With this mouth-watering collection of archival goodies covering more than six decades of orchestral broadcasts, the Boston Symphony Orchestra joins its “big five” colleagues from New York, Chicago, Cleveland, and Philadelphia in the boxed set business. The 12 discs feature each music director from Pierre Monteux to Seiji Ozawa and also showcase the orchestra’s guest conductors. Just a glance at the set’s contents is enough for collectors to drool with anticipation. Fortunately, a good number of the performances live up to whatever legend they may hold, abetted by Paul Bailey’s caring transfers from the best source material available.
Serge Koussevitsky’s 1944 broadcast premiere of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra is a case in point. Its first “official” transfer surpasses previous unauthorized editions for sheer orchestral color, amplitude, and resonance, all qualities that this score desperately needs. You’ll also hear Bartók’s abrupt original ending, which of course he later revised. And although the piano is too closely miked in relation to the orchestra, it’s exciting to hear the youthful Leonard Bernstein passionately intone the big piano part during the world-premiere of his “Age of Anxiety” Symphony while Koussy gives his protegé alert podium support.
Pierre Monteux served as BSO music director from 1919 to 1924, returning often to guest-conduct during the 1950s and early ’60s. Happily, the venerable maestro is represented in works he otherwise didn’t record–notably a Strauss Don Quixote in the taut Toscanini tradition, and a beautifully sculpted Vaughan Williams Fantasy on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. To hear how brilliantly the BSO could play during that era, each and every Charles Munch selection testifies not just to an amazing conductor/orchestra partnership, but to some of the most inspired, characterful music making ever captured by a recording device. If a hotter, sexier, leaner, more unabashedly virtuosic Ravel La Valse exists, I haven’t heard it! Make sure you take a breather before playing Guido Cantelli’s pressure cooker of a Respighi Pines of Rome, and crank up your system in order to fully experience its unusually vivid mono sonics.
While William Steinberg’s Bruckner Eighth boasts a demonstration-class recording that transcends its 1972 vintage, the performance is unduly italicized and transitionally bumpy (especially in the outer movements). The Erich Leinsdorf selections (Shostakovich 1; Janacek’s “Vixen” Suite; Smetana’s The Moldau; Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll) reveal the BSO in fine, responsive fettle, yet the two Seiji Ozawa discs give fuller measure of the orchestra’s stylistic aplomb through large-scale 20th century choral showpieces such as Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms and Messiaen’s Trois Petites Liturgies. The BSO’s stellar wind and brass principals fare divinely in Frank Martin’s Concerto for Seven Wind Instruments, Timpani, Percussion, and String Orchestra, and clarinetist Harold Wright and bassoonist Sherman Walt elevate Strauss’ Duet-Concertino to subtle heights of conversational blend.
Guest conductors range from the boring (Haitink’s workaday Schubert Third), the outrageous (Stokowski’s souped-up Don Giovanni overture), the solemn (Giulini in Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler), and the savage (Kubelik in Martinu’s Double Concerto), to the illuminating (Copland leading his own Music for a Great City in a far superior, more precise performance than his commercial London Symphony studio recording delivers). A final disc of encores includes fascinating rehearsal tidbits with Bernstein and Koussevitsky. The deluxe, 138-page book offers informative essays from Michael Steinberg, Joseph Silverstein, Marc Mandel, Mortimer H, Frank, and Kevin P. Mostyn, a complete BSO personnel roster from 1943 to date, plus texts and translations. In sum, I can’t think of a better way to support the BSO than to purchase this set, and hopefully others like it to come. [4/20/2002]
