Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 (CD review)

Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, soprano; Julia Hamari, mezzo-soprano; Stuart Burrows, tenor; Robert Holl, bass. Eugen Jochum, London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. EMI Studio CDM 7 69030 2.

After reviewing Eugen Jochum's complete Beethoven Symphony set with the Concertgebouw on Philips, an excellent set he recorded in the late Sixties, I realized I had not heard all of his later Beethoven recordings with the London Symphony Orchestra on EMI from the late Seventies. Why he decided to record them all over again just ten years later, I have no idea, especially since the earlier Philips set was so good, and since the EMI set was actually his third complete set in stereo, the first on DG in the Fifties with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Bavarian RSO. Maybe he figured he could get even better sound from EMI, or maybe he thought he had something more to say about the music. He was conductor laureate of the LSO at the time, so maybe that had something to do with it. Who knows.

In any case, I had only heard his Beethoven Third and Sixth Symphonies from the LSO set, so I decided to track down a copy of his Ninth, as that was not only Beethoven's crowning jewel but the best thing in Jochum's Concertgebouw set as well. When I found it, the EMI rendition did not disappoint me.

Jochum's approach to the Ninth remained basically the same, perhaps with a further touch of elegance in addition to the sheer dynamism of a grandly imposing reading. Jochum was an extraordinary musician; rather than slowing down and producing broader, more-spacious interpretations as he got older, a process we see in most other conductors and call "maturing," Jochum seemed to get more animated, more energetic, more vital and compelling in his performances the older he got. He was in his late seventies when he recorded this Ninth, but you would never guess it from the vitality of the music making.

The first movement, which can sometimes drag under other conductors, Jochum takes from its humble beginnings through its building momentum into a fiery conclusion. Appropriately, the second movement scherzo, marked Molto vivace, bounces along gleefully, yet ominously, with Jochum never allowing the rhythmic tension to ease up for a moment, despite Beethoven's odd pauses and even odder hints of the finale.

Jochum's handling of the Adagio feels relaxed, comfortable, a welcome respite from the fury of the previous two movements. The Adagio operates, even sounds, much the same as Beethoven's "Scene at the Brook" in his Sixth Symphony, and Jochum treats it as such, with good-natured grace.

Then, about two-thirds of the way through the Symphony, we hear what is essentially the beginning of the long, tumultuous, tempestuous, resplendent final movement, itself divided into over a dozen separate segments with their own tempo markings, culminating in the glorious "Ode to Joy" with soloists and chorus. Here, Jochum is truly in his element because he appears to relish the music ever more the bigger and more intense it gets.

Yes, there are many other recordings one has to choose from in the Ninth Symphony, and among the top dozen or so, one can hardly go wrong: Solti (Decca), Bohm (1972, DG), Zinman (Arte Nova), Mackerras (EMI), Wand (RCA), Gardiner (DG Archiv), Szell (Sony), Karajan (DG), Kubelik (DG), Stokowski (Decca), Schmidt-Isserstedt (Decca), Monteux (Decca), Abbado (Sony), Haitink (LSO Live), Norrington (EMI), Bernstein (DG), and others. But, for me, topping them all are the two recordings by Eugen Jochum on Philips and here on EMI. They are as electrifying as any you'll find.

EMI's sound, recorded by the two Christophers--producer Christopher Bishop and engineer Christopher Parker--is among the best the Symphony has ever received. Not perfect, because massed voices are notoriously hard to reproduce, but close. Foremost, the EMI sound is fuller and warmer than the Philips sound Jochum enjoyed earlier, with a weightier bass response. Yet the EMI sound is never soft or unfocused. Indeed, it is quite clear most of the time, with only a hint of bass overhang that could be more dependent on your speakers than on the recording. Impact is strong; bass is never overwhelming but realistically rendered; and drum strokes are solid, taut. There is moderately good depth to the sound field, solo voices are smooth and lifelike, and only in massed soprano voices do we hear a touch of bright forwardness. Still, it is never quite as piercing as we hear on so many other recordings. Otherwise, the sound is natural and pleasing.

Heaven only knows what Beethoven might have written to top his Ninth Symphony, premiered in 1824, had he lived long enough in good health and good hearing to have done so. Thank goodness he went out swinging and that people such as Eugen Jochum can today do him justice.

Of course, EMI haven't pressed a copy of Jochum's LSO performance in twenty years, so if you don't already have it and you're interested in it, you'll have to hunt down a used copy. You should have no trouble.

JJP

Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique (SACD review)

Also, Le Roi Lear overture. Marek Janowski, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. PentaTone Classics PTC 5186 338.

One of the problems any conductor faces when he or she records a stardard-repertoire item like the Symphonie fantastique is having to compete with the many classic recordings that have gone before it. In the case of the Symphonie fantastique, Marek Janowski and the Pittsburgh Symphony are up against people like Sir Thomas Beecham and the French National Radio Orchestra (EMI), Sir Colin Davis and the Concertgebouw Orchestra (Philips or remastered on PentaTone SACD), John Eliot Gardiner and the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique (Philips), Leonard Bernstein and the French National Orchestra (EMI), or Roger Norrington and the London Classical Players (Virgin), to name but a few. Formidable competition, indeed.

