Few historic recordings have been subject to such varied refurbishment as the pre-war and wartime legacy of Willem Mengelberg and his Concertgebouw Orchestra. The 1939 Palm Sunday soundtrack recording of Bach’s St Matthew Passion, originally issued by Philips as a plushly produced four-LP set, conjures a positively Mahlerian view of the Baroque. Back in March 1955, when the set was first released in the UK, Gramophone’s Alec Robertson opined: ‘From the point of view of reproduction the disadvantages are many. The chorus rise and sit down all too audibly, the orchestral bass (unless I am mistaken) has been boosted up to an unnatural extent, with results that seriously affect a proper balance, and there is often a strange roar of sound in the continuo part accompanying the recitative portions.’ Since then, Mengelberg’s St Matthew, which employed a 400-500 strong choir and a large orchestra, has been frequently reissued, each time challenging transfer engineers to new feats of recreative refurbishment, ranging from Mark Obert-Thorn’s transparent edition for Naxos to Jochem Greene’s 2024 interventionist restoration for the Dutch Mengelberg Society, achieved in collaboration with Wim Prinssen. The Greene/Prinssen version reduces the quieter chorales to an improbable murmur, while the massive opening and closing choruses sound almost stereophonic.

The performance is, let’s say, idiosyncratic. As I put it when reviewing the Naxos transfer (8/04), Karl Erb is an occasionally over-zealous Evangelist (I’d add now, after listening again, that his actual singing is quite marvellous), while Willem Ravelli’s softly intoned Christus, although warmly affecting, borders at times on sentimentality. The other soloists are Jo Vincent, Ilona Durigo, Louis van Tulder and Herman Schey. Viewed overall, the performance (which is severely cut) courts extremes in tempo and dynamic, not to mention juggernaut ritardandos, its gathered forces and theatrical bias light years removed from anything we would expect to hear nowadays. But the effect remains extraordinarily moving, especially the closing half-hour or so. By 1939 Mengelberg’s Concertgebouw St Matthew Passion had been a regular event in Amsterdam for 30 years, and you can hear how much love and respect his extraordinary interpretation commanded from his collaborators. Mengelberg’s 1931 Columbia recording of Bach’s Second Orchestral Suite, also included by Naxos, is, as I said before, rather stolid.

Also from 1939, what may well be Mengelberg’s most important surviving recording, a work that he performed in the Netherlands some 112 times, Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, featuring the pure-toned soprano Jo Vincent in the finale. Fritz Zwart’s booklet note makes the interesting point that the marked rallentando at the start of Mengelberg’s performance ‘was made during a live performance, spontaneously originating from the conductor’s cherished ideas on improvisando, the spontaneous musical idea born in the moment’. Or is it? I have two points to make in opposition to Zwart’s notion. Firstly, Mengelberg’s performances – like Furtwängler’s – were for the most part products of careful interpretative planning. They may have sounded ‘improvised’ but, in the broadest sense, they weren’t. Then there’s Mahler’s example (he was a friend of the conductor). Listen to the documentary Gustav Mahler Remembered (as put out by Sony Classical on LP or by the New York Philharmonic on CD) and a player from the NYPSO actually hums the way Mahler conducted the symphony’s opening. Talk about a dead ringer for Mengelberg’s approach. The same CD also includes Mengelberg’s favourite among his recordings, his famous 1926 78rpm disc of the Fifth Symphony’s Adagietto (a refreshingly songful 7'22" to compare with, say, Karajan’s lingering 11'53"), an ardent Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen with the Jewish bass-baritone Herman Schey (who was still operational pre-May 1940 before the Nazis moved in) and two works by Richard Strauss, an uplifting 1942 Telefunken recording of Tod und Verklärung and a dashing live Don Juan from 1940.

A Beethoven double includes a mostly exhilarating Seventh Symphony (April 1940), where for much of the Allegretto Mengelberg leans heavily on the first beat of the bar, and an Emperor Concerto (with Cor de Groot, 1942), where the Adagio un poco mosso is romanticised to the point of swooning, especially the expressive swell of Mengelberg’s opening tutti. This is all well and good for the occasional hearing, but most modern-day listeners will find it affectedly indulgent, although the finale has a splendid lilt to it. Again, the muted transfers spin the illusion of primitive stereophony without spatially locating where any of the orchestra desks are placed. The effect is both weird and stimulating. But when it comes to weirdness, nothing in Mengelberg’s discography can quite compare with his May 1940 Choral Symphony (soloists To van der Sluys, Suze Luger, Louis van Tulder and Ravelli) where, in spite of some glories en route, Mengelberg queers his pitch by pressing hard on the brakes at the very close of the work (marked prestissimo), which although understandable in principle (ie ‘yes this really is the end’) sounds ridiculous in practice.

Sound-wise, Pristine Classical offers us a far less interventionist mode of transfer than the Mengelberg Society (thank you Mark Obert-Thorn), more like the original Telefunken 78s but where surface noise is reduced without damaging the sound frame. Pristine’s fourth volume of Mengelberg’s Telefunken legacy illustrates how by the early 1940s the label had shot to the sonic forefront. Beethoven’s Eroica and Franck’s D minor Symphonies, Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben (dedicated to Mengelberg and his orchestra), Wagner’s Meistersinger Overture and Röntgen’s Old Netherlands Dances come swathed in the sort of interpretative charisma that made Mengelberg the darling of his nation. Listen to the Wagner – especially the opening – and the proof is irrefutable. Incidentally, all of Mengelberg’s recordings are accessible online from willemmengelberg.nl.

The Recordings

Bach St Matthew Passion

Concertgebouw Orch / Willem Mengelberg

Willem Mengelberg Society WMS2024

Mahler Sym No 4, etc

Concertgebouw Orch / Mengelberg

Willem Mengelberg Society WMS2020

Beethoven Syms Nos 7 & 9, etc

Cor de Groot; Concertgebouw Orch / Mengelberg

Willem Mengelberg Society WMS2023

The Telefunken Recordings, Vol 4

Concertgebouw Orch / Mengelberg

Pristine Classical PASC719

This article originally appeared in the October 2024 issue of Gramophone magazine. Never miss an issue – subscribe to Gramophone today