Eugene Goossens (conductor)
Cincinnati Symphony Volume 2
Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
Symphony No 4 in D minor, Op 120
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
Le Chant du Rossignol (Poème symphonique)
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
Symphony No 2 Little Russian
rec. 1941-46, Music Hall, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Pristine Audio PASC691 [74]

Goossens’ recorded treasury was never sufficiently rated to end up in the IMP-EMI ‘Great Conductors of the 20^th Century’ series. That said, he left enduring foot-prints on the sand. Affection and regard for Goossens extends to loyalty, respect and love for many of this recorded readings.

This is the second disc in Pristine’s series of the complete recordings (naturally, all mono) of Eugene Goossens (1867-1958) and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. He was with that orchestra from 1931 to 1946 before he left for Sydney and what turned out to be a scandalous nemesis. However things turned out, he was brilliantly faithful to his own musical heartland. The recordings he later made with Everest and the BBC attest fully to this and so do his earlier ones. There’s a particularly torrid early Tintagel (Bax) as evidence.

Goossens and Schumann and Cincinnati. Suffice to say that Pristine presents us with the whipped and driven evidence (try tr. 4, 00:53) for a reputation that prompts drawing of parallels with wild-eyed Golovanov in Mendelssohn and Rachmaninov. The sound from the 1940s does nothing to mask a reading that excites by its intemperate speed, even if it does offset this with some mercury-flowing legato. Even in the third movement, the little amorous flutters of a tail to the melody barely have time to draw breath. Goossens and his orchestra couple blandishment with emphatic, cloud-hung grandeur. If you think of the louring clouds and gruff anger in Brahms’ Piano Concerto No 1 then expect more of the same here. Schumann is on a blood-pressure high and soars.

Goossens is in his accustomed element in Stravinsky’s Le Chant du Rossignol. This is a “Poème symphonique” in four movements. This reading makes much of the angular corners, oriental oddities, dynamic ‘hairpins’ and Mossolov-like factory mechanical overtones. The third movement (the Song itself) looks back to the lyricism of The Firebird. This melts in a kindly crucible with the quiet tensions of The Rite. This forms an oasis for the more jagged echoes of The Rite that come with the final section (The Mechanical Nightingale). The title of this piece suggests one thing (a return to fairytale Rimskian romance and uncanny plot parallels with the fantastic satirical opera Le Coq d’Or). The reality brings us up short with a freshened palate that scoops up the romance and allows it to be stomped on in an unequal battle with the new and tungsten-tough Stravinsky. It’s a work that promises one thing with its title but leaves this listener nonplussed with a score that more emotionally impassive than impassioned. It’s a landmark on a pallidly interesting journey rather than an intrinsic emotion commanding wonder. More’s the pity. Whatever happened to the opera from which Stravinsky drew this piece?

The Tchaikovsky comes at the top of the tree as a musical experience. It helps that this is one of the composer’s most kouchka-flavoured works. This 1941 recording of the four-movement piece comes to the captivated listener and reveals a miraculous depth of field. There is none of the eager speed-merchant that is to be heard in the Schumann. The measured pacing of drum and woodwind in the Andantino registers most engagingly and breeds smiles. It’s uncanny how the storming big-boots tritsch-tratsch finale inhabits a world that was emulated by Glazunov late into the 1890s. This was a direction from which Tchaikovsky was to waver.

Mark Obert-Thorn is one of the select when it comes to the musical audio world. He has made a lovely job of making these 80-year-old recordings sound as if they had close-to-contemporary body and substance; certainly as if they might have been rescued from an era later than the 1940s. The results are a pleasure to hear. The original 78s came from the collections of Nathan Brown and Charles Niss.

Rob Barnett