A testament is often a very personal matter and this addition to the enterprising Testament catalogue has a strongly personal flavour. We hear the whole distinguished company of musicians rehearsing some of the most demanding passages in the great Mass, and, with a smart clap of the maestro’s hands, repeating them again and again. Then, to introduce the record, there is Schwarzkopf, now over 80, recalling those crowded days in mid-September 1958, which in turn evoke other memories and reflections, informally discussed in her still musical speaking-voice, with characteristic thoughtfulness and humour. A delightful supplement is provided by RO’s booklet-notes, telling of another presence on that platform in the Musikvereinsaal. Otto Klemperer, also for personal reasons, had arrived and, having got lost and been found in the basement, was taken up to the hall, where he sat next to Hugh Bean, the Leader, and provided a running commentary, unfortunately not caught by the microphone.
Whether a personal context, such as this, draws a listener in to feel more personally involved (as it probably does), I certainly found my own appreciation enhanced. When it first appeared, the record was at some disadvantage by being issued in mono, and as Alec Robertson said in his review (10/59), “This work needs stereo if any ever did”. A stereo version was duly issued (2/70), but by then the field had changed, with Karajan’s own second recording (reissued on DG, 9/97) high on the list of competitors. In this new transfer, the sound is shown to have been a good deal more clear and spacious than was apparent. Balance, always a particular problem, is not entirely satisfactory but there is a naturalness about the sound which for many listeners will compensate and be found preferable to the more engineered quality of the later versions. The slow speeds, as in the second “Et vitam venturi” fugue, still lay a rather too consciously restraining hand, but have logic to support them in relation to the whole. It is really this strength of control, or perhaps the unwillingness to risk it, that puts this performance just outside the category of the great ones. It’s what I think of as the ‘windhover’ factor. “Then off, off forth on swing”: there isn’t quite enough of that or of “the fire that breaks from thee then … lovelier, more dangerous …”.
From Mozart, too, there is something lovelier, rarer, to be caught than is found in Karajan’s nevertheless excellent recording of the Prague. The Adagio of the opening is fine, and the Philharmonia are on top form throughout; but turn to Beecham and the LPO in 1940 (Dutton, 1/96), and the start of that Adagio is a dance of the blessed spirits, tender, delicate, exquisite. RO’s notes seem to imply (“The trouble was, EMI had nothing to couple with it”) that the recording remained unissued; and if there is indeed a confusion, the fault may possibly be ours, for the Prague was issued coupled with the A major, No. 29, played by the Berlin Philharmonic, which was credited in the Gramophone review (9/60) with both.'