BARBIROLLI – NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC (SJB1030-31)
‘It is the existence of surviving broadcast acetate recordings of many of Barbirolli’s broadcasts with the Philharmonic (as we shall refer to the orchestra) that have enabled us to form a more complete picture of his work and genius (not too strong a word) as a conductor during this period, recordings which in many instances are being made available for the first time publicly. From a period of almost three-quarters of a century, we are able to study and evaluate Barbirolli’s art in a manner that was unavailable to earlier generations of music-lovers.
The evaluation produces extraordinary results. The first of our two CDs in this set opens with Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, in which the soloist is Mishel Piastro. The performance comes from March, 1942, and will be a revelation for many listeners. Piastro is hardly known at all these days, but he was the leader of the Philharmonic under Toscanini and, of course, under Barbirolli. He was, as we may hear, an absolutely astounding violinist – it is rumoured that someone remarked to Fritz Kreisler that ‘Piastro is so gifted but he’s lazy and doesn’t practise’, to which Kreisler replied, ‘Thank God!’
Clearly, in the live 1942 performance on this set, soloist, conductor and orchestra are of one mind. As a single example of Piastro’s quality, the first movement cadenza is absolutely fearless, dead in tune, expressive and superbly phrased. There can be no doubt that Piastro was a complete master of his instrument. The following season, 1943/4, after Barbirolli’s departure, Piastro’s companion on the first desk of the violins, John Corigliano, became the Philharmonic’s leader as Piastro’s successor.
More Russian music follows in a very rare performance of Balakirev’s Tamara. This work is almost never performed today, but in the 1930s alone in the United States it received no fewer than ten performances, and had been introduced to the USA as early as 1896 by Theodore Thomas in Chicago. Consequently, the score – which Barbirolli programmed in successive seasons, 1936-7 and 1937-8 – was not quite the unknown quantity that orchestras today might consider it to be, and as a result – given also the relatively large number of Russian émigré musicians in New York at the time – the performance is remarkable for a quite notable intensity of feeling and inner strength. It is a pity that Barbirolli never made a later commercial recording of the piece for either EMI or Pye.
The second CD in this set of performances opens with the world premiere performance of the Piano Concerto by Mischa Portnoff. It is prefaced by a relatively lengthy and informative spoken introduction by the radio announcer, so little need be added in these notes. This Concerto is, as can readily be heard, a dazzlingly effective work, with extremely virtuosic writing for the soloist, composed in a style perhaps best described as a mixture of the then-contemporary music of Prokofiev and Shostakovich rather than, say, that of Stravinsky. The soloist was the Lithuanian-born but American naturalised pianist Nadia Reisenberg (1904-83), whose family settled in New York after the Russian Revolution. She had initially studied at the St Petersburg Conservatoire under Leonid Nikolayev, and later in America with Josef Hoffmann. She had a much-admired and relatively lengthy career in both the United States and Europe, and after World War II made a number of highly-regarded long-playing records, including a series of Haydn Sonatas for Westminster and albums of Russian music, in which she excelled. Her reputation was well-founded, as we may hear in this dazzling performance of a work – dedicated to Barbirolli – which surely does not deserve the neglect that has befallen it.
Jaromir Weinberger’s Christmas (another well-written work of the time that has fallen into disuse) was a natural choice for a Christmas Eve concert in 1939. Jaromir Weinberger (1896-1967) was, at the time of Barbirolli’s performance, living in the United States; that same 1939-40 Season, his most popular orchestral work (apart from the Polka and Fugue from his opera, Schwanda the Bagpiper) was the Variations and Fugue on an Old English Tune: ‘Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree’, dedicated to Barbirolli and the Philharmonic-Symphony of New York, who had given the first performance of it on October 12th, 1939. That same season, the ‘Spreading Chestnut Tree’ Variations and Fugue was performed by the orchestras of Baltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Minneapolis, St Louis, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington DC – and was soon to be recorded by Dmitri Mitropoulos. It is also astonishing that this brilliant work, the variations linked by a concertante solo piano part, which made such an impact when Barbirolli introduced it – thereafter taken up by many conductors – should today be completely unknown. Weinberger’s orchestral study Christmas (or Christmas Night as it is sometimes called) also requires a concertante keyboard – that of organ.
The English-born conductor and composer Anthony Collins (1893-1963) also lived at the time in the United States, and from a broadcast concert in 1942 comes the first public performance of another work dedicated to Barbirolli – Collins’s delightful comedy overture, Sir Andrew and Sir Toby (as the radio announcer introduces it), after the characters in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.
The Threnody by the American composer Paul Creston (1906-1985) – born Giuseppe Guttoveggio – was written in 1938, and is an impressive work in broad ABA form, powerful and sustained with a superb central climax, superbly judged by Barbirolli in this performance.
The final American work in our collection is the Overture The Old Maid and the Thief by Gian-Carlo Menotti (1911-2007). This is the overture to a comic opera which was commissioned by NBC, and first performed on radio on April 22nd, 1939. It was first staged in Philadelphia in February 1941, and Barbirolli’s performance may well have been the public premiere of the overture as a separate concert item. It certainly receives the most brilliant – not to say breathtaking – performance from the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York, the members of which were clearly relishing the opportunity to display their virtuosity under a conductor who by that time had won over the hearts and minds of every musician taking part.’
- Robert Matthew-Walker