The Antal Doráti Centenary Society
by Rob Barnett

We have not been short of societies to promote and focus enthusiasm for composers or groups of composers, or for musicians. They have, for example, existed for Medtner (initially funded by the munificence of the Maharajah of Mysore), Sibelius, Delius, Bantock, Bax (three of those – one founded in the 1920s, another in the late ’60s to mid-70s and another sprang up much more recently from the passionate work done for that composer by Richard Adams) and by two generations of the British Music Society (again in the 1920s and then breathed into new life in the late 1970s and still flourishing). Each produces or produced their newsletters, prizes, concerts, member gatherings and recordings. Blessed indeed is the executant musician who is taken up by a Society.

So it has been with Antal Doráti. Advocacy for the conductor has been mobilised in the last few decades by the Antal Doráti Centenary Society (ADCS) and its prime mover Richard Chlupaty. The present representative sheaf of CDs is a small sample of that Society’s in-depth work; the ones that interested me.

So what does the buyer get? There’s a CD, or CDs, obviously. There’s no jewel case. The disc (CDR) is in a paper sleeve, the type with an irksomely sticky flap; please change that, ADCS, when you can. The package is completed by paper inserts (bucket and single sheet leaflet) to fit into a standard plastic tray which you would have to source yourself. There are obvious advantages, and a few irritations, to this approach, both for the ADCS and the purchaser. There is little or no ‘sleeve-note’ material except for the core essential discographical details. If you want to spread your wings then there is a Doráti autobiography, Notes of Seven Decades and there is an meticulous and very extensive discography.

I first heard of Doráti in the 1970s. My early years of dabbling in classical music associated his name with two extremes. At one end there was his project with Decca to record all of Haydn’s symphonies with the Philharmonia Hungarica; a project that was completed and which is now reflected in a weighty CD box. At the other we had his work for then ‘modern’ composers like Messiaen, Gerhard and Skalkottas. There was a ‘middle land’ in which he gave concerts and recorded works by Pettersson, Kodály (a still imposing Kodály cycle for Decca), Tchaikovsky, Toch, Antheil, Blomdahl and Piston. I found him a memorable and attractive milestone because of the Kodály set – three LPs as  I recall and still a Decca mainstay. A still world-conquering LSO/Mercury/Philips complete ballet The Firebird shines dazzlingly. The latter can be heard in a devastatingly well recorded CD (Mercury 432 012 2) but in those days (1970s) was heard by me on a budget LP (Contour 6870 574). That bass drum stroke at the end still resounds in the memory, as does the sinister magical orchestration of Kastchei’s garden, seeming to straying darkling out of Ravel’s Ma Mère l’Oye. Hall of Fame stuff. His work in the recording studio is subject of an extensive article and a discography

To the CDs (full details at end of feature) that have come to me …..

Three Great American Third Symphonies ADL 337
We start grandly. The Three Great American Third Symphonies instalment comprises two CDs that preserve a ‘live’ concert. The second of these opens in the best forthright sound with a briefish surface-y interview/symposium, with three eminent US composers: Copland, Schuman and Harris. Then comes Copland’s wartime Third symphony. This four-movement essay gives large-scale (forty minute) voice to spirits that seethe like Shostakovich and that charm and please. In the finale Copland spins a loquacious, sometimes bombastic, sometimes angry finality, out of material that many of us will know as Fanfare for the Common Man. This is all done in Copland’s trademark 1940s style: tonal and transparently orchestrated. This recording is a shade shrill but I have heard worse from radio-broadcast derived material; there’s plenty here to please and to justify the applause to be heard at the end of each item. The ADCS also allow us to hear Doráti on other of their CDs in Copland’s Lincoln Portrait (with no less than Marian Anderson), Appalachian Spring and Rodeo.

The first CD offers up two shorter American Thirds. The first of these is the single-movement Roy Harris work – his best known and most recorded, as is the case with a very different work, Bax’s Third. Doráti’s take on the work is propulsive and urgent: epic and contentedly elegiac. His brass sound superbly forward and right upfront – try 09:05 and 10:45. It’s grippingly recorded and directed. I hope it will encourage you to explore further. It’s one of the best in a crowded field. Harris’s symphonies 5-7 rank high in my affections and the Seventh (Ormandy/Philadelphia), in an Albany recording, is terribly overlooked in relation to its glowing worth and satisfactions.

