Customer Reviews

Great Conductors of the 20th Century: Fritz Reiner

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"Great Conductors of the 20th Century" has proven to be a fascinating, revealing series of recordings, and perhaps no volume in the series has shown itself to be more revealing than this one.
While Toscanini is generally given credit for being a literally faithful interpreter of scores, he made minor adjustments even to the scores of composers he revered, like Beethoven and Brahms. The legendary conductor who came the closest to being a literal interpreter was Fritz Reiner.
This is not to say the Reiner's performances were dry or lacked character. Far from it! Like Szell, Solti, and to a lesser extant, Toscanini, Reiner sought to sublimate his ego in the service of the composer's intent, as indicated in the score. Reiner's achievement was to inject less of his personality into his performances than those of the other Apollonarians. When we listen to a Reiner recording, therefore, we don't find out a lot about Fritz Reiner. We do discover a lot about Beethoven, or Brahms, or Wagner, or Ravel, or Bartok, or whoever else's music he's conducting. It's sort of like watching a production of Shakespeare, mounted by a great director, who shapes the overall vision of the play, and lets the actors play their parts with as little editorial comment but as much faithfullness as possible.
Reiner's object is to mount a performance which gets the audience to love the composer's work as much as he does. He doesn't seem to really care what you think about him.
I bought this set on a recommedation from a friend about the Brahms 2nd Piano Concerto with Emil Gilels. I was not disappointed. Gilels delivers his usual robust, muscular performance and Reiner and the Chicago Symphony are right there with him, every step of the way. The Andante - piu adagio is as gentle and refined as the other movements are strong and confident. This is one extraodinary performance.
Beethoven's "Coriolan Overture," which preceeds the Brahms, is, if anything, even better. It hits you like a stiff left jab in the nose, and once it has your attention, it doesn't let go of it. The Brahms "Tragic Overture" is equally impressive.
"Dawn and Siegfried's Ride" from Wagner's "Gotterdammerung" reveals just how beautiful Wagner's music can sound when given a lean and disciplined approach.
Perhaps one reason Reiner is so hard to pin down as a conductor is that he was a true cosmopolitan, who appreciated the differences in flavors, feelings and aromas of different cultures. Thus, he is equally at home presenting the shining, delicate surfaces, and underlying subtelties, of Ravel's "Le Tombeau de Couperin," or the firey passion and mysticism of de Falla's "El Amor Brujo" as he is with the German repertoire. In fact, this particular version of "El Amor Brujo" is to die for. Carol Brice may not be able to match Leontyne Price in terms of glorious tone, but she more than makes up for it in an idiomatically correct performance, full of that Iberian fire that Price, for all her talent, just couldn't fathom.
By the way, the other selections, by Mozart, Mendelssohn, Bartok
and Richard Strauss, are all up to the same high standards.
This CD is a special musical treat, and, at the price, a real FIND!

Dating from the mid 1940's to the late 1950's, this is an unusual and wonderful collection of recordings by the late Fritz Reiner. The latter period constituted his "Golden Age" - his storied collaboration with the Chicago Symphony produced some of the most spectacular recordings of the 20th Century, and a number of interesting examples are included here, including the wonderful Brahms "Tragic Overture."

But the most fascinating recordings in this collection for Reiner fans are those preceding his Chicago years. The "Til Eulenspiegel" recording, from the early '50's in New York City, is a wonder - it is certainly one of the most completely satisfying recordings ever made of this very early Strauss work, and it has become the favorite (out of nearly a dozen) in my collection. His recording of "El Amor Brujo" is equally fascinating - I have loved his Chicago Symphony recording with Leontyne Price for decades, but my recent invited guest preferred this recording hands-down, despite the somewhat inferior sound and less-than-hair-trigger playing. She found it more idiomatically Spanish, and I grudgingly agree.

Perhaps best of all, for less than the price of a single modern bit of plastic, I own - forever - a living slice of a truly glorious musical era. Considering its status as a "compilation," I suggest picking it up while the pickin's good - these collections generally don't stick around for very long, and this one is truly terrific.

Undoubtedly, Fritz Reiner's twofer is one of the most satisfying releases in this batch of the excellent "Great Conductors of the 20th Century" series. A lot of the material covered here is not only new to CD, most is moreover of the highest order.

One will be hard-pressed to find more gripping recordings of Beethoven's "Coriolan", Brahms' "Tragic Ouverture" and 2nd Piano concerto (which highlights the superb cooperation between Reiner and the Russian keyboard giant Emil Gilels again). There is also an excellent Mozart Symphony #36 "Linz". All are vintage Chicago Symphony of the late 1950s (with a well-nigh ideal orchestral balance, a stunning clarity of structure and excitingly incisive playing), magnified by truly awesome early stereo.

CD two also features an earlier account (1946) of de Falla's "El amor brujo" with soprano Carol Brice and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, which Reiner headed from 1938 until 1948. Ravel's "Tombeau de Couperin" with the NBC Symphony Orchestra and Richard Strauss' "Till Eulenspiegel" with the RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra from the early 1950's rounds off this outstanding release. Both composers, Ravel and Strauss, have always been close to Reiner.

In short, a great introduction for anyone wishing to taste Fritz Reiner's art, as well as a must for collectors.