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) wrote his celebrated Symphonie fantastique in 1830, and it became one of the most influential pieces of music of all time. Combining the programmatic elements of forebears ranging from Vivaldi's Four Seasons to Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony and utilizing an enormous orchestral arrangement for well over a hundred players (Berlioz employed about 130 musicians for the première), the result was extraordinary for its period. I suspect if he'd had a wind machine, electronic instruments, and a light show available to him, Berlioz would have used them, too. Yet the music remains extraordinary for our own times as well, even though people have repeated and imitated it at length.

In the work's five movements, the young Berlioz (in his mid twenties at the time) wrote autobiographically of the hopeless love of a young man for a woman, prompting the young man into a drug-induced vision, which the composer describes in the music. The woman reappears throughout the Symphonie in the form of an idée fixe, a "fixed idea" that will not let the young man go.

The title of the first movement, "Reveries - Passions," should be self-explanatory enough, and under Janowski's baton the dreams are rather languorous, while he expands the ensuing passions into some serious melodrama. Maybe the ebb and flow of the music becomes a bit static; certainly, it has enough red-blooded emotions involved.

The waltz at "The Ball" comes next, Janowski taking it at a quick, flighty pace, losing some of the dance number's initial grace and agility while gaining our attention with its fluid, ongoing momentum.

In the "Scene in the Fields" the dreamer hears a pastoral song, heightening his feeling for the woman, only to let his paranoia about her possible infidelity consume and deflate him. If I think Janowski appears to take this slow movement somewhat perfunctorily, it may simply be that I have never cared much for the music in the first place and would be unimpressed by anybody's interpretation.

The hero imagines in the fourth movement that the courts have convicted him of murdering his loved one, and they are leading him to the scaffold for punishment. It is grim satire to be sure, and it is best if the music be played straight, even ominously, for Berlioz's effect to work. Janowski takes a cautiously middle-of-the-road approach, neither too sinister nor too jaunty. Still, echoes of Beecham's menacing interpretation ring clearly here, and the echoes are hard to dispel.

In the finale, the "Witches' Sabbath," the fates seem to have consigned the young lover to some kind of hell for his crime of passion, there only to see his beloved among the witches. Janowski lets out all the stops here.  Although the results are not as scary as, say, the thrills Bernstein produced, they bring the performance to a respectable close.

PentaTone recorded the music live in 2009 and present it in both two-channel stereo and multichannel surround on a hybrid SACD that sounds smooth and well balanced. In regular stereo (played back in my system on a Sony SACD player), we get wide dynamics and strong impact, if not a lot of stage depth or inner detailing. There is a sort of soft, velvety sheen over the sonics that never quite lets them develop or sparkle as fully as they might. Nor is the front-channel stereo spread all that wide. The bass response and frequency range are fine, however, and one hardly notices the occasional audience noise in the background.

JJP

Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6 (CD review)

Also, Romeo and Juliet Overture. Paavo Jarvi, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Telarc CD-80681.

The booklet note reminds us that Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony, now a staple of the basic repertoire, did not succeed at its première. It confused audiences; they misunderstood it. It wasn't until the composer died, which came shortly thereafter, that people took another look at the work and saw its greatness, even saw in it a possible foreshadowing of the composer's death. Today, we might see the Sixth simply as innovative.

However, it's not hard to grasp why late nineteenth-century listeners might have been surprised by Tchaikovsky's final symphony. The long opening movement begins, unexpectedly, with a quiet Adagio and never reveals its main themes until well into the music. Then it gives us a waltz that isn't quite a waltz but does a wonderful job playing with waltz-like clues. That's followed by a Scherzo in the form of a march that erupts out of nowhere in a tone wholly unanticipated and builds to a frenzied climax. Finally, the last movement brings us back to Earth, prompting us to remember that the symphony's title (whether Tchaikovsky liked it or not) is "Pathetique," as the final deep notes fade off softly, gloomily, into silence.

What Paavo Jarvi and the Cincinnati Symphony do is provide us plenty of pathos. In Jarvi's hands, this is music of yearning, of heartache, of sorrow. And he never lets us forget it. But what I missed was the energy and passion that several other conductors also offer. Jarvi never seems to want to just let go, choosing, instead, to keep the work's more volatile emotions always in rein. By comparison, I had on hand Ashkenazy (Decca), Pletnev (Virgin), and Haitink (Philips), all of whom work up a bigger head of steam than Jarvi in the Symphony's biggest, loudest moments. The same can be said of the Symphony's companion piece, the Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture.

What none of the others have, though, is Telarc's patented bass drum or Telarc's broad dynamic range. Maybe the Telarc recording (made in Music Hall, Cincinnati, Ohio, in January, 2007) lacks a little something in overall transparency, but it more than makes up for it in impact. While Jarvi's rendering is not quite in the top echelon of Sixth Symphony interpretations, it deserves to reach a wide market of fans looking for decent sound and performance.

Adapted from a review the author originally published in the $ensible Sound magazine.

JJP