In times of national political crisis music is bound to be called upon to play its part, and this was certainly the case in Eastern Europe last autumn. Some events, it is true, can take on the character of media stunts; there was a whiff of this about Leonard Bernstein's descending on Berlin on Christmas morning to conduct Beethoven's Ninth (reviewed last month). At the other extreme, we see acts of great artistic courage. Following Vaclav Havel's anti-Communist spring manifesto Several Sentences, the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra began its autumn season by refusing to co-operate with Czech Radio and Television; and after the police action against students on November 17th they played only subscription concerts arid free concerts for students, often programming that great musical portrait of their homeland, Smetana's Ma vlast. The concert that is partly recalled on this new CD from Sony Classical comes some way between. It was a delightfully, imaginatively improvised affair; the Berlin Philharmonie opened up on the Sunday after the breaching of the Berlin Wall for a concert given for and in honour of the citizens of the DDR who for the last three days had been flooding into West Berlin. By circumstance or artistic design the Berlin Philharmonic managed to field a slightly slimmed down version of itself, and Barenboim, who was in Berlin recording Cosi fan tutte with the orchestra at the time, stepped in both as conductor and as soloist. British viewers later saw part of the concert on BBC 2's ''Late Show'', 24 hours later than scheduled as a result of fog-bound flights from Berlin.
Watching the TV transmission, I thought Barenboim's solo performance of a piece of Mozart the evident highlight. And on this record it is the concerto, and above all the pianist's many solo meditations (Barenboim's own somewhat eccentric first movement cadenza notwithstanding), that communicate most clearly the sense of a special event, an occasion of great human moment. By and large, the performance of the concerto—which Barenboim and the BPO recorded in 1987 for EMI, a useful rehearsal for the 1989 concerto—is a great success. It has power, articulacy and zest, and the recording of both piano and orchestra is strikingly immediate. Once or twice piano scales drown out woodwind commentaries and descants but no one could argue that we are being denied here anything of the performance's overall impact.
The symphony, by contrast, is rather less of a success. The recording by Sender Freies Berlin is satisfactory in slower or more lightly scored music but the big tuttis of the first movement Vivace and the finale are often generalized and muddy with splendidly audible woodwinds (the first oboe in particular) offset by often quite inaudible horns. Barenboim's reading is a thoroughly traditional one of the old school with a slowish Allegretto and dragging third movement Trio and outer movements that are strong and thrusting without ever being unduly quick. The playing is robust and generally without affectation, though there is some rather obviously artificially induced added excitement in the fourth movement coda. The text is cut to a bare minimum. There are internal repeats near the start of the finale's exposition otherwise no repeats at all. Neither exposition repeat is taken, and the Scherzo and Trio is played through without any of the repeats being observed. This was probably right for the occasion but it will not necessarily please collectors on record.
One thing that does come across is the unequivocal, heartfelt acclaim of the East German audience at the end of each work. There is applause and applause, acclaim and acclaim; and this is something special. In the two Germanies I imagine this record will have great appeal: souvenir appeal and sentimental appeal. To the serious Beethoven collector, though, I suspect the record's artistic shelf-life will be about as long as this week's edition of your favourite news magazine.'