This is a gorgeous Scheherazade. Not surprisingly, given the fact that this is Beecham’s orchestra a half-dozen years after the great Englishman’s death, the performance is rather like Beecham’s, only better. Rudolf Kempe was a bit of an anomaly in his time, a German conductor who (Strauss and Wagner aside) wasn’t really a great advocate of German music–so he sort of fell between the musical cracks. However, much to the credit of British concertgoers he seemed to be well appreciated in England and fortunately made many recordings for EMI, a dozen of which will be reissued in this series. He was a “chord guy” who thrived on orchestral color, and no one knew better than he how to make an orchestra play the pants off a Romantic blockbuster without ever crossing the line into vulgar exhibitionism for its own sake.
Here’s a case in point. The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship flows and surges effortlessly, its endless repetitions kept afloat by buoyant rhythms, clear textures (winds always audible), and an accompaniment that never becomes monotonous. The second-movement instrumental soloists have all of Beecham’s elegance but also a touch more energy. In the third movement, Kempe milks the tunes for all they’re worth but happily stays in tempo, while the finale, again like Beecham, isn’t especially quick but manages through careful string articulation and exceptionally well-judged balances to generate as much excitement as some of the more overtly virtuosic versions. And unlike Beecham, the final shipwreck has both amplitude and a clearly audible bottom end.
The couplings include a zesty performance of Jaromir Weinberger’s once ubiquitous but now rare Polka and Fugue from Schwanda the Bagpiper along with a bouncy Dvorák Scherzo capriccioso, let down only by a Berlin Philharmonic that in 1958 was on no one’s list of the world’s great ensembles. Still, they play with considerable verve, and Dvorák was another one of those surprising Kempe specialties, his more colorful orchestration catching the conductor’s fancy far more than did, say, Brahms. Fine remastering completes an irresistible package.
