Willem Mengelberg’s fascinating yet controversial Beethoven interpretations proliferate on numerous independent historic labels, with production values and transfer quality ranging from execrable to excellent. Teldec’s latest entry in the Mengelberg/Beethoven sweepstakes provides an opportunity to address a matter of discographical confusion. The Dutch conductor recorded Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony twice for Telefunken. Both 1937 and 1942 versions were released on 78s with identical matrix and catalog numbers. When Teldec reissued the Mengelberg Fifth in 1988 and 1992, they used the 1942 performance, but misdated it 1937. The present release gives us the bona fide 1937 version, coupled with the conductor’s “Pastorale” from the same year. Both performances are also included in a recent Pearl compilation, produced and transferred by Mark Obert-Thorn. Ted Kendall’s new transfers for Teldec stand out for quiet surfaces and excellent side joins, but lack the ambient roundness and brightness on top I prefer in Obert-Thorn’s remasterings.
The performances are baffling. Mengelberg’s affetuoso gearshifts in the Fifth’s first movement make this driving music sound like an animated cartoon. The second movement reveals a completely different kind of conducting. Here Mengelberg’s phrasal inflections evolve from a steady, flowing pulse that is faithful to Beethoven’s Andante con moto specification. Mengelberg’s aforementioned 1942 studio Fifth, as well as his live 1940 traversal, offer more excitement and momentum in the closing movements, and in the main are better played. The conductor’s fleet, transparent “Pastoral”, on the other hand, is more consistent as an interpretation, notwithstanding its fair share of italicized details and rhetorical touches. Mengelberg biographer Frits Zwart’s interesting annotations shed valuable light on the conductor’s interpretive liberties in Beethoven, which extended to occasional rescorings as heard here.
