Ančerl’s Czech Radio concertos

Back in May 2022 I featured in this column Supraphon’s first 15‑CD set of Karel Ančerl live recordings, which included previously unissued rarities such as Suk’s Asrael Symphony, Foerster’s Fourth Symphony, Novák’s Autumn Symphony and Pan, and much else that opened our ears to aspects of Ančerl’s art that were new to us. It was a great collection, and if this more modest second volume devoted entirely to concertos is less exciting (and which includes certain items that have been out before – such as the Sibelius and Beethoven Violin Concertos as played in concert in October 1957 by Ida Haendel), it nonetheless contains enough new material that’s worth hearing to warrant an enthusiastic recommendation.

So what was Ančerl like as an accompanist? Czech pianist Eva Bernáthová was of Hungarian-Jewish birth and like Ančerl had a difficult time during the war. She performed with him several times but opined that (in her view) he didn’t actually like accompanying. Their collaboration in Ravel’s G major Concerto is more feisty and outgoing than subtle. The Soviet cellist Mstislav Rostropovich was just 25 when he performed Dvořák’s Cello Concerto, which was taped around the same time he made his famous – and conceptually similar – Czech PO Supraphon recording of the work under Václav Talich, who proves more attentive to orchestral detail than Ančerl but less concerned with the scale of the piece. Rostropovich’s violinist compatriot David Oistrakh offers an energetic and impassioned reading of Dvořák’s Concerto, though in 1950, the year of the performance featured here, his tone was yet to develop the warm, svelte, urbane quality that he became so famous for.

Ida Haendel, who made a number of well-regarded commercial recordings for Supraphon, reappears for a 1962 account of Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto, which is sprightly enough from her side of the fence, but Ančerl’s account of the orchestral score sounds slightly nervous. Both artists excel in the Sibelius and Beethoven Concertos, the latter more spontaneous-sounding than a serene 1966 performance with Henryk Szeryng, whose intellectual and spiritual mastery of the score is second to none. Both play Joachim’s bold first-movement cadenza, but it is Szeryng who most reminds of his older compatriot Bronisław Huberman in his integrity, sensitivity and fearlessness.

I know the Beethoven Concerto is richly represented in the catalogue (especially on historic recordings), but I’d count this Szeryng/Ančerl version as being way up in the premiere list of available recommendations. Another work that is offered in more than one recording is Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto: Ančerl conducts for Sviatoslav Richter in 1954 and for Emil Gilels in 1953. I’m reminded of Gilels’s reaction to praise that he received after his American debut: ‘Wait until you hear Richter!’ he exclaimed.

Well, on the evidence of the two recordings presented in this set I’d spontaneously fly back to Gilels, in spite of Richter’s probing musical mind and digital impetuosity. It’s Gilels who’s more likely to caress the keyboard, seduce with phrasing that melts your heart or present the wider tonal range, just as he does on his recording of the work under Fritz Reiner (RCA). Richter’s sense of excitement is more from the head, which suits Beethoven’s First and Third Piano Concertos as played in Prague in June 1956, with their pearl-like runs, immaculate trills and sense of musical line. His cerebral playing impresses on account of those qualities, whereas Gilels’s interpretation is from the heart, though they’re capable of changing places. Both can be heard at their best when playing live. That said, here we’re also given a thrilling Liszt First Concerto played by Richter in 1954 that would probably have elicited the comment ‘Gilels was right’! Wilhelm Kempff’s 1959 account of Chopin’s Second Concerto is almost operatic in its voicing and manner of phrasing.

Another pianist featured here and described by Supraphon’s excellent annotator Martin Jemelka as ‘introspective’ is Jan Panenka, longtime playing partner of the violinist Josef Suk and pianist for the Suk Trio, but on this showing in Schumann’s Concerto Panenka is more the thoughtful showman, in the first movement just waiting to reach that cadenza so that he can storm the keys. The finale, too, has plenty of bounce. The other home-grown talent is Ivan Moravec, whose November 1962 broadcast of Prokofiev’s First Piano Concerto lends shape to music that can sometimes sound like a hectic onslaught. Finally, the fun and bravura of Poulenc’s Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra incisively played by the East German piano duo Juliane Lerche and Ingeborg Herkomer, the work’s opening being particularly impressive.

The set’s presentation is both sturdy and compact, the transfers from (mono) analogue tapes pretty well immaculate. I hope I’ve conveyed enough enthusiasm to endorse this set: if you don’t purchase it and it falls to the deletion axe, it will be cause for some regret. It’s good at the very least and stunning at best, so don’t deprive yourself. Another Supraphon historical winner.

