overviewfb55cd020f0643f08418183279e63a5fBEETHOVEN Egmont
BEETHOVEN Septet for Woodwind, Horn & Strings
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 7
Live broadcast recording, 1939
Total duration: 79:55
NBC Symphony Orchestra
conducted by Arturo Toscanini
Get 6 Boxed CDs for the price of 5 when you buy the full Digipack printed CD set
578a9379d1e540bd96d26f03a79628d9review_titlefb55cd020f0643f08418183279e63a5fClassical Source review578a9379d1e540bd96d26f03a79628d9review_quotefb55cd020f0643f08418183279e63a5fA profoundly moving and humbling experience578a9379d1e540bd96d26f03a79628d9review_bodyfb55cd020f0643f08418183279e63a5fSome twelve years ago I reviewed a Music & Arts box featuring
Arturo Toscanini’s celebrated 1939 cycle of Beethoven’s Symphonies – all
bar the ‘Choral’ recorded at Studio 8H – and it has since released
another version that is better in some ways and worse in others. I hoped
that that doyen of historical transfer engineers, Andrew Rose, would
lay his hands on some aptly pristine acetates and produce
state-of-the-art re-mastering, which is exactly what has happened, plus
the 1940 Carnegie Hall Missa solemnis. Apart from the sound, what makes
the concerts different is that these are complete, including Overtures
and orchestrated chamber pieces.
Toscanini’s readings bring together visceral power, rhythmic drive,
effortless rubato, tempo and dynamic variation, humour and beautifully
sculpted melodic lines to create a totally uncompromising, exalted
vision of these supreme masterworks, which makes the entire
period-instrument school sound hopelessly underpowered and sadly
irrelevant. Crucially on these Pristine releases for the first time you
understand why contemporaries talked of the richly upholstered, yet
defined sound Toscanini drew from an orchestra, lustrous strings,
exulting brass, and you realise that unusually for that era the
timpanist’s savage assaults were made using pretty hard sticks. In the
Ninth Symphony and Choral Fantasy (the latter incisively and wittily
conducted, but scrappily played by Ania Dorfmann) the vocal soloists are
there in front of you and the chorus is very life-like. Added to this
there is exceptional clarity, so one can appreciate the masterly way in
which Toscanini layers the sound, structures chords and builds climaxes.
Indeed at the end of the Ninth I was moved to tears by the glorious,
measured majesty of his conception.
As for the Missa solemnis, a stellar line-up of singers includes a
twenty-eight-year-old Jussi Björling. In the opening ‘Kyrie’ one
immediately notes at a measured tempo the way the imposing dead-weight
chords contrast with the fluid vocal line Toscanini weaves. Beethoven
was famous for not really giving a damn whether anybody could perform,
let alone understand, the music he composed in his third period and the
ferocious, tumultuous start to the ‘Gloria’ is fiendishly difficult to
bring off. The way in which the composer illustrates the text with
changes of pace, emphasis and emotional stress has defeated many a
conductor, but Toscanini simply tears into the opening and, as in the
Symphonies, always seems to find the right tempo that enables him to
segue perfectly from section to section, so the colossal fugue carries
enormous conviction, although the final chord is split. In the ‘Credo’
the opening tempo is restrained, the architecture massive, the move to
Adagio effortlessly achieved, the soloists are beautifully led by
Björling and the huge double fugue moves inexorably forward, with
absolutely no sense of hurry, and a sense of dramatic timing that any
aspiring Beethoven conductor would do well to study. And so it goes
on... profound contemplation, precision of execution, exemplary
dynamics, inexorable power ... and the work’s enigmatic ending makes
perfect musical and emotional sense.
In terms of the sound, there were issues with occasional
overloading and very prominent trumpets, but compared to three other
versions I have of this performance this has far greater weight,
definition and presence, far better reproduces the distinctive timbres
of the soloists and the dark-hued sonorities of the chorus.
Pristine had access to excellent source materials – presumably mint
acetates – and Andrew Rose is not afraid to use an array of modern
software to further improve the sound heard on these fragile
eighty-year-old lacquers. This includes Celemony Capstan (yours for
around €3,500!) that removes excessive wow and flutter caused by
variable cutting speeds and/or faults on the lacquer. In terms of noise
reduction, things have moved on enormously from the early days of Cedar
which removed excessive hiss and some snap, crackle and pop, but largely
destroyed the upper frequencies and harmonics, whereas now the image is
not deadened.
