Hanssler Classic, Schuricht Collection XVII 2-CD 93.139, (2 CDs) 45: 43; 58:23 (Distrib. Allegro) ****:
Another excellent addition to the recorded legacy of Carl Schuricht (1880-1967), perhaps, along with Sergiu Celibidache, the world’s greatest “wandering” conductor with no regular appointment. The Mahler Second (17 April 1958) attests to Schuricht’s idiosyncratic gift for this music, which he consistently supported through performances of selected symphonies (Nos. 2, 3, 8) and song-cycles. Schuricht’s comfort with the Mahler style glows through every bar of the frenetic first movement, its Wagnerian, tumultuous throes to its stretches for grace in E Major, the yearning for mystical sweetness. In sonata-form, its periods allow Schuricht to highlight the unfolding structure, even in the midst of emotional frenzy. A massive funeral march for a fallen hero, the music finally plummets into a sense of spiritual bewilderment.
Along with Stokowski’s and Walter’s famed renditions of the A-flat Andante moderato, Schuricht’s exquisite molding of this alternately gracious and bedeviled laendler ranks among my favorites. Wonderful, plastic continuity in the string pizzicato and staccati, the polyphonic weavings of the low basses and violas as the high whistles from the flutes peek over mountain vistas. The erotic cello line sings richly enough to remove the bedcovers. Waltz and folk-music compete for hegemony. When the militant forces coalesce, the upheavals suggest a Pandemonium in Heaven. Like all good Mahlerites, Schuricht wants his share of glissandi and portamenti from the strings. The melodic and harmonic resolution to these divergent energies, a Marriage of Heaven and Hell, remains consistently beguiling. Listen to those final, paused, two plucked chords!
The skittish, slightly vulgar Scherzo shifts and wafts like a perversely elfin round-dance. Wonderful, graduated colors from Schuricht–his viola and cello sections alone provoke all sorts of moody adjectives. Fluid articulation of Mahler’s deliberate asymmetries and agogic dementias, Mendelssohn gone ballistic. Saint Anthony of Padua preaches to unruly fish. When the march bursts forth, we know Mahler and William Blake play chess in the beyond. The Stuttgart trumpet section need not kowtow to any other orchestra’s players for visions of Apocalypse. The D Major “Urlicht” proceeds sans pause, the childlike aura supported by brass tones worthy of Palestrina. Striking, solid diction from contralto Toepper. The Wunderhorn ethos pervades the colors, ranging from solo violin to high woodwinds and harp.
Then, the Wagnerian mountain of a Finale, whose muted trumpets already herald the dovetailing of the entire, immaculate conception. Taking its cues from Wagner’s Nibelungen leitmotifs, the music proceeds by stealth and graduated mystery towards its confrontation with the Dies Irae, and not until bar 470 do the illumined soprano, lulling choir, and alto follow that “great bugle call” to Eternity. What pyrotechnical force the 78-year-old Schuricht generates. He sustains the 32-minute last movement the way Dylan Thomas’ force through the green fuse pushes the flower. The Klopstock ode has rarely sounded so movingly, viscerally authentic, such an inevitable product of the pantheistic and anguished forces striving for unity.
The Haydn D Major Symphony (5 May 1954) of 1788 may be reckoned as part of the Paris Symphonies group Haydn wrote for the Comte d’Ogny for a goodly sum of money. Rife with Sturm und Drang as well as deft musical touches of the Master, this music permits Schuricht every nuanced degree between pomp and sincerity of expression his responsive, transparently-clear Stuttgart players can muster. The first energetic theme, out of an upbeat, sets the Allegro spiritoso in peppy, blood-pulsing motion. If the pounding engagement of the first movement did not suffice, the following Capriccio: Largo possesses a limitless number of musically ingenuous surprises of key and expressive register to fill volumes of academic tracts. The juxtaposition of rising and descending figures would make anyone less than Beethoven weep for jealousy. The regal spirit of the Menuet already points to the great “London” Symphony No. 104. Drollery and nobility of line fuse in Schuricht’s incisive reading. The last movement, Allegro con spirito, exploits repeated notes in an ingenious manner thoroughly anticipatory of Beethoven, only more humorously. What an eddy of sound Schuricht elicits from his Stuttgart band – always clear, always softly tender in articulation, no matter how hectic the surface! An all-consuming affection between conductor and ensemble permeates every measure of these to marvelous scores.
[This review is dedicated to the memory of my father, Edward Lemco]
— Gary Lemco
