Brahms - Tragic Overture; Reger - Variations & Fugue [Original recording remastered]

The other review concentrates on Boult's performance of the Beethoven and says that the rest of the disc may be as good. In fact, it's even better. I acquired the Schuricht concert on tape many years ago (it also included Mozart's Haffner Symphony) and was very surprised to find that the recordings were in stereo (my tape was very definitely mono and I don't think the BBC were broadcasting in stereo to any extent in January 1964 when the recordings were made) and the sound is very good indeed, much better than the Beethoven and fully the equal of most commercial recordings of the time. The prize is the performance of the Reger. He was one of Schuricht's teachers and generally gets a terrible press in this country, couldn't write a tune to save his life, thick and heavy orchestration, and terminally addicted to all the most boring and academic musical forms like, well, variations and fugues. In short he's regarded as the musical equivalent of a particularly stodgy German sausage and it must be said that quite a lot of his music tends to bear that out (I've never been able to get on with the Piano Concerto, of which Rudolf Serkin made a famous recording, which lasts for nearly an hour and where the pianist seems to need at least three hands and when it's all over I've always wondered if it's been worth the effort.) But there are some pieces which don't merit the caricature, principally the two great sets of orchestral variations, this one and the one on a theme by Mozart. Of course, if you can't write a tune yourself it helps if you write a set of variations on a tune by somebody else and in both cases the tunes are not only good in themselves but very suitable for variations. British orchestras never play them and I doubt if any member of the LSO back in 1964 had ever set eyes on the piece but they play it superbly, not just technically but with a real sense of delight and affection which may well have been partly relief at discovering that it was much more grateful to play than they'd expected, but was also I think a reflection of the affection that they had for the conductor which was very obvious from their response to him in the concerts that he conducted at the Festival Hall at the time. He conducted them first the previous year and on both those visits when there was only one Festival Hall concert, the BBC recorded them in separate concerts for later broacast on the Third Programme. (Does the 1963 concert exist in the BBC archives I wonder?) On the last visit in 1965 there were due to be three concerts but the doctors advised him to withdraw from the Mahler 3 he was due to conduct. The orchestra invited him back for two more concerts in the Autumn but he had to cancel. I feel very lucky to have been to two of those concerts and the first in 1963 remains the most riveting orchestral concert I've ever attended. Certainly this performance of the Reger is worth anyone's attention.

Let me say at once that I'm cheating - I don't have this disc and have not heard the Schuricht (i.e. the larger) part of it. But for years I have loved this very well structured 'Grosse Fuge' conducted by Boult, and I'd like to draw attention to it. It was previously available on an Italian Intaglio CD. It is such a difficult piece to get right, but here, in a live performance, it has great strength and a finely judged balance between the contrasting sections. It never becomes stodgy (the orchestral version easily can and often does) and it never loses its sense of direction. There is a most satisfying climax at the end, even if one or two of the Philharmonia violins anticipate the first phrase of their last statement (that is undoubtedly messy, for a moment or two). It's excellent to see this re-emerging, and for me, it justifies the whole CD - the rest of which may, of course be just as good!