Thomas Jensen (conductor)
Legacy Volume 23
Richard Wagner (1813-1883)
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg – Prelude, Act I
Die Walküre Act I (1854-6)
César Franck (1822-1890)
Symphony in D minor (1888)
Franz Liszt (1811-1886)
Piano Concerto No. 2 in A, S125
Walther Schrøder (1895-1976)
Piazza del Popolo (1925)
Lauritz Melchior (tenor), Dorothy Larsen (soprano), Mogens Wedel (bass), Georg Vásárhelyi (piano)
Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra/Thomas Jensen
rec. live radio broadcast 31 March 1960 (Wagner); 24 February 1963 (Franck & Liszt); 20 November 1958 (Schrøder), Danish Radio Concert Hall, Copenhagen
Danacord DACOCD933 [2 CDs: 130]
I confess to not only knowing nothing of the work of Danish conductor Thomas Jensen (1898-19630) but also to not even having heard of him before I saw this issue available for review, but I was intrigued by the line-up for the Wagner excerpt – everybody’s favourite Act in the Ring, especially the presence of the great Lauritz Melchior singing at an age when most Heldentenors have long since hung up their tonsils; the Act I of Die Walküre was performed and broadcast to celebrate his 70th birthday. I also like occasionally to test a long-standing dislike of Liszt’s music, to which I have never responded, just in case I start to feel my resistance crumbling and experience a Damascene conversion. Finally, it allowed me to remedy a lacuna in my knowledge by make the acquaintance of some of the work of a conductor who, I soon discovered, played an important part in Danish musical heritage. He was a student of Nielsen, a cellist, frequent conductor of the Tivoli Symphony Orchestra and founder-conductor of Aarhus City Orchestra and enjoyed a long-standing relationship with the DRSO – although he was not appointed their permanent conductor until 1957 and soon he began to experience deafness, then succumbed to a premature death aged only 65.
This is a two-for-one package combining works by three composers linked by relationship and style, Liszt being Wagner’s son-in-law and Franck one of his disciples, and the claim is that everything here except for Act I of Die Walküre is a first release – I would not know but am happy to accept that unless anyone knows to the contrary. They are all familiar enough, but the “bonus item” – a concert overture Piazza del Popolo – is, in the words of the notes, “a forgotten showpiece which the Danish composer Walther Schrøder drew from his score to a silent movie directed by A.W. Sandberg.” We are also informed that everything except the first act of Die Walküre is a first release – and that last appeared only on vinyl nearly forty years ago, again on the Danacord label, as part of six LP set.
The glorious, uplifting Prelude to Die Meistersinger always makes an ideal curtain-raiser and it is well played here: spacious but propulsive – and the sound is really quite full, despite being a bit harsh and peaky and afflicted by a distressing amount of coughing, especially in Die Walküre.
Melchior’s last stage appearance was in 1950 but following his unofficial retirement around 1955 he made the occasional appearance on television and sung the anthem at the Dodgers baseball games in Los Angeles; the broadcast here was his last public engagement, however. His voice is still remarkably firm and resonant; even if phrases are more short-winded and top notes do not ring as of yore, it is still easily recognisable as the greatest Heldentenor of the 20C. He is more inclined to sing softly than when he was in his prime and audibly struggles with the presto passage just before Spring enters Hunding’s house, but “Ein Schwert verhieß mir der Vater” still makes its mark, the cries of “Wälse” prolonged and steady, even if the tone is hardly fresh. Jensen’s urgent beat helps him. His two co-singers are Danish Royal Theatre stalwarts, both of whom are fine; Dorothy Larsen knows her way around the notes even if she doesn’t have the most velvety soprano and Mogens Wedel has a black, sonorous bass, making a suitably implacable and imposing Hunding. It is perhaps unreasonable to make comparisons between this and Melchior’s recording of the same act made with Lotte Lehmann and Emmanuel List and Bruno Walter conducting the VPO in the 1930s; that is an account for the ages which has never been surpassed. In truth, other than for reasons of curiosity and sentiment, I cannot see why anyone would choose to listen to this later performance over that classic recording if the music and Melchior are to be heard at their best.
The Franck recording suffers from some hiss but the listener soon overlooks this as Jensen’s delivery of the dark, brooding introduction to the Lento first movement is absorbing; the orchestra imparts an impressively dour and bass-rich colouration to this swirling, menacing, even neurotic “Klingsor” music. Its Romantic restlessness surely appealed to a Nielsen specialist like Jensen, whose music is similarly mercurial and ever-shape-shifting. In the Allegretto middle movement, he sustains a constantly disturbing, ambivalent atmosphere with its scurrying strings and persistent pizzicato ostinato from the double basses. The powerful finale mutates into something more positive, certain and even triumphant, as happens in Niesen’s symphonies; this is a most invigorating and persuasive account.
The Liszt piano concerto is likewise fluid and protean. As ever, I find Liszt’s bombast unbearable – so no Pauline metanoia for me – but I think the notes observe correctly that the Hungarian pianist’s “execution on this occasion is hardly flawless, while both the piano and orchestra suffer problems of intonation, but the performance as a whole has a compensating nerve and intensity.” The piano is recorded very closely but not offensively so.
I enjoy far more Schrøder’s splashy, brilliant, rumbustious concert overture Having just listened to, and reviewed, Pristine’s remastering of Toscanini’s famous recording of Respighi’s Roman Trilogy, Schroder’s piece struck me as having much of that Italian spirit – the film for which the music was originally conceived being taken from a novel whose story centres on Rome.
Nowhere in this issue is the sound source and type specified; I assume it is narrow stereo ADD. It is never exactly easy on the ear but is certainly listenable.
(The recording dates on the reverse cover have been muddled, the dates of the Wagner concert being switched with the Franck and Liszt broadcast, but they are correct in the booklet and above in the header to this review.)
I cannot say I would rush to revisit this anthology for reasons already adumbrated – especially as my favourite items are the brief opening and closing overtures – but it is certainly an unusual and varied potpourri.
Ralph Moore
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