From the archives
David Nice dusts off this month’s selection of reissued and archival recordings
June round-up
‘Audiophile Edition’ is very much the selling-point to Abbey Simon’s recordings of Rachmaninov’s Second and Third Piano Concertos with Leonard Slatkin and the St Louis Symphony Orchestra, a 1979 Vox specimen. Orchestral and piano tones are sleek and warm, and slow movements work best: the Second Concerto’s Adagio Sostenuto has some fine climaxes. I find myself wanting a more Russianschool bass weight and more fantasy in the flyaway passages.
Not a top choice for performances, to be sure, but companionable throughout. (VOX Classics VOXNX-3014CD) ★★★
Kurt Sanderling’s Southbank Shostakovich was always masterly, but felt at the time a little less electrifying than intrepretations from some of his Russian-born contemporaries. Perhaps a CD incarnation allows us to savour more fully the right degree of objectivity in this finely-shaped Tenth Symphony, clearly riveting a mostly silent audience. The sound has remarkable impact, and there are superlative solos from the New Philharmonia woodwind at the start of the finale. It’s especially good to have such a vivid performance of Balakirev’s Islamey in the Casella orchestration, Royal Philharmonic horns and trumpets rampant; Sanderling could certainly let his hair down when he felt like it. (ICA Classics ICAC5171) ★★★★
A legendary violinist unfamiliar to many, Bronisław Gimpel, is enshrined in more Vox recordings. You almost wish the Polish player, born in Lemberg (now
Lviv, Ukraine) in 1911, hadn’t been shoehorned into flashy virtuoso stuff, because although there is certainly panache in
Lalo, Wieniawski and Paganini, the revelation is the more inward playing at the heart of the first movement of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. The Tchaikovsky has special interest in that Gimpel plays a Tononi once owned by Iosif Kotek, a major force behind the concerto’s composition; but while impressive, it lacks the charm of the best interpretations. (Biddulph 85024-2, 2 discs) ★★★★
Vaughan Williams’s masterpieces had no shortage of studio recordings during his lifetime, but it’s further enriching to hear more live performances.
The Tallis Fantasia could really do with cathedral, not Carnegie Hall, acoustics, but the quiet and solo playing from the then New
York Philharmonic-symphony Orchestra under Mitropoulos in 1943 has plenty of atmosphere, while the remarkable Eighth Symphony of a very sprightly octogenarian has all the fine tuning it needs under dedicatee Barbirolli. The Whittemore-lowe duo in the Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra doesn’t sound too healthy, but Mitropoulos’s drive carries us through the remarkable later stages of an underrated gem. (SOMM ARIADNE5020) ★★★★
Seemingly new in a stylish presentation, though in fact recorded in the early 1990s, Mark Fitz-gerald ’s Weill with the
Basel Sinfonietta makes a strong impression. The programme is adventurous, flanking the nowubiquitous The Seven Deadly
Sins with a 1956 Suite arranged from The Threepenny Opera by Max Schönherr and the Panamanian Suite derived from Marie Galante. Serena Way is a strong performer in the inverted morality-tale, concealing her lack of an upper range skilfully (though transpositions are necessary), vivid despite being set back in the sound picture. (FHR140) ★★★★