WILLEM MENGELBERG: The Telefunken Recordings, Vol. 6 = Works by BERLIOZ; WAGENAAR; BRAHMS; BEETHOVEN; MOZART; SCHUBERT: – Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam/ Willem Mengelberg – Pristine Audio PASC 776 (2 Discs = 2:25:52, complete contents detailed below) [www.pristineclassical.com] *****:
A sense of approaching musical flamboyance always accompanies a release featuring Dutch conductor Willem Mengelberg (1871-1951), whose severe orchestral discipline he applied to a thoroughly Romantic style of interpretation. Editor and recording engineer Mark Obert-Thorn concludes his five-year restoration project of the Mengelberg legacy with the Telefunken label, here with fine sound documents made 1942-1943.
We begin with the 16 April 1942 recordings of the familiar orchestra l excerpts from the Berlioz dramatic legend The Damnation of Faust (1845): Menuet des Follets, Danse des Sylphes, and Marche hongrgroise. The “Menuet of the Will o’ the Wisps” enjoys a light, transparent character, with sudden bursts of buoyant energy in crescendo, the strings and woodwinds especially alert. The application of portamento, due to Mengelberg’s insistence on uniform string fingering and slides, had become his calling card.
The coda of this selection whistles with blazing facility. “Dance of the Sylphes” proceeds as a leisurely waltz, almost an afterthought for “Le Bal” of the Fantastic Symphony. The interchange between strings and harps, lucid and delicately nuanced, feels like celestial droplets concluded by hints of thunder. The pungent immediacy of the Hungarian March has rarely been matched, except perhaps by a frequent visitor to the Concertgebouw, Pierre Monteux. The brass section resonates with a vivacity that testifies to the fine acoustic of the hall and the art of the Telefunken engineers.
Johan Wagenaar (1862-1941) ranks among the few contemporary Dutch composer Mengelberg championed, especially after 1920. His 1905 Overture to Edmond Rostand’s play Cyrano de Bergerac reveals an immediate influence from the Richard Strauss tone-poem Don Juan, but the lyrical capacity for melody belongs to Wagenaar without apology. The course of the piece, marked by D major optimism, introduces several musical motifs essential to the quixotic character of Cyrano, his intellectual and martial flamboyance, and his tragic vulnerability.
The violin solo that appears marks a section of “Love, Poetry” that must hide itself in the play as a vicarious substitute for Cyrano’s own, vehement passion. The scoring proves entirely virtuosic, exactly the kind of exalted contrasts of texture that defined the Mengelberg demands in which his ensemble specialized. Obert-Thorn comments that these 16 April 1942 recordings “have the finest sound Telefunken provided for [the] Concergebouw discs.”
April 17 brings us Schubert’s Marche Militaire and the Brahms Tragic Overture, in somewhat distant sound, but still acoustically piercing and rhythmically acute. The middle section of the Schubert enjoys a true Austrian suasion, lilting and eminently transparent. In immediate contrast we confront the D minor Tragic Overture (1880) of Brahms, whose opening pages under Mengelberg may rank among the most effective realizations I have encountered.
While the oboes and trombones perform them music in a literal style, the strings again engage in slides that may, for some, detract from the unity of effect. The dramatic power of the rendition, however, suffers no compromise, churning and pulsating with the spirit of fatalism. The lyrical F major episodes and contrapuntal means of development, typical of the composer’s innately Classical integrity, receive their full, sonorous due. Savor the power of the Concertgebouw trombones and double basses, which perhaps deliver one of the few moments in Brahms that may have satisfied Nietzsche’s concept that tragedy remains inherent in the spirit of music.
Mengelberg continues with Beethoven from 1 November 42, starting with a pungent rendition of the Overture to the Creatures of Prometheus, Beethoven’s one concession to the ballet. The brisk counterpoints of the Overture flow by with blazing finesse in those “Mannheim rocket” figures, while the famous Finale, pregnant with the grand theme of the Eroica Symphony, maintains its alternately dance and blustering character. I must own up to having possessed the shellac incarnation of the janissary, Turkish March, No. 4 of the incidental music for The Ruins of Athens, and wearing out my disc via an osmium needle. Now, I can play Obert-Thorn’s transfer ad infinitum.
With Mengelberg, even the most familiar music may be rendered unfamiliar: witness his Eine kleine Nachtmusik from 5 November 1942. The opening Allegro hustles with courtly spirit, the colorful string ensemble ever virtuosic. A bit of acoustic distortion mars the effect at the loud passages. The Romance: Andante sings the elegant beauty of a lost age, though the secondary melody played a bit pesante to my taste.
The musical bustle for the final section comes off as demonstrative of Mengelberg’s rigorous discipline, including portamento. The Menuetto and Rondo: Allegro appear more “conventional,” once we accept Mengelberg’s idiosyncratic rubato. Despite the eccentric conception, the clarity of execution lingers for its pure musicality.
