While Mengelberg’s partnerships with both the Concertgebouw and New York Philharmonic remain among music’s legends, his work with the Berlin Philharmonic is less familiar. Not that this 1940 performance of the Fifth Symphony differs radically from his earlier recording with the Concertgebouw (reissued on Music & Arts, 10/94). Indeed, as Ian Julier observes in his personal and trenchantly argued notes, it is remarkable that a conductor who, after the most meticulous preparation, allowed his players the highest degree of spontaneity should achieve something close to “a mirror image” in the phrasing and articulation of so many key passages. Once again there are “two cuts in the finale, an added cymbal clash and altered chordal harmony prior to the coda”. More subjectively, Mengelberg’s rubato is uniquely characterful and intense, his sense of polyphony breathtakingly acute. From a lesser artist such individuality (a term I prefer in this instance to idiosyncrasy) could have clouded all sense of coherence or lucidity. Yet a more rich, more deeply human performance would be hard to imagine. Here, supreme virtuosity always serves a musical purpose, with Mengelberg taking his players to the very edge, extending parameters to the very limits of romanticism. You may quibble over this or that. You may resort to that blessed word, ‘controversial’, but you will surely feel compelled to admit that few conductors have achieved such glamour and nobility, such intimacy and heroism.
Mengelberg does his best to ginger things up in the First Piano Concerto but, alas, he is foiled by a soloist who stakes his all on a non-committal clarity and a sense of proportion (slim virtues where Tchaikovsky is concerned). You won’t hear a “blow torch incandescence” or “a performance stewed in Russian juices” (Claudia Cassidy on Emil Gilels, whose early recording with Reiner – 11/56 – has now been reissued on RCA). Instead, you will note octaves that remain octaves rather than volleys of virtuoso defiance, a limp view of the first movement’s Allegro con spirito and, most oddly, the loss of all but the last bars of the cadenza. An imperturbable soloist, Conrad Hansen (a pupil of Edwin Fischer) is easily vanquished by his partners in this most celebrated of “all battles for piano and orchestra”. Ward Marston’s transfers are admirable and no true lover of Tchaikovsky should miss Mengelberg in the Symphony.'