Here is my review of “Willem Mengelberg / Concertgebouw Orchestra: The Radio Recordings” (Q-Disc), originally published by andante.com in 2001 and recovered from the memory hole.

A Treasure Trove of Mengelberg

WILLEM MENGELBERG / CONCERTGEBOUW ORCHESTRA LIVE: The Radio Recordings
[see end of review for full contents]

Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam
Willem Mengelberg, conductor

Q Disc (10 CDs plus bonus DVD)

September 2001 / andante.com / A quarter century ago, the name Willem Mengelberg had been all but forgotten by music-lovers – his reputation was that of an interpretive anachronism and a disreputable Nazi toady, and all but a few of his recordings had vanished.

Today the story could not be much more different: Mengelberg is seen by many as one of the twentieth century’s greatest maestros – in the exalted company of Arturo Toscanini, Leopold Stokowski, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Leonard Bernstein and Herbert von Karajan – with a reputation restored largely on the basis of compact disc reissues.

For those unfamiliar with Mengelberg’s art, one element that distinguishes him from those other exalted names (save, to a certain extent, Stokowski) was his emphatic use of certain interpretive techniques that were common during the early twentieth century – including liberal use of string portamento, rubato, sudden tempo changes and what can best be called “elastic tempo,” and conspicuous alterations to orchestration. To modern listeners, such practices can be both a shock and a revelation after some three generations of conducting “literalists” influenced by the interpretive approach of Toscanini and Felix Weingartner. Mengelberg himself, with his talent for using them to both immediate effect and overall structural delineation, is seen as surpassing other conductors who made use of these interpretive “anachronisms.” His use of these techniques remains controversial today when applied to the music of, for example, Bach, Mozart or Beethoven – but for many listeners it proves so convincing in Romantic repertoire and the music of Mengelberg’s contemporaries as to raise questions about the interpretive validity of today’s “by-the-book” orchestral performances.

Mengelberg’s surviving studio output, from acoustic recordings with the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York to wartime recordings made with the Berlin Philharmonic and Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam (COA), has been reissued in its near-entirety – either “officially” (by the original label or its successor) or otherwise (with many such unofficial releases sounding far more realistic than their authorized counterparts). Additionally, releases of live “airchecks” from Mengelberg’s concert performances during the mid-1930s through 1944 have proliferated – a comparatively large legacy of live performances for the period. To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Mengelberg’s death, the enterprising Dutch label Q Disc has assembled a ten-CD set of recordings with the COA, derived mostly from live recordings originally captured on acetate discs (the two exceptions being landmark studio recordings of the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony and Richard Strauss’ Tod und Verklärung). A bonus DVD is also included: a film of Mengelberg conducting the COA in 1931.

It should first be said that, for all practical purposes, everything in this set has circulated at one time or another. Nevertheless, the broad spectrum of repertoire included here has been very well chosen, and includes not only some of Mengelberg’s most critically celebrated airchecks but rare performances that have seen only very limited or brief circulation.

The set gets off to a slightly inauspicious start – the opening selection, Weber’s Oberon Overture, is pitched just a bit high – but from the moment of Mengelberg’s trademark “double tap” of the baton on the conducting podium (a detail that the present set has preserved wherever possible), this performance raises the curtain on the set with a gentle but (if you are not accustomed to it) startling demonstration of Mengelberg traits: the Concertgebouw strings’ precise portamento in the overture’s very first bars, crisply articulated staccato flourishes from the woodwinds a few bars later, and disciplined virtuoso playing at a brisk tempo from the allegro straight through to the end. Also on the first disc is Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto with piano soloist Cor de Groot, whose propulsive and colorful approach – not to mention his own flexibility with tempos – is much in tune with Mengelberg’s.

