From the archives
Andrew Mcgregor welcomes the return of great and revelatory Decca recordings of Brahms and Bruckner
The Decca Eloquence label is so well established as a resource for reissues that it may startle a few people to discover that it was founded 20 years ago by one man: the Universal stable’s man in Australia, Cyrus Meher-homji. With Eloquence, Cyrus indulges his passion for recorded history, unearthing recordings that have never been digitised before and, typically, he’s found an interesting way of marking the anniversary: budget boxes of Brahms and Bruckner. The complete Brahms Orchestral Music (Eloquence 484 0144; 8 CDS) returns to the catalogue recordings Kurt Masur made with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in the 1970s. Their performing tradition is writ large in the mass and sonority of the symphonies. The Violin Concerto with Salvatore Accardo has breadth and opulence, while the Double Concerto with Heinrich Schiff is sinewy and muscular. The two Piano Concertos with Misha Dichter are impressively weighty, but lacking in pianistic poetry, despite some fine orchestral solos. The darker orchestral sound of the Serenade
No. 2 is attractive, and the Hungarian Dances are serious fun.
The Bruckner box (Eloquence 484 0204; 9 CDS), previously released in Japan, offers the Nine Symphonies with the Vienna Philharmonic, but six different conductors at the helm over a decade from 1965. Claudio Abbado’s first recording of No. 1 is a fresh, youthful traversal; we’re already in safe hands. Wagnerian Horst Stein conducts No. 2 and No. 6, impressing with straightforward musicality, but skating a little over the depths. Karl Böhm’s Vienna recordings of Nos 3 and 4, from the same time, offer a better integrated experience. Lorin Maazel’s Mahler Five impresses throughout, but has a slightly lacklustre finale. Georg Solti in Vienna finds a silky orchestral refinement, maybe muting his adrenal immediacy in No. 7, but delivering across the board in this classic account of No. 8. The revelation though is the earliest recording: Bruckner Nine from Zubin Mehta, his Decca debut in 1965, properly visionary in a superbly remastered recording.