In 1939 and 1940 multi-channel stereo recording was unknown, so
even at Carnegie Hall the engineers used just one microphone, which fed,
by modern standards, decidedly low-fidelity cabling, amplification,
lathes and cutting-heads, which could not capture low and high
frequencies and struggled with clarity and definition. However over a
decade ago a company produced a cheap application called Har Bal, which
enabled anyone to select a piece of music of whatever length and import
the frequency response of a modern recording, which as anyone who owns
this will know, makes a huge difference to the internal balance because
it liberates frequencies and thereby instruments, and Pristine uses
this.
Then there is ambient imaging, which broadens the sound-stage
without any loss of definition and again creates something closer to
what the audiences would have heard. Related to this there is software
which enables a remastering engineer to replace part of or the entire
acoustic signature of a hall with that of another, where this has been
measured. Clearly this is totally unnatural, so why would you use it, to
which the answer is Studio 8H. This was built specifically to house the
NBC Symphony Orchestra at full-strength; unfortunately the architect
knew absolutely nothing about acoustics, as a result of which the sound
produced and thereby recorded was unacceptably shallow, bass-light,
treble-heavy and harsh, so Pristine adds a dash of Carnegie Hall to the
mix, which is a huge improvement.
With regard to formats, 24-bit downloads were used, but you can get
16-bit, CD and – heaven forbid – MP3. What we have here is by some
distance the greatest Beethoven Symphony cycle and account of the Missa
solemnis ever recorded in sound that for the first time does justice to
them and it has been a profoundly moving and humbling experience to once
again listen to these supreme masterworks.
Rob Pennock
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On 28 October 1939, Arturo Toscanini took to the podium with his NBC
Symphony Orchestra to begin what would be a unique series of six
concerts: his only recorded Beethoven integral symphony cycle. Over six
weekly concert broadcasts Toscanini would conduct all nine symphonies,
roughly in order, together with various overtures, excerpts and other
works, most interestingly the Choral Fantasy, Op. 80. This was coupled
with the Ninth "Choral" Symphony in a special broadcast live from
Carnegie Hall (the other concerts took place in his more usual radio
studio venue), and constitutes the only recorded example of him
conducting this work ever. Mortimer H. Frank suggests that Toscanini
considered conducting the work again in 1952 in London but dropped the
idea - he also suggests this may have been the only time Toscanini ever
conducted the Choral Fantasy.
As with our recent issues of Toscanini conducting Russian music (PASC548) and the music of Richard Strauss (PASC549),
I have been able to access source recordings of unprecedented quality,
taken from acetate discs recorded directly by NBC and almost certainly
not played since. For optimal sound quality this is crucial - the
delicate surfaces of these discs are prone to immediate deterioration
when played, especially when the weighty pick-ups in common use in the
1940s were used, resulting in distortion, higher background noise, and
potential loss of high frequencies and other details. Previous issues
have relied on Toscanini's own copies, discs which have seen
considerable wear and use over the years.
The use of these new
source discs translates directly into remarkable audio quality, with
quiet backgrounds and a particularly wide frequency range - and sound
quality that would have been considered excellent on a hi-fi era LP
record from twenty or more years later. The use of the latest audio
restoration technology brings with it rock-solid pitching, excellent
tonal balance, and a clean, clear sound quality throughout. On the
present volume I had to contend with both wow and flutter throughout the recording, and also two different pitches caused by the disc cutters running at different speeds. There was also a degree of pitch drift to be seen across sides. Cumulatively this resulted in differences of up to a semitone in pitch between the highest and lowest points of the recording, and a section of around four minutes where the pitch slowly rose by almost this amount.
Each of the concert broadcasts ran for
longer than was usual, and it has been necessary to trim some of the
commentary from these recordings in order to fit each one onto a single
CD release without cutting any of the music. The amount of speech
editing will vary from release to release, but the intention is to
preserve as much as possible the occasion as heard some 80 years ago -
this is, we believe, the first time they have been presented as
broadcast in this manner. Certainly they have never sounded as fresh and
fine as this before.
