BBC Legends BBCL 4188-2, 75:18 (Distrib. Koch) ****:
Several high-flying performances of classical and contemporary staples grace this fine album of music led by Rudolf Kempe (1910-1976), who succeeded Sir Thomas Beecham at the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and who had established a strong rapport with the BBC beginning in 1973. The Haydn Symphony (8 October 1975) enjoys a romantic, robust energy, with horns and tympani in especial communion. The four-square measures of the first movement Allegro assume a royal purple, often breaking the bonds of their otherwise austere formal limits. Beauty of string tone appears to be a quality Kempe labored on with good effect, given the luster of his strings for the stately Andante. When the main theme develops, the sheer sonically creamy girth of the various lines and stretti become heroic, indeed.
The same largesse and nobility of line mark the Menuet, only a hair’s breadth of propriety away from exploding into Beethoven. A beautifully graduated transition back to the da capo commands our note. The Finale: Spiritoso begins rustically enough, and then Kempe has the jovial figures tumbling after one another, the horns as much Handel as Haydn. By end of the rondo-sonata, my head was quite dizzy with enchantment, lulled by a performance which rivals my old standard with another of the old German guard, Hans Rosbaud.
The Britten Four Sea Interludes (12 October 1975) from the same period in Kempe’s tenure with the BBC display his strongly individual color sense. The trenchant string lines and modal bass chords might remind the listener of Hindemith. Sunday Morning emanates a clarion brightness borrowed from Moussorgsky, while Moonlight shimmers with dubious light. Storm has the tympani in metric paroxysms, while Kempe maintains a tight leash on the winds, which bark like Stravinsky and buzz like Rimsky’s bumblebee. Finally, as if to commemorate the Shostakovich centennial, we have an often thoughtful, measured studio account of the F Minor Symphony (29 May 1965). A pity EMI never encouraged Nicolai Malko to inscribe this piece, which he premiered. Kempe plays this iconoclastic music for its sultry sarcasm; one has a good sense of the envelope being deftly pushed in various directions. The second movement Allegro might be an abridged capriccio for piano and orchestra. The Lento-Largo has a nervous intimacy we don’t often hear, almost Prokofiev. Shades of Mahler for the last movement, with some excellent riffs from the BBC oboe and cellos. When the flute and keyboard usher in the Allegro molto section, we are off on a saturnine dark ride, only delayed by the violin and shades of Verklaerte Nacht. The Presto presses forward with a fierce resolve unusual in British musicians’ realizations of the Russians.
— Gary Lemco