Two of the most important recordings in the set, of music by Gustav Mahler, are contained on this first disc. Mengelberg was a close friend and prominent interpreter of the composer. (Reportedly, Alma Mahler had wanted to entrust to Mengelberg the posthumous premiere of her husband’s Das Lied von der Erde, a performance that ultimately was directed by Mahler’s most famous protégé, Bruno Walter). This live performance of Mahler’s early Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen gives lie to the often-repeated notion that Mengelberg was an exaggerator rather than interpreter; baritone Hermann Schey, although sometimes singing a hair below pitch, projects the youthful exuberance and pain of this early song cycle, with Mengelberg’s orchestra providing pungent accompaniment. And the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, recorded in 1926, is a genuine recording landmark – one of the earliest recordings of the COA and a superb demonstration of tempo flexibility in the service of both structure and raw emotional power. Sadly, the present transfer comes up short on two counts: the producers used a commercial copy of this recording that was in less-than-excellent condition and, far worse, failed to compensate for a problem common to many recordings of the period: the pitch drops from the beginning to the end of each side. The result is a jarring change in pitch and timbre at the side change. (The transfer in Pearl Records’ box set of Mengelberg’s Columbia recordings is far superior.)

The second disc begins with the “grand scale” Bach typical of the early twentieth century, a performance of his Wedding Cantata Weichet nur utilizing a large string section and a piano with the hammers modified to make the instrument sound as if it were a very large, very loud harpsichord. The romanticized interpretation is the antithesis of modern Bach performance practice, with emphasis on the emotional aspect of the text – and Dutch soprano To van de Sluys, a regular soloist with the COA, delivers a richly expressive performance. The balance, though, seems a bit odd in that the “clavicembalo” seems more to the fore than van de Sluys. Also included are selections from Schubert’s Claudine von Villa Bella and Rosamunde featuring soprano Betty van den Bosch-Schmidt, whose voice is a bit on the hard side and often at odds with the delicacy of both Schubert’s music and Mengelberg’s accompaniment. Schubert’s Ständchen is a different story altogether, a delightful and lithe interpretation with van den Bosch-Schmidt and orchestra joined by the women of the Amsterdams Toonkunstkoor.

The final selection on the second disc is an aircheck of Brahms’ Symphony No. 3 dating from February 1944 – chronologically the last recording in the present set. A comparison with the same artists’ commercial recording for UK Columbia in 1931 is quite telling: while the overall interpretive approach is similar, the string section’s intonation in the later performance is not on a par with the earlier recording and there are lapses of ensemble far more conspicuous than elsewhere in this set. (It should be noted that a significant number of the orchestra’s Jewish players had by this time fallen victim to the barbaric policies of the occupying Nazi regime.) The sound quality is also noticeably inferior to that of the 1931 recording and most of the other selections in the present set – possibly a result of technical compromises made necessary as a result of war conditions.

Pitch shifts plague the opening seconds of the first track on disc three, Mozart’s Zauberflöte Overture, a performance which showcases some of Mengelberg’s more extensive scoring “retouchements,” which themselves showcase the strength of the COA’s orchestral playing. Two concerto performances dominate this disc: the COA’s principal flautist Hubert Bahrwahser’s plush sound and expressive cantabile yield a highly individual performance of Mozart’s Flute Concerto No. 2, and American-born violinist Guila Bustabo, who was all of 22 years old at the time, performs Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with plenty of virtuoso sizzle in the outer movements and a surprisingly unsentimentalized but lyrical Adagio.

Two vocal gems also adorn disc three. Ria Ginster’s 1942 performance of Mozart’s concert aria Bella mia fiamma. Resta, o cara is by turns lithe and impassioned, shining through one of the more technically problematic selections in the set; Grace Moore’s 1936 performances of “Un bel dì” from Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and the popular tune Ciribiribin are rare souvenirs of a great soprano early in a career that was cut short a decade later when she died in a plane crash. The former is a very rare example of Mengelberg in operatic repertoire, placing emphasis in his accompaniment on orchestral color.

Disc four opens with a “local” showpiece: Wagenaar’s Taming of the Shrew Overture, a work highly influenced by early Richard Strauss. Mengelberg makes the work sound tailor-made for the COA’s unique sonorities. Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 features soloist Theo van der Pas, whose unfussy approach comes across as a bit strait-laced – with Mengelberg’s expressive and energized orchestral accompaniment sometimes contrasting to the point of being at odds with the soloist.

