7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brahms Double, Beethoven Triple Going Fast, July 7, 2003
This review is from: Brahms: Double Concerto / Beethoven: Tripile Concerto (Audio CD)
As someone who has only recently begun seriously collecting classical CDs, the Bruno Walter Edition has been a revelation. Walter, at the end of his career, set out to record his signature pieces for posterity in what was then the new technology of stereo. And unlike von Karajan, who rushed to record his repertoire at the dawn of the video and digital era to often-mixed results, every Walter performance I have encountered is absolutely brilliant. This recording of Brahms' Double Concerto, with violinist Zino Francescatti and cellist Pierre Fournier from 1959, is no exception. (It should be noted that the Beethoven Triple, a stunning account featuring Corigliano, Hendl and Rose, is a mono performance from 1949 during Walter's days with the New York Philharmonic.) There are other Beethoven Triple/Brahms Double discs out there that are equally good -- most notably the Karajan/Szell EMI title featuring the triumverant of Richter, Rostropovich and Oistrakh -- but none of them are superior to these accounts. Also, I should note that since making a point of acquiring all of the Bruno Walter Edition titles earlier this year, I have witnessed several of them falling prey to the deletion axe. So order the Bruno Walter Edition titles quickly, because these recordings made during the twilight of Walter's career, seem to be in the twilight of their own life as well.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
the two faces of Bruno Walter, December 17, 2010
This review is from: Brahms: Double Concerto / Beethoven: Tripile Concerto (Audio CD)
Bruno Walter's 1949 recording of Beethoven's Triple Concerto was made with the first desks of the New York Philharmonic, John Corigliano and Leonard Rose, and its pianist and assistant conductor Walter Hendl. Beethoven's Triple Concerto was rare stuff back then on record: to the best of my knowledge, this was only the second recording ever made of it, after Weingartner's 1938 recording,
Beethoven Concertos 1937 & 1939 (Toscanini's 1942 broadcast performance,
Beethoven: Symphony Number 5, surfaced only later). It is likely to shock those used to the famous recoding and more spacious approach of the Soviet dream team of Oistrakh-Rostropovich and Richter under the baton of Karajan (
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4; Triple Concerto). It is a performance of considerable urgency and drive, with hardly any repose in the first movement (compare its 16:33 to Karajan's 17:49), and wonderful zest in the finale. The central Largo looses nothing of its movingly songful qualities (why do I think of Schubert's piano trios when I hear this music?), thanks to Rose's magnificent eloquence and great rapport with Corigliano. Those interpretive options make the Triple Concerto sound closer to the Third Piano Concerto than to the Pastorale Symphony - not an entirely irrelevant option, I think, although not one that I hear often exercised on disc. This is not a style that one necessarily associates with Walter either when one knows only the Beethoven recordings he made with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra in the early stereo era, but Walter in his earlier, mono and New York years was often brisker and more driving than later.
Naturally these are 1949 mono sonics (there are no surface scratches that I can detect so I suppose these were originally recorded on tape, and the tape hiss has been kept at a minimal) and orchestral details can get blurred (but it is the case even with modern recordings). Violin and cello are ideally balanced and the latter is never covered, even in its accompaniment figurations; the piano is at times given more the position of an accompanist. Rose plays with a gorgeous, creamy tone, Hendl is thicker in touch and tonal production.
It would have been more coherent of Sony to pair this recording of the triple with Walter's first studio recording of Brahms' Double Concerto, made in 1954 with the same orchestra (New York Philharmonic) and sharing one of the soloists: cellist Leonard Rose, now joined by Isaac Stern in what turned out to be the latter's only recording with Walter. This recording was in fact reissued on Sony's great Isaac Stern collection,
The Early Concerto Recordings, Vol. 1. Instead it is the stero remake we get, from 1959, with Zino Francescatti, Pierre Fournier and the Columbia Symphony Orchestra. But in fact, all considerations of program coherence aside, I find the remake preferable, and not only for sonic reasons. The sonics do count tremendously, of course. The 1954 mono, in Sony's transfers, sounds somewhat distant and uni-dimensional and the impact of its climaxes must be reconstructed in one's imagination rather than actually felt. The 1959 stereo is full, vivid and effective, offering great interplay with the woodwinds in the finale. Fournier's tone is somewhat gruffer than Rose's (or what one, again, can reconstruct of it through the flawed sonics) or even than his own, as recorded in 1956 by EMI (with Oistrakh and the Philharmonia under Alceo Galliera,
Triple Violin Concerto) but, as much as I admire and love Stern, I find Francescatti's more crystalline and sharp tonal production almost preferable. But these differences in tonal production are small details, abundance of riches from which to choose from.
It is striking to hear the driving 1949 Walter (Beethoven's Triple) "morph" into the spacious 1959 Walter (Brahms' Double)... but the 1954 recording belies the too simple notion of a Walter from the mono era and New York years that is brisk and driving, as opposed to a Walter from the stereo era and the Columbia Symphony Orchestra that is spacious and mellow. All the interpretive traits of 1959 were already present in 1954, and, despite the different soloists, the two versions are indeed strikingly similar: unhurried, powerful in the tutti, lyrical elsewhere, forward-moving and sharply accented in the finale but not brisk - showing that Walter was in charge or rather, that he had chosen like-minded soloists (which is confirmed by Stern in the reminiscences he wrote for the liner notes of the Early Concerto Recordings mentioned above). Interestingly, contrary to the opinion which I sometimes read but rarely see confirmed in the recordings, that the later Walter was not just spacious in tempo but also slack, there is marginally more orchestral bite in 1959: not a question of tempo but of muscularity of accents, snappiness of the staccato playing. In fact, although my own preference is for the brisker and more fiery approach of Heifetz (in both his recordings, from 1939 with Feuermann,
Heifetz Collection, Volume 5 (1939-1946)and 1960 with Piatigorsky,
Double Concerto), I find that Walter here (like Galliera three years earlier with Oistrakh and Fournier) strikes a nearly ideal balance between the lyrical and the powerful.
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1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fundamental issues!, April 14, 2005
This review is from: Brahms: Double Concerto / Beethoven: Tripile Concerto (Audio CD)
The happy contribution of those giants musicians under the legendary batoon of such kind human being and profound director as Walter was, made possible these golden recordings.
I must remark my favorite versions of these two notable works are both directed by Ferenc Fricsay. Those are genuine gems but these perhaps are warmer. Leonard Rose the first cellist of the New York Plhilarmonic used to play in chamber works with Schneider and Istomin loyal friends of Pau Casals and as many times I have underlined this influence of this genius illuminated and enriched the vision of those musicians,. From Serkin, Kapell, Grumiaux, Vegh and please stop of count.
So in this case, the presence of Walter (just at the end of his life) a director who conducted so admirably with so many artistic liberties, allowed to leave for the posterity this golden legacy. Musicality, discipline and efusiveness all along both performances. Do not miss this CD under no pretext.
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