Complete Mengelberg to be released on CD
OrchestrasDutch based Brilliant Classics have reached agreement with the Willem Mengelberg Society to release the complete remastered recordings of the controversial Concertgebouw conductor.
First off the presses are a 1939 Bach Matthaus Passion and Mahler 4th symphony.
Pretty much indispensable.
Yes the man was not fantastic as the conductor who was so important with R. Strauss Ravel and Mahler. But not talking about him when we are talking about Mahler is terrible mistake. There was someone before Kubelik and Bernstein….
Yes, he gave a complete Mahler cycle in 1920. The nine concerts were accompanied by great public acclaim, much like Stokowski’s series of 10 performances of the 8th Symphony in Philadelphia and New York in 1916. Which shows that Mahler was a huge hit with audiences at that time.
PLEASE don’t forget Mitropoulos either!!
I can recommend particularly the 1939 Matthew Passion as one of the most intense musical experiences out there. Not exactly historically informed…
There is so much desinformation in the HIP movement andso I have some doubts. Cherypicking a few things and ignoring the other ones is not helpful at all.
Hopefully not (but i fear it is) in the latest remastering by the WM society, which has been stereophonized. Sounds awful and blurry.
It is a terrible sounding remastering. A crime, with fake stereo and provided with an bad akoestic ambiance which has nothing to do with the originaliteit recording. Just forget this reissue!
A certain loudmouth critic says the Mengelberg Mahler 4 was not how Mahler would have interpreted it and is not ‘authentic’. But Mengelberg was there waching Mahler rehearse it, made notes in his own score about what Mahler did, and the critic wasn’t. Go figure.
Not to mention the heavenly singing of Jo Vincent in that Mahler 4th.
I’m looking forward to this. Has a release date been announced?
New digital masterings or the old ones?
This will surely be a very important issue of the recordings of a very important figure of the last century, regardless of his unfortunate political affiliations at that time.
That being said, we should also raise a cheer for Brilliant Classics. This largely unsung company has, for years, been issuing outstanding bargain-price releases, mostly of two kinds – modern digital recordings of lesser-known but excellent musicians and ensembles, and historic recordings of great artists. The repertoire is very wide – from established classics to works by lesser-known composers. There are also boxed sets, such as the (almost) complete Mozart and the (almost) complete Beethoven. The cost of such boxes is a tiny fraction of similar boxed sets by Philips (Mozart Edition) and DG (Beethoven Edition). There’s also a sumptuous Haydn assemblage on 150 CDs of major works (including complete Piano Trios, String Quartets, Piano Sonatas and Concertos) and lots more. I managed to pick up this set at a charity shop for the price of three first-class postage stamps and as I was carrying it home I became thankful that it was not the complete Haydn, the carrying of which would almost certainly have induced a hernia.
Brilliant Classics, both on volume of releases and quality of recordings, is probably now the leading independent classical recording company. Long may they be so.
Then there are the Nielsen Symphonies with the Janacek Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by the American Theodore Kuchar. I have seen only one review and it is never mentioned in reviews of new versions. These are outstanding performances, even as good or better than Luisi’s.
I always think of the Mengelberg that chose to tamper with Rachmaninoff’s score of the Third Piano Concerto in his infamous live performance with Gieseking that took place on March 28, 1940, that was first issued on CD back in 1987. Tympany rolls (not in the score) can be heard at 3:32 of the first movement, 8:41 of the second movement and 11:47 of the finale. Why he thought these “necessary” is beyond my comprehension.
The idea is that a conductor creates the music, and the composer is merely delivering the goods for the conductor to shine.
You can hear an excerpt at the bottom of this page:
https://www.nporadio4.nl/klassiek/maatwerk/adb69ea9-ba97-440f-925e-24358288fdd5/mengelbergs-matthaus-uit-1939-klinkt-weer-als-nieuw
You then have to click on the button called ‘speel fragment af’.
That fragment sounds unbearable…..it should be censored as cultural vandalism.
By “complete recordings” do they mean only the Concertgebouw ones, or they include the ones that survived from other bands such as the New York or Vienna Philharmonics?
In case anyone cares, here is some information from the Concertgebouw Archive regarding the
1939 Mengelberg live Mahler 4 recording.
It was of the 110th of 112 concert performances of the 4th he conducted with the Concertgebouw Orchestra.
It was the 25th of 27 concert performances of the 4th by Jo Vincent with Mengelberg and the Concertgebouw Orchestra.
Mengelberg’s 1939 Bach Matthaus Passion is incomplete (omits most of the arias).