The fourth disc ends with a live Tchaikovsky Fifth Symphony from 1939 that has circulated previously in transfers of widely varying quality (some of them missing the opening bars). Mengelberg made three complete studio recordings of the Fifth (a lost recording from late in the 1920s with the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York, and two commercially issued recordings, one in 1928 with the COA and the other in 1940 with the Berlin Philharmonic), and recordings of the second and third movements with the COA in 1927. The present performance holds its own when compared with the 1927 recording and is better played than the Berlin performance of a year later; despite some sonic problems, it’s better balanced and wider in dynamics than the two commercial recordings. As with those two recordings, Mengelberg takes two cuts in the finale which those familiar with the score are likely to find particularly disfiguring; Mengelberg claimed that the cuts had been sanctioned by the composer’s brother, Modest. The performance bears all the hallmarks of Mengelberg’s approach to Tchaikovsky – liberal portamento, incisive bowing, and particularly the huge “mood-swing” shifts in tempo and dynamics that make the music sound like Russian Mahler. And while the present transfer is sonically superior to previous releases, it does share one thing with some of them: the same botched splice just before bar 100 of the second movement, a notorious glitch that the producers could and should have fixed.

More un-authentic Bach begins disc five: the Clavier Concerto in F minor with piano soloist Agi Jambor. The tempos taken in the outer movements are slower than is common today, yet soloist and ensemble create a sense of inevitable momentum, and the inner movement is played with a sense of hushed awe. The disc continues with Kodaly’s Háry János Suite, which Mengelberg and the COA play for all its color and virtuoso possibilities, and it concludes with Brahms’ Violin Concerto in a 1943 recording. Soloist Hermann Krebbers had just been named concertmaster of the Hague’s Residentieorkest at the time – he would become the COA’s concertmaster two decades later and enjoy a career as one of Europe’s most respected violin pedagogues. Krebbers brings biting intensity to the solo part in the opening movement, which contrasts with the refinement and warm cantabile in the second and the swaggering virtuosity of the finale. The present recording presents a strong case that, were it not for the Nazi occupation of Holland and the security of his position in the Hague, Krebbers could easily have gone on to a successful international career as a soloist.

Disc six opens with Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, marred by a timpani-heavy balance to the recording but in noticeably cleaner sound than pervious versions. This is followed by another highlight of the present set: the world premiere of Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 2 with soloist Zoltán Székely. The performance is simply electrifying – Székely, a longtime artistic collaborator of Bartók, plays with absolute authority, and Mengelberg and the COA play as if they’d known the work for years but still found it exciting. Here the engineers have worked absolute magic with badly worn source material – a comparison with Philips’ release of over a decade ago proved a real eye-opener, in that their “NoNoise” processing failed to abate surface crackle and pops but had done a magnificent job of removing the Concertgebouw’s unique acoustic signature. The disc ends with another world premiere – Kódaly’s Peacock Variations. Mengelberg takes a “Concerto for Orchestra” approach to the work, showcasing soloists and sections without sacrificing the character of Kódaly’s idiom.

On disc seven, symphonic favorites act as “bookends” to a stunning performance of an underrated concertante work – Debussy’s Fantaisie for piano and orchestra, with soloist Walter Gieseking, from a 1938 concert performance. It is sonically in the same league as and artistically better than Gieseking’s “official” recording from over a decade later for EMI – and makes one wonder why this work seems to have fallen through the proverbial cracks. The remaining works on the disc are crowd-pleasers: Wagner’s Tannhäuser Overture is given the showpiece treatment, as are the three symphonic excerpts from Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust. Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloe Suite No. 2 has previously appeared on CD, but in very poor sound; yes, with those big Hollywood portamenti, Mengelberg’s interpretation of the Dawn sequence does go a hair over the top by even his standards, but the Pantomime is played with real poetry and the Danse Générale doesn’t get much more exciting than this – and what a thrill it is to hear this all-stops-out Ravel for the first time in good sound.

