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共21首歌曲

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艺人

Pierre Monteux / Paris Conservatoire Orchestra

语种

其他

厂牌

BBC Legends

发行时间

2005年10月03日

专辑类别

现场专辑

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专辑介绍

This is the fifth release in BBC’s “Legends” series devoted to live recordings of Pierre Monteux. Such issues can be especially valuable in the case of a conductor like Monteux, who never got to record a large part of his repertoire in the studio. BBCL 4006–7, for example, offered a complete performance of The Damnation of Faust; BBCL 4058 featured the Brahms Third, with exposition repeat, as Le maître always insisted it must. (Brahms was Monteux’s favorite composer; hard as it is to believe, he got to record only the Second Symphony, but that one four times!) BBCL 4096 offered the Symphony of Psalms. BBCL 4112, issued in 2002, featured the “Eroica” with the RPO, which Monteux did record twice; I have not yet heard this performance. The only item on that CD that he did not record in the studio was Cherubini’s Anacreon Overture.

While any recordings of Monteux are always welcome, whether live or studio, it may be that the BBC has already mined the most valuable gems in its vaults. On the present disc, the Weber, Ravel, and Pijper items are all pieces Monteux did not record in the studio; the Weber, which celebrates the final defeat of Napoleon by Wellington, quotes “God save the King” at the end, and is bound to have received a warm reception in London, but is not one of Weber’s stronger efforts. The next two items have the handicap of having been performed with the BBC Symphony, which at that time was probably the fifth-ranked orchestra in London (behind the London Symphony, London Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic, and Philharmonia); certainly a Monteux recording of Le tombeau is worth having even under compromised conditions, but the tempo he takes in the Prélude leaves the oboist holding on for dear life. A 1959 New York Philharmonic broadcast is within seconds of this performance in duration—not an uncommon phenomenon for Monteux—stretching even the incomparable Harold Gomberg to his limits. Overall, both performances are fast, maybe too fast; perhaps for some reason this is one Ravel score that simply didn’t resonate with Monteux.

The symphony in one movement by Willem Pijper, written at Monteux’s request in 1926 (only two years after the Sibelius Seventh) during the time he shared the Concertgebouw podium with Mengelberg, was regarded as avant-garde in its time; it seems to have caught on since in the Netherlands but not elsewhere. It makes what Beecham might have called a “grand racket,” but the abrupt ending must have disconcerted the London audience.

The Elgar performance is about two years later than the studio recording with the same orchestra; what differences there are work to the disadvantage of the live version here. The most important one is that the studio version is in stereo, so we can hear the left-right violin seating that Monteux used throughout his career. Also, in the studio version the emotional high points—the big crescendo in “Nimrod,” for example—are more effective.

Finally, the Chabrier excerpt is a chestnut that Monteux had recorded both in Paris and in San Francisco; the piece is of little substance, but it does bring the disc to a rousing conclusion.

The program notes by Stephen Johnson, who evidently played trumpet under Monteux on at least one occasion, are so well done that I was tempted simply to copy them here. They offer a savvy and entertaining portrait of Monteux as a man and conductor.

So, to buy or not to buy? I wouldn’t bother for the Elgar or Chabrier; to get the New York Ravel you have to buy a 10-CD set, and while Jim North, Fanfare’s resident expert on all things Dutch, tells me a 1960 version of the Pijper was issued on Donemus, I don’t find that currently available. I’m keeping this disc for that and for the Weber, which you can’t get elsewhere by Monteux; I imagine it will be of most interest to Monteux completists and to those who wish to own a recording of the Pijper symphony played by the conductor for whom it was written (and who conducted the 1926 premiere). You know who you are.

-- Richard A. Kaplan, Fanfare [Issue 30:2 Nov/Dec 2006]

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最新简评（共10条）

• @肖茵：
• @aurora(O)：
• @倒影：喜欢
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