Great Conductors: Felix Weingartner (1863-1942)
Beethoven: symphony No. 9 “Choral” • Consecration of the
House Overture
Weingartner made one of the first commercial recordings of
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony for Columbia in 1926 with the London Symphony
Orchestra and a team of British soloists and chorus singing the finale in
English. A subsequent 1935 recording was the first in his famous series of
Beethoven recordings made in Vienna before the Second World War and immediately
established itself as a landmark performance that has rarely been out of the
catalogue ever since. Its special qualities offer a vivid experience in terms
of interpretative values, the performing style of the time, and the art of
comprehensively communicating the very essence of a masterpiece with a
spontaneous sense of renewal and discovery.
As
ever with Weingartner, his control of pulse, the generation of line and tension
throughout individual movements and the work as a whole, together with
expressive flexibility and overall architectural span, emerge as distinctive
hallmarks. The music lives and breathes with no distorting view or personality
imposed upon it, to remain a naturally voiced, honest statement totally at the
service of the composer’s own inspiration. To create the illusion of no
intermediary, a paradox of self-effacement stamping its own special character,
is one of the pinnacles of the conductor’s art, achieved by very few
practitioners. Even within the exalted company of other great interpreters of
the work, notably Furtwängler and Toscanini, this particular Weingartner
recording remains an object lesson in how to present a difficult work in the
best possible light irrespective and sometimes almost because of passing
technical imperfections. This is especially true of the vocal contribution,
which in this particular symphony could almost be viewed as a case of no
strain, no gain. For both soloists and chorus, Beethoven’s almost impossible
demands to sustain phrasing, tone, intonation and diction are somehow an
intrinsic part of the work’s struggle and of pushing limits to extremes. Within
the context of such an affirmative and uplifting finale, it seems futile to
criticise Viennese tenors for a moment of ragged ensemble when confronted by a
fugal entry of such fervour that it pins the listener to the wall with
collective understanding of the spirit of Schiller’s text.
It
is interesting to watch Weingartner in action in a performance of Weber’s
Overture Der Freischütz filmed in the Salle Gaveau with the Paris Symphony
Orchestra in 1932. The overriding impression is of great control achieved
through a combination of mainly rigid posture, impassive facial expression, and
sparing, but very precise and eloquent baton technique, in many ways
reminiscent of the reserved style of Richard Strauss captured on film. His
eyes, however, betray total engagement, flashing cues like lasers among the
attentive players. At key moments, baton and body language suddenly erupt to
galvanise the performance, most notably in the triumphant closing section. This
sudden ignition at climactic points is key to Weingartner’s pacing and
marshalling of cumulative energy. He is the shrewdest judge of compelling
attention while keeping his powder dry to then make the moments of release all
the more powerful and overwhelming. The end of the Ninth’s finale is kept
almost dangerously contained until the very final bars, which suddenly produce
the most thrilling rush of adrenalin in an exultant jump for joy.
Weingartner
was respected as much for his musical scholarship as his conducting. With the
publication of his treatise On Conducting in 1895, he had already led a
reaction against the post-Wagnerian Von Bülow school of interpretation that
played on flamboyant romanticism and wilful exaggeration whatever the period of
a work’s composition. This was followed in 1906 by a monograph on the
performance of Beethoven symphonies that in some respects became the progenitor
of new editorial research on the composer leading to the radical quests of
period instrument performance in the latter part of the twentieth century.
Despite his renown for exploring the veracity of Beethoven’s scores, however,
Weingartner was not beyond altering them himself. Although he gradually
abandoned the practice, it is interesting to note the prominent modification of
the trumpet line to double the first violins at the end of the first fortissimo
outburst that launches the finale. It is repeated with even more cutting effect
in the same passage preceding the entry of the solo bass. Fascinating too that
in the film of the Weber no less than two timpanists are much in evidence
playing together with no suggestion that their presence is for mere cinematic
effect. In many instances these alterations, although much more sparingly
deployed later in his career, serve as a reflection of interventionist
sensitivity to enhance internal balance and as compensation for developments in
sound resulting from changes in instrument manufacture.
Weingartner’s
mastery of instrumental balance is expertly demonstrated in the brief
processional march following the opening ceremonies of the overture The
Consecration of the House. Weaving through emphatic chordal interjections, the
chattering bassoon commentary that is so often garbled or lost within the
texture altogether, here very audibly urges the rest of the orchestra on
towards the main Allegro. The conductor transforms a passage of potential
idiosyncrasy into something both apposite and wickedly jaunty, an insight
perhaps not lost on Berlioz just a few years later in a very similar passage in
the Marche au supplice from the Symphonie fantastique, where the bassoons
fulfil exactly the same rôle. Composed to introduce a revised version of The
Ruins of Athens incidental music for the opening of the Josephstadt Theater in
1822, not long before work began in earnest on the Missa Solemnis and the Ninth
Symphony, it is dressed by Weingartner in suitably festive colours with much
élan.
It
is salutary, heartening and even a little humbling to reach the culmination of
Beethoven’s orchestral output in the company of a conductor of such integrity
and vision. This nearly seventy-year old interpretation can still resound in a
new century to offer a palliative to worldly struggles and strife with
supremely musical vitality, love, and unquenchable spiritual joy. For once the
word legendary is not tainted by hyperbole.
Ian Julier
Mark Obert-Thorn
Mark Obert-Thorn is one of the world’s most respected
transfer artist/engineers. He has worked for a number of specialist labels,
including Pearl, Biddulph, Romophone and Music & Arts. Three of his
transfers have been nominated for Gramophone Awards. A pianist by training, his
passions are music, history and working on projects. He has found a way to
combine all three in the transfer of historical recordings. Obert-Thorn
describes himself as a ‘moderate interventionist’ rather than a ‘purist’ or
‘re-processor’, unlike those who apply significant additions and make major
changes to the acoustical qualities of old recordings. His philosophy is that a
good transfer should not call attention to itself, but rather allow the
performances to be heard with the greatest clarity.
There
is no over-reverberant ‘cathedral sound’ in an Obert-Thorn restoration, nor is
there the tinny bass and piercing mid-range of many ‘authorised’ commercial
issues. He works with the cleanest available 78s, and consistently achieves
better results than restoration engineers working with the metal parts from the
archives of the modern corporate owners of the original recordings. His
transfers preserve the original tone of the old recordings, maximising the
details in critical upper mid-range and lower frequencies to achieve a musical
integrity that is absent from many other commercially-released restorations.
Producer’s Note
The present transfers were made from American Columbia
discs: “Full-Range” label pressings in the case of the Consecration Overture
and a mixture of those and pre-war “Microphone” label shellacs for the
symphony. The latter was originally set down over four days; the final four
sides containing the choral portion of the finale were made at a separate
session with a noticeably different recording balance from that used for the
rest of the symphony.
Mark Obert-Thorn
