Jascha Horenstein (conductor)
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)
Symphony No.1 in F minor op.10
Carl Nielsen (1865-1831)
Symphony No.5 op.50 CNW 29
Jascha Horenstein in conversation with Deryck Cooke
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (Shostakovich)
New Philharmonia Orchestra (Nielsen)
rec. 1970, Albert Hall, Nottingham, UK (Shostakovich), 1971, BBC Studios, Maida Vale, London, UK (Nielsen)
ICA Classics ICAC5184 [72]
Type-casting is a terrible thing to do to a musician; but it happens, time and again. It happened to the great conductor Jascha Horenstein, who was labelled quite early on as a Mahler and Bruckner specialist. Yes, he gave many great performances of their music, and made fine recordings too. But he was in reality most versatile, with wide sympathies.
He was often seen as something of a maverick, mainly because he never held a permanent post with any orchestra after resigning from his Directorship of Düsseldorf Opera in 1933. He was a Jew, so with the rise of the Nazis Germany he was more or less hounded from his post. Like so many others in the same position, he ended up in the USA. He conducted in many countries, though, and was very popular with British orchestras. As a young musician, I played for him on just a couple of occasions. He seemed to me delightful – gentle, courteous, but absolutely sure of what he wanted and how to go about getting it.
On this disc, we have works by two of the greatest 20th-century symphonists under Horenstein’s baton, and a very short but fascinating interview with Deryck Cooke. The version of Dmitri Shostakovich’s 1st Symphony is a take of a live performance at the Albert Hall in Nottingham in 1970. Horenstein greatly valued his friendship with Shostakovich. They met in the 1930s, and they shared a great enthusiasm for Mahler.
Horenstein did not record very much of Shostakovich’s music, although I wonder how many readers remember listening, as I do, to his superb recording of the Fifth Symphony made with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra in 1952. I listened to it again just the other day, and it still sounds terrific! This version of No.1 is not in that class; it is a live recording, and not an especially good one. The balance is poor, and many of the teeming details are not prominent enough or simply obliterated by the percussion in the big tuttis. But it is a performance, and by the end I was wishing I had been present at that concert – the audience response is hugely enthusiastic.
As Horenstein explains in the interview, his involvement with Carl Nielsen’s 5th Symphony went back a long way: to his early years as a conductor, in fact, when he was assistant to Wilhelm Furtwängler in Vienna. The symphony was programmed for performance, and Horenstein had to take most of the rehearsals, with Furtwängler coming in at a late stage. As Deryck Cooke clearly did, I found the idea of Furtwängler conducting the Nielsen very strange, almost bizarre. Yet Horenstein insists that the performance was highly successful, though he does go on to say, mischievously, that it was Furtwängler’s Danish wife who pushed her husband to perform the work. He says: “… it was Mrs. Furtwängler who insisted he should do the composition of her compatriot”.
But Horenstein came to love the work very deeply, and recorded it in 1969, with the same orchestra as here, the New Philharmonia. As with the Shostakovich, this version was made for a BBC relay, except that this is a studio recording, so the sound, though still not great, is far better.
And it is a powerful, intensely dramatic reading. The slow build-up of the first movement conveys strongly the underlying nervous tension of the music. The pitch battle that eventually breaks out is startlingly violent; the side-drum player, according to Nielsen’s clear instructions in the score, must improvise “… as though at all costs to obstruct the flow of the music”. Horenstein and the New Philharmonia give it everything. Equally impressive is the eerie calm that ends the movement, with its elegiac clarinet solo as the side drum marches away into the distance, defeated – for the time being.
I have never felt that the second movement quite manages to live up to the first, a fine movement though it is. It is broken up into a number of sections, and it needs a firm grip to maintain a feeling of connection and growth. Horenstein can do that. There is a convincing sense of achievement, and a sort of cosmic relief at having arrived, at having got there in the end. In my experience of performing this incredibly difficult and demanding work, that relief is felt not only by the audience, but by those on the platform as well.
The interview is, as I have noted, very short, but entertaining and valuable. Apart from those remarks about Furtwängler and his first wife, Horenstein talks affectionately about his meetings with Carl Nielsen, who came along to help with the early rehearsals of the 5th Symphony. Horenstein confirms what many others have said: Nielsen was a kind and charming individual, happy to help the young conductor in his grappling with this enormously demanding piece, which had only recently been premiered.
This is an enjoyable and interesting disc, and an important musical and historical document.
Gwyn Parry-Jones
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