Disc 2 opens with Schubert’s Ninth Symphony from 17 June 1943, a performance known to me prior via the Philips label. Eminently lyrical, the opening Andante enjoys a combination of verve and songful energy. The heavy marcato stresses of the ensuing, briskly rendered Allegro ma non troppo carry their own visceral inertia, with distinct pizzicato strings, jubilant pipings from the winds, and huge fanfares from the brass and tympani. Typical tugs forward and subsequent ritards mark the eccentric but exciting, even explosive, musical progress. The ineluctable journey towards personal heroism has only Schubert’s periods of relaxation to hamper the ultimate, galloping peroration that defines the coda.
Mengelberg’s second movement Andante con moto, the heart of the work, carries its own gravitas, a haunted lyricism borne by distinctly Austrian mountain sensibilities. Perhaps more martial in character than some interpretations, the moments of melodic repose convey a true sense of relief, bucolic and cautiously mystical. The secondary period casts no less than an aura of “The sheer finesse of Paradise Lost,” especially given the political climate of the performance.
The sheer finesse of the applied rubatos testifies to the taut discipline of Mengelberg’s trained, often brow-beaten, ensemble. The martial trumpet work that emerges just before the sudden halt might have inspired Liszt for his Les Preludes. The graduated transition back to the final pages again reveals wonderful, dynamic discipline and an idiosyncratic sense of long-breathed, musical drama.
Mengelberg takes the Scherzo: Allegro vivace uncut, rife with luftpausen, rhetorical breaths, that certify the “Romantic antiquity” of his conception. The pace feels deliberate and measured, working to an accumulated momentum. The woodwinds literally whistle their colorful contribution to the blended motion of the musical evolution, kaleidoscope of tones that reaches a pinnacle before huge intake of breath before the Trio. This section seems devoted to basking, Romantic self-indulgence, but the music feels no less miraculous for it. The effect remains colossal. We return to the hearty metrics of the da capo refreshed, alert to the vigor and outdoor energies available to use. The immediacy and spontaneity of expression justify the licenses employed, and the strings and winds glow in their dynamic power.
The Finale: Allegro vivace rounds off a realization thoroughly committed to the aesthetics of musical velocity. Mengelberg’s brass section has newly awakened to its explosive capacities, and the string triplets seem to have no end of obsessive energy. Set at an extreme of nervous tension, the music balances mania and heroism in volcanic proportions.
The piercing quality of the string work cannot decide if it projects pleasure or pain, but the essentially momentous, lyrical climate manages to prevail. The whirlwind resumes, the colors threatening to fly off into their own aether, but the rhythmic current pulls them back into deliciously insane harmony. The “hard-won resolution” insists on its frightening verve, the trumpets ablaze for the coda, the tutti stunning in its stupendous glory.
For my taste, the Germans have won the issue of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, with performances by Furtwaengler in Vienna, Walter in Philadelphia, and Lehmann in Berlin. There are many others, and Mengelberg left two renditions, one from 1939 and this, from 17 June 1943. This latter performance possesses fewer rhetorical excesses than that of the broadcast form 1939, though that version retains the first movement repeat. Ominous and full-throated, the opening Allegro moderato enjoys a steady, flowing pulse, alternately lyrically and explosively dramatic. Mengelberg does not indulge in unnecessary sentiment for the famous melody. The movement proceeds propelled by internal, organic necessity, with large arches and poignant stress points. The sense of a tragic fate looms large, undeniable, shattering in its certitude.
Grand, nostalgic resignation marks the last movement, Andante con moto, Mengelberg’s strings and winds vibrantly expressive. The ominous presence of fate finds relief in the haunted melodic textures, the woodwind melody’s floating on a restless sea of transparent mist. Again, the rhetorical tugs and releases erupt into brief paroxysms of despair that will relent into philosophical acceptance.
A martial resolve infiltrates the music as it battles to achieve emotional balance, the string often charged with longing. The Concertgebouw’s principal oboe and clarinet need some degree of recognition for their efforts. The French horn ushers in the last, plaintive calls from the Black Forest or some other bucolic source of refuge, answered by the flute and strings. The stately procession concludes, haunted and majestically poised.
—Gary Lemco
WILLEM MENGELBERG: The Telefunken Recordings, Vol. 6
BERLIOZ: The Damnation of Faust – excerpts;
WAGENAAR: Cyrano de Bergerac Overture, Op. 23;
BRAHMS: Tragic Overture, Op. 81;
BEETHOVEN: The Creatures of Prometheus – Overture and Finale, Op. 43;
Turkish March from The Ruins of Athens, Op. 113;
MOZART: Serenade No. 13 in G Major, K. 525 “Eine kliene Nachtmusik”;
SCHUBERT: Marche Militaire No. 1, D. 733;
Symphony No. 9 in C Major, D. 944 “Great”;
Symphony No. 8 in B Minor, D. 759 “Unfinished”
Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam
