repeats missing from the scherzo and a finale as bland as white toast, this particular example of the artistic delights of the Third Reich hardly deserved preservation in the first place, let alone resurrection now. Even in 1941 this performance would have appeared redundant on the international market, and only the peculiar wartime situation in Germany possibly could have justified recording the symphony yet again.
The couplings, a lumpish and ill-disciplined Coriolan Overture (1943) and a very bizarre and freakishly unidiomatic nine minutes of excerpts from the Theme and Variations finale of Tchaikovsky’s Third Suite for Orchestra (1934), constitute the final nail in this particular coffin. Grubby sound, clear enough in the 1940s recordings but still dynamically flat and miserly of instrumental detail below the melodic surface, adds nothing to this issue’s appeal. Ridiculously poor notes and skimpy recording/remastering documentation complete the dismal picture. Here’s the bottom line: labels of all sorts release this dreck because it’s free. Schuricht fans (all both of them) and those who believe that any sort of junk has value as long as it’s old and sounds bad will collect this anyway. And then, in this particular case, there’s the niche market for Nazi memorabilia. If you fall into any of these three categories, enjoy. [7/20/2004]
