Recordings are more than simply sonic approximations of a live musical performance. Often, they are historic documents in and of themselves and their value is manifold. They bear witness to the legacy of great conductors and soloists, great orchestras, and performance traditions (such as the Berlin State Opera Orchestra’s delicious string portamento in the recapitulation of the “New World” finale’s second subject) that may have changed over the years. On the other hand, so much depends on our ability to actually hear any of these things, and recording quality is sometimes so limited (when it comes to symphonic music) that it boils the music down to a melodic line with murky underpinnings, the only clearly audible interpretive gestures being selection of tempo.
For this reason, the first three items on this disc–Carnival Overture, Scherzo Capriccioso, and The Moldau–are practically worthless. Large chunks of the musical texture (timpani, winds, brass, percussion, and harp) are simply lost, and to hear these lively pieces robbed of all instrumental color and clarity is a painful experience. Kleiber fans may not care, and may well learn something about his approach to tempo and orchestral discipline, but for the average listener these recordings (which date from 1928 to 1948) do not adequately represent the music. The sound of the 1948 Carnival Overture, with the London Philharmonic, is particularly terrible for its era.
The “New World” Symphony, however, is another matter. Naturally, the dynamic range is restricted, but once the ear adjusts, you really can hear everything well enough to tell what’s going on in the performance. The string sonority is remarkably full, with the sound weighted heavily toward the bass, at the expense (unfortunately) of the woodwinds. Timpani are clearly present and firm, except at the recapitulation of the Scherzo where they seem to disappear into a sonic fog. Kleiber conducts a performance of extremes: very slow first movement introduction, very swift allegro. It’s not an especially tidy effort, despite the conductor’s fearsome reputation as an orchestral disciplinarian. The first movement coda, especially, nearly comes to grief, and there are several other instances that show the band not quite together, but these aren’t terribly serious. It’s a very dramatic and exciting first movement, overall.
The English horn soloist in the famous slow movement is quite good, though Kleiber’s tendency to speed up and slow down repetitions of melodic fragments makes the violins’ statement of the main theme sound impatient. The movement’s middle section is less well done: the double bass pizzicatos nearly overwhelm the clarinets, the tempo is unsteady, and the oboe soloist loses it completely at one point. And if brass intonation sounds a bit suspect at the movement’s close, it’s obvious that those double basses really worked on tuning that final chord! Overall, and despite fine moments, the movement comes off sounding more sectionalized and less flowing than usual.
The Scherzo begins well, the bass line reinforced (it seems) by low brass in a couple of spots, but the transition to the trio suffers from Kleiber’s unwillingness to ease into the new tempo: he simply stops the music dead and switches from fast to slow. In fact, the trio is painfully slow, and the triangle part is inaudible. The finale opens heroically, with really strong (if not note-perfect) brass playing and a tremendous physical jolt of energy. Kleiber maintains the momentum right up until the end, then disappointingly rushes the coda. Worst of all, he reorchestrates the final bar, tastelessly retaining the full orchestra in a general diminuendo (which sounds as silly here as at the end of Schubert’s Ninth), rather than playing it as Dvorák so poetically wrote it, for a handful of winds. The “bonus” performance of the Slavonic Dance No. 1 is rhythmically sloppy, heavy footed, and erratic in tempo.
In sum, this in an interesting, but not a great “New World”. Taken purely on its own terms, and without regard for sonic considerations, it offers a unique interpretive perspective on the symphony, even if some of Kleiber’s decisions inevitably work better than others. His stiffness at the points of transition in all four movements, though, can’t help but raise the issue of whether or not he was comfortable recording at this juncture in his career (1929). The performance really does sound metered out in four-minute doses, but fans of the conductor aren’t likely to care, and if you’re a “New World” junkie, there’s plenty here to feed your habit. Naxos’ sonic restorations (by Mark Obert-Thorn) sound about as fine as we’re likely to get these days, though the notes talk extensively about Feuermann’s Dvorák Cello Concerto, which appears on a different disc entirely in Naxos’ historical series. A little proof-reading would not have been amiss. [Editor’s Update: We are informed by Naxos USA that the note problem has been corrected, and should not affect copies available domestically.]
