Bach - Mass in B minor, BWV 232
Brahms - Ein deutsches Requiem, op.45
Beethoven - Missa solemnis in D major, op.123
Ah perfido, op.65
Fidelio, op.72: 'Abscheulicher! ... Komm, Hoffnung'
Mozart - Ave verum corpus, KV 618
Strauss - Vier letzte Lieder
The
early Philharmonia Orchestra (featured on the greater part of these recordings)
was an extraordinary band. That holds not only for its superlative players, but
also with respect to the conductors with whom it worked and, of course, for its
presiding eminence, Walter Legge, producer of all the recordings in this set.
To be recording with Wilhelm Furtwängler, Herbert von Karajan, and Otto
Klemperer, amongst others, would be more than noteworthy for a long-established
orchestra, let alone for one just founded. There are many, moreover, who
account the period covered here to have been perhaps the finest, most
consistent, in Karajan’s lengthy, prolific recording career.
Take
the lithe, even blithe, opening to the ‘Gloria’ of the B minor Mass, Karajan’s
sprightliness quite different from Klemperer’s granitic splendour. The ‘Cum
Sancto Spirito’ fairly whizzes by, more Don Giovanni-like champagne than
full-bloodied claret, let alone something more Thuringian or Saxon, whilst the
angelic throng’s ‘Et exspecto resurrectionem’ seems to strain towards the world
of the Mannheim rocket. Not that grandeur lacks entirely; one hears, even sees,
the swing of the censer in the ‘Sanctus’, as much a product of expertly-judged
harmonic motion as mere ‘weight’. And, if it is not the abiding characteristic
of this performance, mystery is nevertheless present: consider the leisurely
yet intense ‘Benedictus’, blessed by Manoug Parikian’s violin, hinting perhaps
at Beethoven’s Missa solemnis. The
Philharmonia’s wind soloists sound as euphonious – just listen to Dennis
Brain’s horn obbligato in the ‘Quoniam’ – and often as perky as they do in
their Mozart opera recordings made at this time with Karajan; if hardly
neo-Classical, there is little claim to Romanticism here.
Even
the Wiener Singverein sounds streamlined. Hearing Karajan conduct the Mass in
Vienna in the Bach anniversary year, 1950, Toscanini was moved to dub it the
best choir in the world. This recording captures Karajan’s dual focus during
these years: solo movements recorded in London with the Philharmonia, choral
movements with the conductor’s ‘own’ choir in Vienna. Bach may be said to have
assembled rather than composed this setting; Karajan and EMI did likewise.
Recording and technology always fascinated Karajan – but ultimately as a means
to musical ends. That is what we hear here, as ever with the finest vocalists,
Marga Höffgen’s contralto in particular a reminder of an almost-lost age of
Bach performance, likewise Kathleen Ferrier’s contribution to the additional
excerpts. Karajan’s ‘modernity’ remains open rather than restrictive.
Brahms’s
Ein deutsches Requiem was recorded in
post-war Vienna at the same time as Strauss’s great elegy, Metamorphosen. Karajan’s was the first recording of the latter; it
is perhaps more suprising that Brahms’s humanistic message of grief and consolation
had not previously been recorded in full. Elisabeth Schwarzkopf would later
recall: ‘It was very special. Certainly, we were remembering those whose lives
had been lost.’ Wotan himself, Hans Hotter, works with Brahms to suggest not
only that the souls of the righteous may be with the Lord, but also to question
that claim. Karajan in some respects offers the other side of the coin. His
Vienna Philharmonic, admittedly weighty in expression of loss, increasingly offers
a consoling orchestral warmth quite different from, say, the unvarnished, even
atheistic ‘truth’ toward which Klemperer, again with Schwarzkopf, would later
strain with the Philharmonia.
The
Missa solemnis receives a deeply felt
reading, also conceived in terms we might characterise above all as ‘musical’.
That is not to say there is nothing of the metaphysical, but rather that those
glimpses into the beyond – alternatively, those epiphanies visited upon us – arise
through score and performance rather than determine them. Of our Philharmonia trio,
Furtwängler never recorded the work; though he spoke of it as Beethoven’s
greatest, he came to find it un-performable. Klemperer’s wrestling with
Beethoven’s angels – and dæmons – has long been the ultimate recorded recommendation.
Karajan, however, offers a genuinely intriguing alternative – again, in many
ways preferable to his subsequent recordings. There is no shortage of
intoxication, whether humanistic or divine; the opening of the ‘Gloria’ might
be a moment of symphonic or indeed operatic exultation. And what control
Karajan exerts over his forces! Not so as to mould them unduly, but so as
better to express – or should that be execute? – his conception. The imploring,
ineffable sadness, even desolation of the ‘Agnus Dei’ registers equally. Nicola
Zaccaria makes a powerful contribution too here, ‘operatic’ maybe, but in a
good sense, similarly the more typical ‘Karajan soloists’ who join him:
Schwarzkopf, Christa Ludwig, Nicolai Gedda. We struggle less in an overt sense
than with Klemperer, but Beethoven offers consolation too; there is unquestionably
room, even need, for both. If there is less defiance in the ‘Dona [nobis]
pacem,’ is it wrong to present here a heavenly throng rather than a
shell-shocked earthly choir? The Viennese chorus certainly does its persuasive
best, as does the rich-toned yet ultimately angelic Philharmonia; the Kantian
gulf between divine and human remains unbridgeable.
And
yet, hearing Schwarzkopf in particular towards the close, is there not
something of Goethe’s eternal feminine drawing us upward? Karajan, though not
wont to speak in metaphysical terms, nor indeed to make his music in them, was
no more uncultured than the composer whom he so resembles in many ways: Richard
Strauss. If there were never a better-read composer than Strauss, and certainly
none more in thrall to the soprano voice, Karajan emerges quietly, even
modestly, in similar vein, with more than a little help from Schwarzkopf, the
partnership ever-attentive to words and
music. The Fidelio excerpt emerges as
human, Romantic, possessed of a sincerity Karajan’s – and Schwarzkopf’s –
detractors would never allow; likewise the splendidly post-Mozartian rendition
of Ah! perfido. Mozart’s Ave, verum corpus is treasured as liturgical
foretaste of heaven, and is that not precisely what this unearthly music is? Finally,
the Four Last Songs receive a
performance in which conductor and soloist prove magnificently complementary, never
contradictory; Schwarzkopf’s verbal acuity heightens Karajan’s equally
Straussian orchestral revels, and vice
versa. ‘Im Abendrot’ presents a sunset none will be able to resist; and why
would one try?