Edvard Grieg had been an early champion of Mengelberg’s, and his Peer Gynt Suite No. 1 opens disc eight. Mengelberg puts the emphasis on delicacy and color in a suite that can sound heavy-handed and trite in less imaginative hands. Bloch’s Violin Concerto has been among the most circulated of Mengelberg’s “unofficial” discography, and gets a performance that, as with the Debussy, leaves one wondering why it is not more frequently recorded or performed. But that may well be the interpretive doing of Mengelberg and soloist Joseph Szigeti, who rein in many of the structural problems of what comes across in lesser hands as an unwieldy, large-scale concerto. This live recording, dating from 1939, is arguably Szigeti’s overall finest concerto outing – his playing may have been at its best at this time, and his brilliant, penetrating sound carried well in the Concertgebouw. The transfer is a noticeable improvement over a previous release on Music & Arts.

The final selection on disc eight is the most elusive studio recording of Mengelberg and the COA, at least on CD: Strauss’s Tod und Verklärung. Made for Telefunken in 1942, this recording has not fared as well with critics as Mengelberg’s other Strauss recordings. In this transfer, at least, it’s hard to understand why: while there are a few lapses in string ensemble and overall intonation, the recording is in all other respects outstanding, with all the intensity and power that characterize Mengelberg’s approach to Strauss

Disc nine is taken up entirely with a performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 from one of the final concerts of the COA’s 1937-38 season. The sound is not as good as that of Mengelberg’s 1940 Ninth on Philips; the present transfer also sounds a bit more filtered than the other selections in the current set. (It’s likely that the producers opted for this performance because of its previously limited availability.) The two performances are of a comparable artistic standard and interpretively nearly identical. Those listening to Mengelberg’s Beethoven Ninth for the first time may find themselves so distracted by such a high density of “Mengelbergisms” that they miss many of the performance’s virtues: powerful momentum, strong structural coherence in the first three movements, a finale that really does sound like a theme and variations, and painstaking attention to inner voices and details that often go unnoticed (with or without the use of “retouchements”).

The final CD contains Mengelberg’s concert performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 with soprano Jo Vincent – an outstanding, individualistic performance about which so much has been written that anything added would be superfluous. This is far and away the best-sounding transfer of this recording available.

Finally, we come to the bonus DVD, a 1931 film of Mengelberg and the COA made in Epinay-sur-Seine by Sonores Tobis as a demonstration of their technical capabilities. The orchestra and conductor perform on a soundstage decorated to look like the main stage of the Concertgebouw’s Great Hall, with exterior and audience footage from Amsterdam intercut to yield the illusion of an actual concert. One side of the disc is playable on U.S. players (NTSC standard), the other on European players (PAL).

On the downside, the footage itself does not appear to be in as good condition as that used in Teldec’s The Art of Conducting: Legendary Conductors of a Golden Era; the source used here has taken on a sepia tint. A few tiny snippets of the film have disappeared, so expect odd quarter- and half-seconds of music to be missing, especially in the Weber. Also, the film is run at 25 frames per second instead of the correct 24 fps speed, apparently as an accommodation to PAL’s 25 fps speed; consequently, the sound is a half-step high.

But what footage! Mengelberg’s technique looks quite similar to that of Arthur Nikisch (whose artistry was, sadly, visually captured only on silent film); arm movements seem quite stiff but the beat is impeccably clear, and Mengelberg communicates many of his cues with his face and eyes. The footage of the orchestra is also revealing – as of 1931, there were a few women in the string section of the orchestra, an uncommon situation for most world-class orchestras. And the music making is very exciting. Weber’s Oberon Overture is dispatched with a virtuoso flair that would have made Toscanini green with envy; the great Italian maestro’s recording with the NBC Symphony was famous for generating goose bumps, but here Mengelberg and his band generate even more. The Adagietto from Bizet’s L’arlésienne is played with great tenderness, and Mengelberg looks to be having a wonderful time leading the COA in the final selection, Berlioz’s Rákoczy March from The Damnation of Faust – a performance that surpasses both their commercial recording and the aircheck on disc seven of the present set. The sound quality is a bit clearer than disc recordings of the time, particularly in the midrange; the only problems seem to occur in the loudest passages, where there is a hint of distortion and congestion.

The liner notes – in five languages – provide a brief background on the set’s production, a biography of Mengelberg, thorough notes on the music, Mengelberg’s interpretive approach, and information on the soloists. More material on the sound recording sources and their restoration would have been welcome, especially given that many of the disc sources may no longer exist.