The recording

Live Recordings: Concertos

Czech PO / Karel Ančerl (Supraphon)

Mravinsky in Helsinki

After Supraphon’s celebration of a major Eastern bloc maestro, I turn to historic recordings of Soviet conductors. These are dominated in the main by one authoritarian figure, Yevgeny Mravinsky, whose leadership of the Leningrad Philharmonic spanned some 50 years and resulted in performances – whether live- or studio-recorded – that at the very least matched those by Georg Szell in Cleveland, even Toscanini in New York, for precision, control, dynamism, profundity, virtuosity and sweeping musical lines. So when a recording appears of a treasurable 1961 concert performance of ‘Solveig’s Song’ from Grieg’s incidental music for Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt, although only 6'30" in length, this unique recording of Mravinsky conducting Grieg (no others have been released, at least not to my knowledge) there’s cause to celebrate. This well-refurbished Janus Classics release of a Helsinki concert from June 12, 1961, is otherwise dedicated to supremely accomplished performances, taped in excellent mono sound, of works already familiar from Mravinsky’s discography: Tchaikovsky’s Fifth (famously recorded for DG around a year earlier, and in mono before that), Shostakovich’s Fifth, alas missing its first movement, and Liadov’s miniature magical mystery tour Baba-Yaga. Impressive moments include Shostakovich’s finale, with its prominent bass drum, and the breathless onrush of Tchaikovsky’s Allegro vivace finale, quite unlike anyone else’s. It’s always a joy to hear a first-ever Mravinsky release: even when similar, fresh performances of works already familiar from Mravinsky’s discography are likely to harbour details unheard on previous recordings, be they clarified chords, heightened passages for winds, strings or both, or weighty contributions from the brass. Mravinsky was forever rethinking his interpretations and even if newfound differences are small, you can benefit from hearing them all.

The recording

Mravinsky in Helsinki

(Janus Classics) info@prestomusic.com

Heifetz in his prime

Having recently witnessed, via television, the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, hearing Jascha Heifetz perform his own arrangement of The Star-Spangled Banner with a maximum of emotional input was moving, and forget which side of the political fence(s) you happen to favour. This bewitching performance opens Biddulph’s programme of Heifetz in live performances, which includes numerous appealing rarities, not least a sequence where Heifetz is accompanied by the Telephone Hour Orchestra under Donald Voorhees (with Voorhees playing harpsichord in the Sicilienne from Bach’s Flute Sonata in E flat, BWV1031, an especially lovely performance). The Allegro from Mozart’s Divertimento No 17 in D (K334) is awash with colour and played with a maximum of vitality, and Heifetz plays pieces he never recorded commercially by his longtime idol Fritz Kreisler, including the unaccompanied Recitativo and Scherzo caprice, Op 6, possibly the finest recording it has ever received. Mind you, I now wouldn’t want to be without his recordings of Londonderry Air or Provost’s Intermezzo (made famous by fellow Leopold Auer pupil Toscha Seidel), both recordings overwhelming in their loveliness. Aside from much else to tug at the heart-strings there’s the humour, Heifetz a real sport rehearsing Mairzy Doats or taking part in a skit with Jack Benny. As Benny says when they both play sections of MacDowell’s To a Wild Rose, ‘now come on folks, can you tell the difference?’ The audience’s laughing response says it all. A gift of a disc.

The recording

Live Recordings

Jascha Heifetz (Biddulph)

Schoenberg that sings

Years ago, I spoke with the American writer and conductor Robert Craft, who, for his Sony recording sessions of what was then still contemporary music (Varèse, Webern, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, etc), called on the talents of some major musicians of the day. One was violinist Israel Baker, a frequent playing partner of Heifetz, whose sweet-centred tone and gritty method of attack were on occasion so close to Heifetz’s that you could barely tell them apart. When I mentioned Baker’s name, Craft smiled. ‘You could put anything in front of that man,’ he said, ‘he was the most incredible sight-reader. And whatever he played sounded beautiful’ (or words to that effect).

Baker’s Craft-directed 1962 stereo recording of Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto with the CBC Symphony, which sounds especially good as transferred by Pristine Audio, is, in my view, as close as could be imagined to a Heifetz recording of the work, Heifetz himself having deemed the Concerto unplayable. The couplings are Verklärte Nacht (CBC SO again, 1962), a reading that combines urgency with a sense of pathos, and the Variations for Orchestra, Op 31 (Columbia SO, 1962), where Craft’s interpretative directness (with each variation separately tracked) facilitates easy learning of a highly complex score. Playing standards are high and the sound is unexpectedly vivid.

The recording

Schoenberg Orchestral Works

Israel Baker, Columbia SO, CBC SO / Robert Craft (Pristine Classical)