Let’s get the bad news out of the way first, because this is in many respects a fascinating release. The performance of the Janácek is simply the worst ever recorded. Atrocious playing (for example, trombones in the third movement’s central section, or the solo winds–piccolo especially–in the fifth movement) and conducting at rehearsal tempos (you won’t believe the sound of the opening fanfare at nearly double its normal length), render the work almost unrecognizable in some places, and nearly unlistenable in many others. As yet another example of Horenstein’s championship of unusual repertoire, it’s interesting. As a musical experience, it’s disgusting. Enough said.
Now, however, we come to a fine “From the New World” Symphony recorded in 1952 (three years before the Janácek), and captured in very clear mono sound with appropriately forward woodwind balances. Granted, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra isn’t going to win any major awards for tone quality: grainy cellos, edgy brass, and the occasional sour oboe point to a typically post-War European orchestral experience. What’s far more important, though, is how carefully Horenstein makes his band observe Dvorák’s detailed phrasing and accent marks, and how flexible this performance is tempo-wise, a far cry from the stiffness of his last years. And as luck would have it, Horenstein re-recorded the work in 1962 with the Royal Philharmonic in stereo (currently available on Chesky), also a very fine performance in which we can clearly hear the conductor “de-Romanticizing” his style while still retaining significant elements of the earlier performance. Let’s compare the two and see what we can learn.
The first movement introduction (’52) contains a near disaster, when the horns enter a beat early for all of their fortissimo eruptions beginning at bar 10. This should have been corrected. In both versions, Horenstein launches the first movement allegro with great energy. The 1952 ensemble balance highlights the clarinet over unison flute and oboe in the transition to the second subject despite the composer’s clear dynamic markings to the contrary–an interesting touch all the same. When the famous flute theme arrives, Horenstein gets some lovely, elegant phrasing from his Viennese players, while a decade later he’s a shade less generous with his rubato at a marginally faster tempo. Although I miss the extra affection of the earlier version, the later one sets up the transition to the development better and maintains a higher energy level. Finally, in 1962 Horenstein had much better horn players, and evidently didn’t feel the need for the big ritard introducing the coda (letter M) that we hear ten years previously.
The Largo reveals the biggest differences between the two recordings. Horenstein takes two extra minutes in 1952 (14+ minutes in all), and while the English horn player hasn’t the most lovely timbre, he phrases sensitively and in tune. The very slow tempo compared with 1962 makes for a much larger, even abrupt contrast between the first and second themes. However, the London Horenstein retains the speed-up, slow-down treatment of the quiet string passage at measure 30, as well as the strictly in tempo approach to the big climax. At the movement’s end in the earlier version, at the top of the main theme’s concluding phrase (measure 113) as played by the strings for the last time, Horenstein inserts a stunningly effective sforzando that’s sadly absent in the remake. And if the 1962 scherzo has greater energy at a swifter tempo than this one, the earlier version has two lovely touches that vanish later: a sweet little ritard at the end of trio’s second half (both times around), and an uninhibitedly ferocious return to the scherzo proper.
Both finales treat the opening in the brass as a slow introduction, and then accelerate impulsively to the string’s triplet theme at letter B. Once again, the earlier effort exploits this contrast more boldly than the later one. In both versions, however, Horenstein is one of the very, very few conductors who get the cymbal part right: suspended and struck with a soft stick, rather than two plates clashed. This isn’t an especially important matter, but it is indicative of the conductor’s attention to the finer points of detail, a characteristic of both performances. The mono recording’s focus on the winds invests the finale’s development section with plenty of color and rhythmic interest, and Horenstein has the strings attack their wild triplets at the big climax just before the coda with impressive power. In 1962, there’s less emphasis on expressive shaping of details and a stronger sense of linear continuity, while both recordings bring the work to an exciting close.
These two “New Worlds” clearly demonstrate the difference between Horenstein’s early and late interpretive styles: one relatively “free” and self-consciously Romantic, the other stricter in tempo, less sentimental, but in some ways even stronger and certainly more concerned with the long line. They do this while remaining emphatically the work of a conductor with definite and consistent ideas about how to interpret the piece. However as the Janácek also shows, Horenstein’s achievement was highly variable. In particular, finding the right tempos and negotiating transitions between them was a genuine problem that plagued him throughout his career, and ultimately marred many of the late recordings for which he’s now best known. Still, when it comes to his Dvorák, these considerations compromise neither the value of his insights nor his success in communicating them to his players. The rating reflects this.