Still, warts and all, this is a most impressive release, arguably the most interesting and important historic release so far this year. With the exception of Mahler’s Adagietto, practically every recording in this set represents a sonic improvement over previous CD incarnations, and the wide variety of repertoire has been wisely selected. This set is strongly recommended to Mengelberg fans, including those who may already own a great deal of the material issued in this set and will welcome the opportunity to reacquaint themselves with this legacy, and is especially recommended to those who are only familiar with Mengelberg’s commercial recordings.

WILLEM MENGELBERG / CONCERTGEBOUW ORCHESTRA LIVE:
The Radio Recordings

CD 1
WEBER: Oberon Overture (13 October 1940)
BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op.73, ‘Emperor’
Cor de Groot, piano (9 May 1942)
MAHLER: Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen
Hermann Schey, baritone (23 November 1939)
MAHLER: Adagietto from Symphony No.5 (Columbia, May 1926)

CD 2
BACH: Weichet nur, betrübte Schatten, BWV 202
To van der Sluys, soprano (17 April 1939)
SCHUBERT: “Liebe schwärmt auf allen Wegen” from Claudine von Villa Bella D.239
SCHUBERT: “Ständchen; Der Vollmond strahlt auf Bergeshöhn” from Rosamunde
Betty van den Bosch-Schmidt, soprano
Ladies Amsterdams Toonkunstkoor (Ständchen) (19 December 1940)
BRAHMS: Symphony No. 3 (27 February 1944)

CD 3
MOZART: Die Zauberflöte Overture (5 March 1942)
MOZART: Flute Concerto No.2
Hubert Barwahser, flute (5 March 1942)
MOZART: “Bella mia fiamma … Resta, o cara”
Ria Ginster, soprano (5 March 1942)
BRUCH: Violin Concerto No.1
Guila Bustabo, violin (27 October 1940)
PUCCINI: “Un bel dì vedremo” from Madama Butterfly
PESTALOZZA: Ciribiribin
Grace Moore, soprano; Gibner King, piano (Ciribiribin) (23 January 1936)

CD 4
WAGENAAR: De getemde feeks Overture (10 October 1940)
CHOPIN: Piano Concerto No. 2
Theo van der Pas, piano (9 April 1943)
TCHAIKOVSKY: Symphony No. 5 (26 November 1939)

CD 5
BACH: Clavier Concerto in F minor
Agi Jambor, piano (17 April 1939)
KODÁLY: Háry János Suite (12 December 1940)
BRAHMS: Violin Concerto
Herman Krebbers, violin (13 April 1943)

CD 6
BEETHOVEN: Egmont Overture (29 April 1943)
BARTÓK: Violin Concerto No. 2
Zoltán Székely, violin (23 March 1939; world premiere)
KODÁLY: Variations on a Hungarian Folksong “The Peacock” (23 November 1939; world
premiere)

CD 7
WAGNER: Tannhäuser Overture (10 August 1940)
DEBUSSY: Fantaisie
Walter Gieseking, piano (6 October 1938)
RAVEL: Daphnis et Chloé Suite No. 2 (6 October 1938)
BERLIOZ: Three excerpts from La Damnation de Faust (21 March 1943)

CD 8
GRIEG: Peer Gynt Suite No. 1 (15 April 1943)
BLOCH: Violin Concerto
Joseph Szigeti, violin (9 November 1939)
STRAUSS: Tod und Verklärung (Telefunken April 1942)

CD 9
BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 9, “Choral”
To van der Sluys, soprano
Suze Luger, contralto
Louis van Tulder, tenor
Willem Ravelli, bass
Amsterdams Toonkunstkoor; Koninklijk Oratoriumkoor (31 May 1938)

CD 10
MAHLER: Symphony No. 4
Jo Vincent, soprano (9 November 1939)

BONUS DVD
WEBER: Oberon Overture
BIZET: Adagietto from L’arlésienne
BERLIOZ: Marche Hongroise from La Damnation de Faust (Tobis-Klangfilm Paris, 1931)