Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Brandenburg Concertos (c.1721)
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra/Alois Melichar
rec. 1922-39
Danacord DACOCD975 [137]
Danacord has gathered into a twofer the 1932-34 recordings of the Brandenburg Concertos made by the Austrian conductor Alois Melichar with the Berlin Philharmonic. Because Furtwängler had recorded the Third Concerto in 1930, Melichar didn’t reprise it leaving an incomplete cycle in our terms, though contemporary listeners will have been glad enough to have had all the concertos played by the same orchestra.
Melichar (1896-1976), a student of Joseph Marx and Franz Schreker, was contracted by the Berlin Philharmonic at the time to make recordings of lighter material. His recordings of the Bach predate those of Adolf Busch and Alfred Cortot. The Melichar Nos 1, 2 and 4 have been transferred to CD by Music and Arts (CD1225 – review), an 8-CD box devoted to the commercial recordings of violinist Szymon Goldberg, but this is the first time, to the best of my knowledge, that all five have appeared on CD. Mark Obert-Thorn’s transfers for M & A are certainly on a par with these, perhaps a touch brighter.
Melichar and his Berlin forces prove commandingly weighty interpreters of the concertos and have some fine orchestral soloists – Goldberg himself, though by the time that Nos. 5 and 6 were recorded he’d been forced to emigrate, oboist Gustav Kern, flautists Albert Harzer, Heinrich Breiden and Friedrich Thomas, trumpeter Paul Spörri, and in No.6 a raft of string players including violists Reinhard Wolf and Kurt Oberländer and Paul and Sylvia Grümmer playing the viole da gamba. In No.5 Franz Rupp plays the harpsichord.
If the Busch Chamber Players were reacting to – and against – unwieldy Bach performances with their bloated full string sections, it’s possible that these Berlin recordings, as well as Furtwängler’s of No.3, were examples of these kinds of performances. The lithe, clear Busch Players readings, one to a part in places, with George Eskdale using his ‘Bach’ trumpet and Joy Boughton, Rutland’s daughter, proving a lighter player than Kern, eschew density of sound in favour of clarity of texture and mobility. The Cortot cycle has some odd balances and some unwieldy horn playing but offers a kind of very idiosyncratic halfway house position between Melichar and Busch. Indeed, I’ve heard post-war performances of the concertos punched out more heavily than these Melichar-directed ones and they offer richly burnished examples of orchestral Bach performances. They’re ‘of their time’, of course, but then what isn’t?
Furtwangler’s recording of No.3 can be usefully contrasted with the recordings of the same concerto contained as ‘bonus tracks’, those by Eugene Goossens and Georg Høeberg. Goossens recorded it with the Royal Albert Hall Orchestra in 1922, the first recording of any Brandenburg Concerto. It’s a typically thorny HMV and same clicks have escaped the transfer process but what is clear is that, despite the strong string tone, top to bottom, and despite a big rallentando at 3:38 – to prepare for the side change – Goossens’ conception of tempo was far more to modern tastes than those of his eminent German colleague, at least in the first movement. Whilst this isn’t an especially rare recording, Høeberg’s 1924 Nordisk Polyphon is much rarer and seldom seen. This recording, consequently, is chuffy – the price one pays for rarity – and the conductor directs a very sleepy performance, the basses of the Berlin State Opera Orchestra scrubbing along manfully. The side change here is at 4:16 but at least Høeberg doesn’t indulge it as much as Goossens had done. He adds the two chords for the second movement and his finale is better than the first movement though slightly hectically voiced.
The final piece dates from the late 1930s and features Melichar with the Berlin Philharmonic once more. This is the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, BWV565 arranged by Melichar, who prefers staccati to Stokowskian grandeur and sonic breadth and so stresses wind lines in a very clear and precise way.
There’s an interesting booklet that considers the recordings from Claus Byrith from whose collection all the discs come, except for the Goossens. This is another of Danacord’s two-for-the-price-of-one releases which should please historically-minded Bachians.
Jonathan Woolf
Availability: Danacord
Contents
Concerto No.1 in F major, BWV 1046
Concerto No.2 in F major, BWV 1047
Concerto No.4 in G major, BWV 1049
Concerto No.5 in D major, BWV1050
Concerto No.6 in B flat major, BWV 1051
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra/Alois Melichar
rec. 1932-34, Berlin
Concerto No.3 in G major, BWV1048
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra/Wilhelm Furtwängler
rec. 1930, Berlin
Royal Albert Hall Orchestra/Eugene Goossens
rec. 1922, London
Berlin State Opera Orchestra/Georg Høeberg
rec. 1924, Berlin
Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, BWV565 arr Alois Melichar
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra/Alois Melichar
rec. 1939, Berlin
