Lohengrin–Prelude, Act I; Parsifal: Prelude, Act I and Good Friday Spell, Act III: Siegfried Idyll; BRAHMS: Academic Festival Overture – Boston Symphony Orchestra/ Serge Koussevitzky
Naxos Historical 8.111283, 74:09 (Not Distr. in the U.S.) ****:
The present disc, edited and restored by Mark Obert-Thorn, represents the CD premiers of sessions Serge Koussevitzky (1874-1951) devoted to Wagner and Brahms, 1946-1949, many of which did not appear on American commercial records. Koussevitzky’s inscription of Lohengrin (27 April 1949) was available on American 45 rpm format; the Siegfried Idyll (27 April 1949) RCA issued on LM 1177 along with the conductor’s Don Juan, the disc a kind of memorial to Koussevitzky‘s orchestral discipline and marvelous string tone. While the Flying Dutchman Overture (4 April 1947) came out on RCA LP in England, the edition suffered sonic compromise in a pseudo-stereo format. The Brahms Academic Festival Overture (2 April 1947) was issued as part of a three-disc LP set that included the Brahms 4th Symphony and Tchaikovsky 5th.
One tends to forget Koussevitzky’s early days, 1901-1905, in the Bolshoi Theater double-bass section, where he learned repertoire and a fine-tuned sense of musical drama. The Overture to the Flying Dutchman, with its sweet English horn solo and D minor ocean heavings, enjoys a tempestuous ride from the BSO, noted for its homogeneity of sound. The purity of string patina in Lohengrin makes it uncanny even for Koussevitzky aficianados, who always revel in the Maestro’s voluptuous readings of the works he loved. Grand gestures and sweeping periods mark both the Parsifal Prelude and the Good Friday Music (19 April 1946), which moves from lush, impulsive statements of the Grail quest to intimate meditations on ethereal spirituality.
The Good Friday Music basks in a spacious conception that manages to retain musical tension and interest among the various soli and the string section, a balance he achieved with equal effect in his Liadov Enchanted Lake recording. The Siegfried Idyll provides the Boston Symphony principals, like flute Georges Laurent, ample opportunity to show off their beauty of tone, the whole a study in graduated intimacy, until the French horn and trumpet urge a forte upon us. The BSO brass section makes its edgy presence felt again in the Brahms college overture, the music moving between pompous valediction and earthy vulgarity. Wonderful thrusts in the strings and lower brass, like the tuba, in the second period of the music. Rich and variegated music-making throughout, typical of the rounded orchestral sheen Kousseivtzky commanded when in his natural element.
— Gary Lemco