At first sight, given that Reiner's recording legacy depends so heavily upon classic accounts made with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra shortly before his death, it might seem a little perverse or churlish of IMG to have restricted the compilation to recordings made no later than 1959, but as the bulk of the music here was made either with the CSO or top-rank American orchestras, we have little cause for complaint. Furthermore, even those earlier recordings in stereo are of such immediacy and quality that one scarcely notices the sonic limitations. Another earlier reviewer, despite clearly attaching paramount importance to sound, is surely wrong to claim that only the Brahms and Beethoven are in stereo; so are the Wagner and the little Bartok snippet. The Mozart is in mono so good it can sound like stereo. I also take issue with another reviewer who complains about the selection; I owned none of the recordings here and yet would consider this bargain set worth buying for the Brahms Piano Concerto no. 2 alone, even if I had everything else. As it is, everything was new to me and I find it all to be vintage Reiner.

That Brahms concerto is much more immediate and lively - not to mention a full seven minutes faster - than the more celebrated version Gilels made later with Jochum - going for vigour, power and élan rather than grandeur; it makes the second account seem very stuffy and stately. Reiner's special brand of precision, clarity and sonority pays dividends here; everything is so sharp, contoured and disciplined without being the least bit cramped or fettered. Just look at the range of composers with whom Reiner is at ease and for whom he finds the right idiom: everything from French elegance to Teutonic massiveness to Iberian passion. Despite the restricted mono sound, I like his "El amor brujo" more than any other I've heard; the combination of Carol Brice's earthy, gutsy lower register singing and Reiner's fiery direction really brings the music alive. The Mozart (no repeats) is elegant, the Wagner imposing but always linear in feel, the (very fast) Beethoven heroic, the Strauss wonderfully perky and elastic. It doesn't matter what the mode, Reiner gets inside the mood without pulling the music about. A splendid souvenir of a great conductor - as long as you are tolerant of the tracks in mono sound.

The compilers of the Great Conductors series let us down with this installment devoted to Fritz Reiner. The vast majority of the works on these 2 CDs are commercially available on RCA and always have been. The Mozart Linz Sym., the Ravel Tombeaut de Couperin (a "why bother?" if ever there was one), and a mono El Amor Brujo from Pittsburgh (re-recorded by Reiner to far more dramatic effect with Leontyne Price and the CSO) are the slim claims to novelty.

If you don't own the Coriolan or the Brahms 2nd Concerto with Gilels, both superb performances, this set has something to offer. The old RCA standbys are all superb, in fact. But where is Reiner the long-time opera conductor? Reiner in live performances from Chicago? Reiner with the Vienna Phil. near the end of his life? Reiner in unusual repertoire? By missing so many opportunities, the Great Condcutors series did poorly by one of their truly great conductors.

Of all of the multitude of works presented on this double (2-CD - made in England) the Beethoven overture, the Brahms overture, the Bartok, the Wagner works and the Brahms piano concerto No.2 with Gilels are in stereo.

The sound is of various degrees ranging from not so, to so-so, to good and to beyond good (classification of beyond "good" refers to the Wagner on CD 2).

The stereo Brahms concerto with Gilels has merits, mostly, an almost full piano body tone (which is rare for RCA of that time where piano tone was almost always captured to be threadbare, meager and devoid of dynamics at the lower register - and touching upon that stumbling block for RCA piano recording - this property of being meager one will find creeping also into the 1961 S.Richter/Leinsdorf/CSO recording where at times the piano sounds restricted, small, distanced - although that specific Richter/Leinsdorf recording has better overall see-through qualities than the one here, namely, the Gilels/Reiner).

Still, the playing here of the Brahms second piano concerto is what should be categorized as traditional, a bit forceful yet masterly but without dwelling on tiny expressions, all in all it is a "cool" reading with tempi that are quicker than those found on the Backhaus/Bohm/VPO.
One should not regard this 2-CD set as "the find of the century" and certainly not from the Audio point of view, but what this set might offer - specially in the Wagner works - is a relief from the more recent Sony cheaper series 24 bit/DSD travesty.

One can not avoid the thought of what sonic spectacular might have awaited us if the Wagner and the Brahms piano concerto would have gotten the SACD treatment; alas, Sony stopped that super-series of SACD, fired the remastering engineers and voted for mediocre to bad sound.
No more SACD RCA living-stereo, thanks to Japanese Sony, no more treasuring and respect for the American great recordings achievement of the Fifties and the Sixties.

My experience with this set of CD's is incredible! I remembered faintly how I, as a child, remembered Fritz Reiner's work. Not any more! Not after buying this terrific set of CD's. I won't bore you by repeating the genuine and well-earned praise of previous writers, except that this man got the most out of every orchestra and every composer he ever tackled. This set of out-of-print CD's would be a bargain for any serious lover of classical music at any price!

But I got it brand new in original shrink-wrap for less than 1/4 of what the next lowest seller wanted for it. It was shipped from an Amazon seller in Germany, and it arrived at my home in less than a week from when I ordered it - and that was with Thanksgiving Holiday thrown in. As I said, the discs arrived in perfectly brand new condition, and they are tremendous to listen to. The sound, considering the era, is magnificent.

The seller said he had two left at $6.00 each. This is the bargain of the year! Buy one while they last! You'll be glad you did.