It must have been exciting for audience members attending Clifford Curzon’s Salzburg Festival debut on July 26, 1955 to hear the pianist speed through Brahms’ Second Concerto, letting nervous energy and adrenaline guide the way, and correct notes be damned. However, if Curzon were still alive I doubt that this sensitive, immensely self-critical artist would want such an alarmingly uneven performance preserved, let alone released commercially. And although the Vienna Philharmonic’s strings sing sweetly for Hans Knappertsbusch, that’s about all that distinguishes the conductor’s enegertic yet poorly coordinated support. Even the Andante’s relatively easy opening pages suffer from flaccid rhythm and imprecise chording.
The Tragic Overture preceded the concerto to open this all-Brahms concert, and it’s as craggy, lumpy, and square-toed a reading as you don’t want to hear. While the Third Symphony isn’t quite the slop-fest Kna presided over two years later in Dresden (type Q931 in Search Reviews), it only achieves coherence during chordal tuttis, when everyone more or less has the same rhythms and the conductor either whips up the tempo or imposes clumsy momentary ritards.
As for shaping and balancing Brahms’ contrapuntal writing, forget about it. True, there are moments when Kna lays into a dissonance and milks it for momentary effect, or allows the violins a little extra room for certain turns of phrase to register. But you’re not thinking about that during the fourth movement. Instead, you’re puzzled as to why the Vienna Philharmonic can barely execute the off-beat rhythms without sounding like elephants in labor. It hardly helps that the brass stick out like sore thumbs in the recorded balance. For archivists only.
