Sir Eugene Goossens (conductor)
Cincinnati Symphony Volume 2
Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
Symphony No 4 in D minor, Op 120 (1841)
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
Le Chant du rossignol (Poème symphonique) (1921)
Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
Symphony No 2 in C minor, Op 17 ‘Little Russian’ (1872)
Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra
rec. 1941-46, Cincinnati Music Hall
Pristine Audio PASC691 [74]

The first volume in this series was an all-British affair, but this second one devoted to Eugene Goossens’s Cincinnati Symphony recordings moves further afield. The recordings were made between February 1941 (Tchaikovsky) and February 1946 (Schumann) in the capacious Cincinnati Music Hall.

David Hall, who was associated with Mercury, was very sniffy about the Schumann Symphony in The Record Book, finding it very ‘lavender-and-old-lace’ and much preferring the virility of Ormandy’s recording in Minneapolis or Paul van Kempen’s in Dresden. There’s no doubt that the contemporary American and import catalogue was stuffed with fine recordings which also included Bruno Walter’s old LSO set and an even finer one in the shape of Frederick Stock’s Chicago recording. Goossens favours lyricism over vitality, as Mark Obert-Thorn mentions in his one-page producer’s note, and this sense of directness is allied to textual clarity. In the Romanze nothing is underlined or sculpted, and the finale is lithe, taut and crisp. One can hear the hall’s big reverberation after the final chord and this resonance is a definable element of the recording. If you’re looking for afflatus, look to Furtwängler: Goossens’s is a clear-eyed, but rather underpowered reading.

Stravinsky, on the other hand, was something of a known reportorial strength. Goossens had already recorded Petrushka back in London in 1923 with the Royal Albert Hall Orchestra and was to do so again on LP with the LSO. He had given the London premiere of The Rite of Spring in 1921 and was for a time associated with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. This made him a fine choice for the first complete recording of Le Chant du Rossignol in January 1945. He draws out a fine array of colours and textures – note the balancing of harp and flute – and in The Mechanical Nightingale he is adept at presenting a decidedly bluesy cadence or two in its slow section. This is an authoritative, rhythmically alert, stylistically apropos reading.

Tchaikovsky’s ‘Little Russian’ symphony was the first in this sequence of works to have been recorded and shows the vitality and energy of which Goossens was capable in congenial repertoire. Far superior to Mitropoulos’ near-contemporary recording in Minneapolis, Goossens finds the balance between subtlety and energy – encouraging his principal horn and bassoon in the opening movement in their statements and drawing on the natural folk material in the slow movement. The culmination of his energising engagement is the finale, where his sweeping conducting generates a genuine grandeur, such as his friend and colleague Thomas Beecham was to find in the work in his post-war recording with the RPO.

The transfers are excellent and the project continues in the best of hands.

Jonathan Woolf

Previous review: Rob Barnett (July 2023)