The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s second two-disc tribute to Rafael Kubelik showcases its erstwhile music director in repertoire both familiar and rare to his posthumously expanding discography. Taken from live performance tapes, overall recorded quality (audience and hall noise aside) is generally good, other than the sonically-compressed 1952 performance of Belshazzar’s Feast that squelches a good part of the chorus. Of interest to collectors are rare archival recordings of Ravel and Britten, two composers not normally associated with Kubelik, whose music here provides eye-opening tidbits that reveal the conductor’s range. The well-documented liner notes are informative and a bit apologetic–reminders of Chicago Tribune critic Claudia Cassidy’s relentless negativity toward Kubelik’s programming appear repeatedly as indictments of her own pedestrian tastes.
Within this compendium is a vivacious Dvorák Eighth from 1966 that compares favorably to his studio version, boasting a fourth-movement finale that bristles with excitement. Also notable are an incandescent account (also from 1966) of Wagner’s Prelude and Liebestod music from Tristan und Isolde (marred only by one solo horn clunker in the “Mild und Leise” theme), and a splendid 1983 rendition of Britten’s Sinfonia da requiem, where the fabled Chicago brass are simply breathtaking in the fanfares of the Dies Irae. The Ravel offers nothing special (1983) other than to showcase principal oboist Ray Still’s mellifluous solos, and the Mozart (1980) provides some off-the-beaten-path filler. Kubelik’s own 24-minute Sequences, performed in 1980, is a rather sprawling work of immense orchestral proportions but only seems to grip the listener in the last seven minutes or so, when the percussion takes center stage. The predictably tepid, polite applause gives some evidence of the audience’s bewilderment.
Finally, Kubelik gives a spellbinding, fiery performance of Walton’s great oratorio that nearly comes unglued in the massed choral sections (“Praise ye the God of Gold”, “Thus in Babylon, the mighty city”, and during the final perorations following the death of Belshazzar). Choral precision from the University of Illinois student forces is sacrificed to unbridled enthusiasm and the words are often difficult to hear over the muffled acoustic, but it is a performance to remember and one that certainly was worth preserving. This set can be ordered from the Chicago Symphony’s own website (www.cso.org).