That other high-tension American expression of the WW2 years is William Schuman’s Third Symphony. As a work it is Shostakovich-like in its mordant emotional ‘geist’ and virtuoso attack. In Doráti’s hands, the music takes no prisoners; annihilating victory is the only outcome. The second of two meaty movements at first communicates a Quiet City highly-strung angst. The Symphony comprises two bipartite ‘slabs’. The last, and bitter-blitz segment, can be heard from about 9:00 of that track. This Doráti version weighs in alongside the best: the first Leonard Bernstein recording (CBS-Sony, 1960s), and a radio broadcast I once heard where André Previn was the conductor. Its radio sound is again slightly treble-fierce – but then this suits this sort of work. Two tracks, one meaty movement apiece. At 12:00 in the second movement those violins reach out to the listener and sing as they slice perilously close. The percussion whip up the violence and high value dazzle. Zest is added to the grand imperious strings. One can only say at the end ‘Wow!’. The applause is not at odds with that impression. What would Stokowski or Mravinsky or Golovanov have made of this, I wonder?

Alan Pettersson ADL315
The two discs that make up the Alan Pettersson volume bear on-high Doráti’s work for this Swedish composer. The Pettersson following has been matchlessly supported and extended by Bis. There is no way that Bis’s effort in reach and quantity and quality could be trounced. That said, “my first” Pettersson symphony was the Seventh, a huge single-movement work. The Tenth Symphony is about half the length of the Seventh. The Tenth is music that races across a blazingly destructive, thrashing ferment. Tense strings ‘outgrabe’ like ‘mome raths’ and Pettersson’s ‘signature’ brass writing orates and erupts in furious cells or motifs. The resulting cauldron can, at some level, be equated with Brahms’ Tragic Overture against the same composer’s Fourth Symphony. As to those ‘motifs’, these occasionally recall the famous call-sign from Beethoven’s Fifth.

By contrast, the wholly successful Seventh articulates a taiga of the emotions. It’s grim, gruff, dismal, concentrated and, at its close, spun out of sorrow, ire and hyper-tension. It’s on a scale that suggests that these emotions will last into a desperately unremitting eternity. Relief: there is none. Doráti rode, spurred and drove the crest of the composer’s ‘wave’ in the ’sixties and ’seventies: the days of vinyl dominance. He is no sluggard when it comes to the true Pettersson spirit which finally encompasses a high and quiet whistling (from 36:00 to the end); a poised and deeply moving ‘tragical’ consolation. Vastly impressive stuff, but you may need an infusion of Chabrier and Bizet after hearing this particular Doráti offering. It should carry the superscription “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here”; in a sense like certain of the symphonies of another Swede, Torbjorn Ivan Lundqvist.

Dorati’s Pettersson symphonies 7 and 10 have previously been issued by ADCS on ADE90 (one CD) and reviewed here by William Kreindler.

Pettersson wrote no opera but there is an extended sequence of songs, typically called Barefoot Songs. Doráti orchestrated eight of these which, although they carry the impress of Pettersson’s childhood of extreme poverty, also gently channel his country’s lyrical yield. Indeed they might almost have been by Alfvén or Nystroem. They are, for this composer, an astonishing ‘take’ on Nordic bel canto. Just right for Jussi Björling. Each of the eight is separately tracked. As for the orchestration, it is intimate, delicate, discreet, finely crafted and highly-skilled. On this CD the alluring and crooning voice of Hakan Hagegård  is front and centre. There is also a fulsome fifteen-minute Doráti interview – part in English and part Swedish – about Pettersson.

Doráti in Dallas: 1945 ADL 346
The Doráti in Dallas / Beethoven Eroica disc declares itself as a record of Doráti’s first concert in the city. It is impressive. It is bound to be mono of course but is fulsome and communicative; such unity of playing and force. There are times when charm is not its strength, but the playing is superb and there is no lack of tears and dignity in the Marcia funèbre. The performance flames and blitzes along in the Scherzo. The Dallas players are coaxed – or should it be whipped – into being a virtuoso orchestra – especially evident in the Finale. You must hear this. Just to note that is no applause on this ADCS disc. If there were two Eroicas I would recommend as inheritance tracks, this is one and the other is an astounding version conducted by Wyn Morris.

William Schuman’s Prayer in Time of War is a substantial essay and runs to 12:49. The audience is prominently afflicted with bass catarrh but Doráti ploughs on and builds and sustains an intense atmosphere. Let’s recall that the people of the USA were at the time receiving news about mayhem and the deaths of their young people. The grippingly intense singing groups this work with Schuman’s Third Symphony (try Bernstein – as well as the above Doráti from ADCS) and the Violin Concerto (DG Zukofsky / Boston SO / Tilson Thomas). A certain opacity of message – a sort of matte effect – afflicted many symphonies of the 50s and 60s. There is no reason to complain of that here. The language is touching, placing the work, in its thrust and funereal sweetness, with pastoral Copland, the Barber Adagio, Bernard Herrmann’s For the Fallen, a tribute to the soldiers who died in battle in World War II and In Memoriam The Colored Soldiers Who Died for Democracy by William Grant Still. The Schuman is a moving and concentrated piece and in this broadcast is met with applause.

