BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op. 68 “Pastoral”; Overture to Egmont, Op. 84; SCHUMANN: Manfred Overture; Alpenkuhreigen and Zwischennaktmusik, Op. 115; WEBER: Overture to Euryanthe; Overture to Abu Hassan – Berlin State Opera Orchestra/Max von Schillings
Pristine Audio PASC 228, 77:59 [avail. in various formats fromwww.pristine classical.com] ****:
Max von Schillings (1868-1933) has several claims to fame: first, as a composer, Schillings’ opera Mona Lisa (1915) enjoyed enough success to have been performed at the MET. Secondly, as a conductor and pedagogue, Schillings worked in Bayreuth and Stuttgart, succeeding Richard Strauss as intendant at the Berlin State Opera. His influence on Wilhelm Furtwaengler’s orchestral technique has been noted in that conductor’s various biographies.
This Pristine document, produced and edited by Mark Obert-Thorn, captures Schillings’ (via Parlophone shellacs) art away from the Wagnerian repertory which has tended to define him. Schillings’ penchant for the Romantics opens with Weber’s Overture to Euryanthe (8 October 1928), a rather stunning sound document which moves with athletic force and dramatic impact. The interpretation does not indulge in sentimental slides or long-held caesuras but moves with plastic and shapely grace, much in the manner of the Felix Weingartner style. The same composer’s fluttery and janissary Abu Hassan Overture (19 December 1928) rings with lightly impish fervor, the music a close relative of Mozart’s Seraglio music.
Schillings offers three orchestral excerpts (3 and 10 My 1929) from Schumann’s response to Byron’s poem-psychodrama on Romantic Agony, Manfred – the Overture and two interludes that trace Manfred’s search for a guiding spirit in Astarte. Schillings elicits terrific force and energized playing from his ensemble for the Overture, and their tone and discipline prove quite supple. The sheer speed of execution prevents any sense of infatuation of dreaminess in the interpretation, but for forward momentum, few conductors could rely on their orchestras to deliver such an exact relentless vision. The figurations at Schillings’ tempo reveal how much the piece has in common with the D Minor Symphony, Op. 120. The brief Alpine scene could have influenced Wagner’s shepherd’s melody in Tristan; the ensuing Swiss Night-Music gives us a Schumann waltz-laendler in rustic colors, especially in the French horns and winds.
The Beethoven Egmont (14 December 1928) obviously celebrates the composer’s approaching birthday (December 16) with one of his most dramatic and popular pieces. Schillings does not dawdle in the F Minor 3/2 sostenuto opening long; he hustles ¾ into the obsessive rhythmic figures and the urge to freedom with a will. The eventual working out of the sonata-form to a “victory symphony” becomes impassioned and ferociously driven, a tour de force for all principals, especially in the crescendo violins and trumpet fanfares.
The Beethoven Pastoral inscription (16, 23, and 30 September 1929) has assumed a marvelously clear sheen from editor Obert-Thorn, and the resultant performance, an extended hymn to Nature, basks in limpid and clarion tones. Schillings manages to inject a note a relaxed contemplation into the first movement, its expansive breadth not compromised by undue haste. The bassoon part comes through clearly, and the viola parts communicate the latent bite in the elements. Excellent horn work in the recapitulation, the human dance motifs balanced with the pantheistic panorama. We might someday take note of the competing accounts of this symphony by contemporaries Pfitzner and Schalk.
Schillings finally allows his more “romantic” self some expressive latitude in the very opening of the 12/8 Andante molto mosso, the Scene by the Brook. He underlines the pulse and accents the transition phrase with marcato accents, thus the watery realm does indeed seem to “converse” with Beethoven’s omniscient narrator. Once again, Schillings gives his bassoon expressive power, caressed on all sides by warbling strings and fellow woodwinds. The hymn soon becomes a pageant, a mighty paean directed by Wordsworth and maybe Emerson, into the mysteries of ontology. The rustic country movement, Allegro, enters a bit deliberately but quickly gambols with a bucolic fury. Our friend the bassoon appears again with the oboe, both perhaps a mite tipsy, and the Breughel vision explodes into round dance. The interruption of a sudden thunderstorm, somewhat metronomic, still conveys Nature’s fury and its capacity to end the world. The high piccolo quite carries us to an angry Jupiter. With the storm’s abatement we receive Beethoven’s orchestral orison to Nature’s bounty, the orchestral patina easily a model for later Germanic interpreters Klemperer, Walter, and Karajan.
–Gary Lemco