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2. BEETHOVEN Egmont, Op. 84 (8:21)
3. RADIO Midway Announcement 1 (1:02)
BEETHOVEN Septet in E flat for Woodwind, Horn & Strings, Op. 20
4. 1st mvt. - Adagio - Allegro con brio (8:00)
5. 2nd mvt. - Adagio cantabile (8:25)
6. 3rd mvt. - Tempo di menuetto - Trio (3:10)
7. 4th mvt. - Tema con variazioni. Andante (7:34)
8. 5th mvt. - Scherzo. Allegro molto e vivace - Trio (2:59)
9. 6th mvt. - Andante con molto alla marcia - Presto (5:27)
10. RADIO Midway Announcement 2 (0:38)
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 7 in A, Op. 92
11. 1st mvt. - Poco sostenuto - Vivace (11:19)
12. 2nd mvt. - Allegretto (8:08)
13. 3rd mvt. - Presto (6:51)
14. 4th mvt. - Allegro con brio (6:40)
15. RADIO Closing Announcement (0:44)
NBC Symphony Orchestra
conducted by Arturo Toscanini
XR remastering by Andrew Rose
Cover artwork based on a photograph of Toscanini
Broadcast of 18 November, 1939
NBC Studio 8H, Radio City, New York
Total duration: 79:55
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TOSCANINI DIRECTS BEETHOVEN SEPTET
Chamber Work, With Strings Reinforced, Feature of 4th NBC Cycle Concert
GIVES ‘EGMONT’ OVERTURE
Also Makes a Characteristic innovation in Scherzo of the Symphony in A
Major
By OLIN DOWNES
Perhaps those who listen to an instrumental concert by means of the radio
get the greatest rewards from the scores which employ but a few
instruments, as, for example, the Beethoven septet, which, with reinforced
strings, was performed by the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Toscanini's
direction last night in Studio H-8 in Radio City in the fourth concert in
the Beethoven cycle. At least, this principle holds true if Toscanini
directs the performance.
He is pre-eminent in music which requires the clarity, artistocratic grace
and inherent power of the representative scores of the Haydn-Mozart and
early Beethoven period. Much of the Septet might be Haydn, were it not for
a new compression, energy and humor which entered music with Beethoven, It
was a common mistake of even a quarter of a century ago to refer
condescendingly to the early scores of the Bonn master, but Toscanini
always knew better. He makes of each phrase a masterpiece.
Mr. Toscanini would probably agree with the Arabian philosopher who
discovered in a small ring the reflection of the completeness of the
universe. Here, in simple melodic lines and small dimensioned forms, are
the profound formal ideas which underly the symphonies. The enchanting
simplicity of the Septet, in a word, is matched by its consumate
workmanship. To achieve a like simplicity and mastery in performance is an
accomplishment of only secondary magnitude.
Mr. Toscanini accomplished this so felicitously that at times one wanted to
laugh aloud in sheer exhilaration at his achievement. There were not only
grace and wit, but also a pervasive beauty of song in the playing which
provided the last essential of a great interpretation. Thirty strings
replaced Beethoven’s four. These thirty proved that they could play, not
like four, but like one.
The utter absence of bombast or mere dramatic rhetoric, and the
quintessence of drama and heroism in the “Egmont” score were precisely
reflected in the performance. The Beethoven Seventh Symphony had the same
unsurpassable sincerity and complete absence of effect for effect’s
sake, or for any reasons save those both implicit and explicit in the
score.
It would be interesting, one of these days, if that rare being, the
conductor who loves Beethoven but fears him as he does his God, should
attempt a small editing to obtain somewhat better balances in the
orchestration of the symphony's introduction, where the wind parts, with
the noble swinging motive in half notes, are in certain measures not strong
enough to balance properly the ascending sixteenths of the strings. That is
Beethoven’s shortcoming.
Mr. Toscanini, as usual, takes the trio of the scherzo of the symphony
faster than is customary. The more one hears this, the more it seems
logical, and no injustice to the music. He made no attempt to read special
things into the uproarious finale, built principally on the Nora McCruna
song. He gave the music its head, and we were richly rewarded.
New York Times, 19 November, 1939
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