Doráti ADL 325
Doráti’s The way of the cross, sung in French, is not otherwise available. It’s a large and sprawling work. It sprawls magnificently with each of the ten parts allocated a track across these two CDs, running in total to about 86 minutes. This big French premiere performance is given with furious engagement and passion. This is, after all, the passion of Christ. The performance of this cantata (somehow an inadequate word) is fervent and wild-eyed. It is set for speaker, alto, bass-baritone, mixed chorus and orchestra. It is spoken and sung by everyone as if their lives depended on it. The music itself is approachable if roughhewn – a touch of Shostakovich here and Bartók there. Doráti lets slip the dogs of war, so to speak. It makes you wonder how he would have enriched things if he had set The Apocalypse, which I had cause to hear from Françaix recently.

On CD1 tr. 3 the skies flame and the alto sings as if she felt rather than just pronounced every mood.  In tr. 4 the mood is more recessed but tonality is pushed to the very edge. The score then proceeds with sensationally imaginative use of the percussion. On the second CD, the narrator bestows a paradoxical blessedness in an atmosphere that is apocalyptic. The effect is unaffected by a momentary stuttered at 0:52. Next the music turns vengeful – recalling Barber’s Medea diptych. Contrast this with the alto solo later in this part (tr. 3) which is inward and resigned. A remorseless march, heavy with a sense of the sinister and evil, threads through the tortured narration. Finally (tr. 5), Doráti reaches an amiable tiredness which shades into a fatalistically beatified gloom. From this there evolves at 4:46 one of those fatigued marches of grandeur – a gift rather like equivalent marches in Enter Spring (Bridge), Alwyn’s Hydriotaphia, Rubbra 4 or at the end of Bax 6.

There are only five tracks on CD 1 when the insert claims six but then for CD 2 the packaging claims four when there are in fact five. I regret that there are no words or translations supplied but it’s all wonderfully resonant stuff and a cherishable discovery if you are not allergic to spoken voice pieces like RVW’s Oxford Elegy or Gerhard’s The Plague.

It’s a concert performance but with no applause. The artists are: P E Deiber (speaker); J. Mars (baritone); Marie-Luce Bellary (alto); Orchestre nationale et choeurs de l’ORTF. They are conducted by the composer.

Doráti & Mozart ADL 316
The works by Doráti himself have always intrigued me. In the site’s early days I was familiar with them through work that had been done for Doráti by Bis and has previously been smiled upon by ADCS. This present disc comprises a recording of Doráti’s 32- minute piano concerto in three movements. Its coupling is a strange blood brother: a Mozart trio in which Doráti’s wife (Ilse von Alpenheim) is the pianist. The Trio is in three movements and has all the gravamen of a Mozart piano concerto; all knowing innocence and a jolly smiling finale. It’s stylish played and the piano is nicely balanced vis a vis the ensemble. Again, no applause.

That concerto launches as if a cool libation is being administered at the treble end of the keyboard. The pianist is Ilse von Alpenheim. This concerto is Romantic and noble in style with virtuoso flights and with some serious Brahmsian aspects to the invention. It is not as easy and insouciant as the Françaix work but that is certainly not an obstacle to appreciation. The central Lento rubato offers a deep pool of healing introspection and the concluding Presto, which is almost as long as the opening Allegro, is quick, with a ruthless grimace. The last page delivers a flighty explosive payoff and there’s applause as well.

There are no booklet notes and for the record ADCS should, I think, reconsider the use of adhesive-lipped envelopes – you can get non-adhesive flapped ones. Shelf space might be an issue but try to fit these discs into your own crystal cases.

Doráti ADL 323
The Doráti Cello Concerto is another half-hour work in three movements. The soloist here is Robert Jamieson and the performance was given in the Coffman Union Ballroom at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis on 16 December 1957. The music is utterly accessible and is heard in clear sound, even if the strings are somewhat recessed. Each movement is longer than its predecessor. There’s an atmospherically pleasant noise of the audience shuffling between the movements. The first resembles a sort of 20th century Dvořák cello concerto. It’s pensive and faintly melancholic. The Adagio is seraphic, relaxed and inwardly thoughtful while the Allegro Grazioso majors on stirring anxiety and signs off with a blend of petulance and victory. It’s good to hear singer William Langstaff in the extended Two Enchantments of Li Tai Po. There are a few British and American song cycles with orchestra or other accompaniment that should be recorded for our benefit: Reginald Redman’s Chinese songs and the Tagore cycle by John Alden Carpenter.

