Pristine Classical

At last, a remastered release of the legendary Jascha Horenstein Mahler Symphony no 5, with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra recorded at the Edinburgh Festival in 1961. It's available for digital download from Pristine Classical, the specialist supplier.

Not too far back, I found myself at a loss for superlatives in describing readings by conductor Felix Weingartner of Brahms’s First and Second symphonies on a remastered Pristine Classical CD. Three years earlier, I expressed equal admiration for composer Felix Weingartner’s Symphony No. 5 in a superb SACD recording on cpo. The German label’s dedication to Weingartner, the composer, is here evidenced in this latest release, captioned Volume 3, of his string quartets.

Matthias Bamert’s survey of music by Mozart’s contemporaries continues with this elegant programme of Cannabich Symphonies. Harmonically conservative, lavishly scored, and full of the mannerist crescendi and rising figures the Mannheim Orchestra was famous for, these are fascinating examples of the style gallant. Though Cannabich had found his way to sonata form in the G major symphony, something of Telemann’s programmatic writing hangs over the Symphony in A major, while baroque affects are yet more keenly felt in the D major Symphony. The London Mozart Players’ pristine sound and careful phrasing is highly enjoyable throughout.

These are two of the most contentious – and rarest - recordings made by the doyen of Czech conductors. Although I have heard rumours that the whole Czech Philharmonic decamped to Vienna to record there, they were apparently made in situ in the National Theatre in Prague in the days of the Nazi-Soviet pact. The Piano Concerto was recorded first and then a year later the Violin Concerto. It’s not hard to see what might have annoyed people.

The recording project Northscapes weaves works—from the first decades of the twenty-first century by composers from the Nordic and Baltic countries of Europe—into a tapestry of soundscapes, vibrating between landscape and the imagination, between the external and internal, between nature and psyche. What these works for piano solo share is a particular attunement to nature, reverberating out of the ever-present reservoir of pagan myths, legends, and folk music of the region. Their sensitivity to the sonic environment allows these composers to explore the liminal space dividing yet connecting landscape, soundscape, and mindscape.

Both conductor and soloist are well-known for their performances of the Beethoven Violin Concerto – just not with each other. The conjunction of Furtwängler and Schneiderhan is probably the least-well remembered of the conductor’s collaborations, either live or studio. Similarly the violinist’s commercial DG recording, conducted by Eugen Jochum, holds the most pressing claim on the collector, notwithstanding Furtwängler’s eminence or the fact that the disc under review was made live in the Titania-Palast in Berlin in May 1953.

Conductor Jascha Horenstein has long been regarded as one of the finest exponents of the music of Gustav Mahler. His 1952 studio recording of the Ninth Symphony was the first such recording to be commercially released (the 1938 Walter was partly or entirely live; a 1950 studio effort by Scherchen only appeared long after it was recorded). A small handful of other recordings, made between the mid-1950s and the late sixties and generally live, have appeared over the years, but never this particular rendition from the Vienna Festival of 1960 which, over three weeks, celebrated Mahler's centenary.