WAGNER: A Siegfried Idyll; BRUCKNER: Symphony No. 9 in D Minor – New York Philharmonic/Bruno Walter
Music & Arts CD -1212, 67:16 [Distrib. by Albany] ****:
I for one have always preferred the New York Philharmonic experience of Bruno Walter (1876-1962) to his tenure with the Los Angeles Philharmonic (aka Columbia Symphony Orchestra), since to me the latter sound possesses a flabby, schmaltz-laden idiosyncrasy I find treacle and sentimental, with perhaps the exception of the Bruckner Romantic Symphony inscription. And though I first heard Walter’s late reading of A Siegrfried Idyll of 1953 (ML 5388) as my model of that lovely score, Walter in fact inscribed the piece no less than six studio performances, with his 1959 stereo version adopting a broader tempo. Here, Music & Arts publishes for the first time Walter’s concert with the Philharmonic from 10 February 1957, a period that assistant conductor Stefan Willem-Mengelberg once described to me as capable of transforming Walter from the “predictable leader of the so-called ‘menopause concerts’ of late Friday afternoons into a veritable powerhouse with whom to reckon.” While the epithet “streamlined” appears in Mark W. Kluge’s notes to this album to describe the general tenor of Walter’s Siegfried Idyll recordings, I would apply “lyrically paced” to indicate Walter’s rather walking tempo as it expresses his innate fondness for this operatic serenade.
The Bruckner Ninth found its way into Walter’s ken after a bout with double pneumonia in 1927. Given Walter’s predilection for the theosophy of Rudolf Steiner, the Gothic elements in Bruckner’s periods must have appealed to Walter’s philosophical need to find metaphysical architecture or “fearful symmetry” in the cosmic aspirations of this hymn-based music. The music’s strange allegiances to Schubert’s early symphonies make it unique in its own amalgam of militant and morbid energies. The first movement moves rather briskly, even swaggering, perhaps as a foil to the lofty, ethereal thoughts that pass momentously between the cellos, flues, and the stars. The flow between broad paragraphs Walter handles with a richly balanced canvas, maintaining the pulsations without letting them sag into monotony. Purists and close devotees of the score will look to the 1903 edition of the Ninth as the source of Walter’s plan, but he found rationales for adjustments, especially in the tympani part.
Walter felt that a moderate tempo alone supported the pizzicati of the Scherzo, yet he still imbues the energy of this demonic movement with a monumentality and verve we likewise find in the reading by Eduard van Beinum. The trio, on the other hand, sails by in rather virtuoso fashion, still singing, but the underlying nervousness flitters palpably beneath the nostalgic surface. The da capo plummets and shimmers, assertive, with no trace of false bathos. A sweeping opening of the last movement Adagio well reckons its spiritual ambitions. The triplets in the horns are not at all sugared, yet the periods express tenderness as much as they do jaw-set devotion. The discipline of the Philharmonic proves each moment a factor in the excited grandeur and totality of the musical effect. Kudos to engineers Ray Osnato and Donald Tait for this strong, highly subjective reading of a score whose realizations in recent years–excepting Giulini‘s last inscription–seem to me derivative and stale by comparison.
–Gary Lemco