Sæverud & Toch ADL320
The Saeverud/Toch CD harnesses live performances, respectively from 1958 and 1954, of two four-movement symphonies written during the last century. Quite apart from their values as music they are souvenirs of Doráti’s time with the Minneapolis Symphony, giving concerts at the Northrop Auditorium.

The Saeverud Eighth is a 45-minute work with four movements: I Once Upon a Time; II Hope and Longing; III Gay Day (Scherzo Pastorale); IV Man and the Machine. It’s an imaginative work with links, I would have said, with the Nielsen Symphony No. 6. It’s cool and seems at time to yearn for the unattainable. Wild delights are suggested by the third movement and the finale has plenty of grunt. It is far from the antiseptic expectations you might have harboured from the title (Man and the Machine). It seems to suggest that Man ends up possessing the high ground. It would be good to compare this with the Simax recording where the Bergen orchestra is conducted by Dmitri Kitajenko.

The Toch runs to about 30 minutes. This is jagged music and while not a walk on the wild side, it is not shackled to tonality.  Doráti revels in Toch’s diverse and pellucid structures. This composer’s progress is at times like the proverbial “bull in a china shop”, shouldering his way forward, but textures are never densely scrambled. The buffet is laid out for the diner’s delectation. Unlike the Saeverud the movements carry conventional mood/speed titles. As to the grimly tolled-out finale it is greeted with pleasurable applause, as indeed is the Saeverud. You might well wish to explore further. In the case of Saeverud hie you to Bis, Simax and Aurora and for Toch there’s his complete symphonic cycle on CPO.

The disc has been issued before and reviewed here with the Toch then identified as the Second Symphony. I am guessing that this later disc lists the Toch symphony correctly but I cannot be sure. Both works are clean and rousingly heard in good clear ‘hue and cry’.

Rob Barnett

Details
Antal Doráti Society ADL 315 [2 CDs: 92]
Alan Pettersson (1921-1980)
Symphony No 7 (1967)
Symphony No 10 (1972)
Eight Barefoot Songs (arr. Antal Doráti) (1943-45)
Stockholm Philharmonic/Antal Doráti
Swedish Radio Symphony/Antal Doráti
Re-mastered from LPs (1969-74) first release on CD

Antal Doráti Society ADL 316 [58]
Antal Doráti (1906-1988) Piano Concerto (1975)
Ilse von Alpenheim, (piano)
San Francisco Symphony Orchestra/composer
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) Piano Trio No. 1
Ilse von Alpenheim (piano); Arion Ensemble

Antal Doráti Society ADL 323 [63]
Antal Doráti Cello Concerto (1977)
Antal Doráti Two Enchantments of Li Tai Po (1957)
Robert Jamieson (cello), John Langstaff (baritone)
Minneapolis Symphony/composer

Antal Doráti Society ADL 325 (2 CDs) [94]
Antal Doráti Chemin de la Croix (The Way of the Cross) – cantata (1955)
P E Deiber (narrator) J Mars (baritone) Marie Luce Bellari (alto)
Orchestre National and Chorus de l’ORTF/composer
Paris premiere, live

Antal Doráti Society ADL 337 [2 CDs: 100]
Three Great American Third Symphonies
Roy Harris (1898-1979) Symphony No. 3 (1937)
William Schuman (1910-1992) Symphony No. 3 (1941)
Interval Talk by these three composers with Fred Calland
Aaron Copland (1900-1990) Symphony No. 3 (1946)
National Symphony Orchestra, Washington/Antal Doráti

Antal Doráti Society ADL320 [60]
Harald Sæverud (1897-1992) Symphony No.8 Minnesota (1958)
Ernst Toch (1887-1964) Symphony No.4 (1954)
Minneapolis Symphony/Antal Doráti
rec. live, 18 October 1958 (Sæverud), 12 November 1954 (Toch)
Northrop Auditorium, Minneapolis, USA

Antal Doráti Society ADL 346 [59]
Doráti in Dallas: 1945
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 – 1827) Symphony No. 3 Eroica (1804)
William Schuman (1910-1992) Prayer in Time of War (1943)
Elizabeth Bollinger, Susan Arling, Perry Askam, Gabor Carelli, North Texas College Chorus, Dallas Symphony / Antal Doráti