It wasn’t a major label—no rival to Columbia, say—but it was what some call a “major minor” label, and it was a distinguished one. Westminster Records produced LPs from 1950 to 1965. Now many of those albums are back on compact disc under the rubric “Westminster: The Legacy.” This is one of the many gifts of the remarkable, shiny, hardy CD: since its advent, we’ve had an explosion of “historic recordings.” The truism should be repeated that never before has so much music been available to so many.
One of those represented in the new series is Artur Rodzinski, the Polish-born conductor who was one of the keenest musicians of his time. He is rather underrepresented on compact disc—despite our blessed explosion—and he deserves to be better remembered. From 1933 to 1948, he led the Cleveland Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in succession. He raised standards everywhere he went. Rodzinski was an unsparing autocrat, in the old, now-vanished mold, but he knew what he was doing, and he got results.
Such results can be heard on his Westminster disc of Dvorak’s Slavonic Dances. These are terrifically successful pieces, taking off from Brahms’s Hungarian Dances (with which they’re often paired on recordings). There is a competing set from Fritz Reiner, leading the Vienna Philharmonic (on London Classics). Reiner and Rodzinski had much in common, temperamentally, musically, and managerially. Each was feared but thoroughly admired. In the Dvorak, Rodzinski conducts the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the house that Sir Thomas Beecham built (or rather, one of them).
Rodzinski gives these dances all the character and spirit they are due. They are pieces of many moods, and the conductor captures them all. Some he gives a country, rustic flavor, to go with the elegance and polish of the concert hall. He demands— and, of course, gets—great ensembleship, with each section of the orchestra precise and in balance. We hear tonal richness, bracing dynamics, and rhythmic brilliance (essential for this music). The playing is exciting, too, with the RPO players obviously relishing their time with the maestro.
The key to conducting music like this is to treat it—unfailingly—as great music. Rodzinski accords each piece both dignity and a dance-like joy. Rarely has Dvorak been so well served. If this is what the age of the dictator produced, bring it back!
Another of the Westminster artists was Clara Haskil, one of the great darlings of twentieth-century pianism. By “darling” I mean that she was beloved, revered, by an audience that particularly appreciated spirituality and a simple honesty in music. She belongs to that class of pianist that includes Dinu Lipatti, Myra Hess, and maybe Lili Kraus. (Is there something about women? That is perhaps the subject of another article—but the short answer is no.) Haskil was one of those of indeterminate nationality, first Romanian, then Swiss. She studied with some of the finest minds and talents of the age: Fauré, Cortot, Busoni. She was a remarkably complete musician.
The Westminster disc begins with Mozart’s D-minor concerto, a work made for Haskil: it demands spirituality and a simple honesty. Her playing conveys a remarkable sanity and serenity, a state of being composed. It is pure. She has no excesses or tics. Her phrasing is perfect (in a word), and so is her tone. The concerto has both divinity and an earthly bite. Ever sensitive, Haskil attends to each detail, but she isn’t fussy or prissy. Her playing is astonishingly limpid and even. In the opening Allegro, she gives us a cadenza of almost unbelievable grace and perception. The Romanza is simple, lovely, transcendent. This is very much a recording for other pianists to learn from, and Haskil was, indeed, a “pianist’s pianist.”
There are two great surprises in this performance. The first is that the collaboration of the conductor Henry Swoboda and the Winterthur Symphony Orchestra—not exactly immortal names—is excellent. And the second is sadder: that the closing Rondo fails. Here Haskil becomes mousy, too retiring, lacking in blood, that earthly bite. She isn’t so much limpid as limp. This mars a recording that might otherwise belong in the pantheon. But then, perhaps it does anyway.
What surely belongs in some pantheon is the Scarlatti playing that follows the Mozart. There are eleven sonatas—or esercizi, exercises, as the composer called them— on this disc. Haskil’s Scarlatti album (1950) is famous among piano lovers and record collectors, and its return is special cause for rejoicing. All the pianist’s hallmarks—refinement, purity, musicality—are on full display. Her playing is clear and beautifully woven, or interwoven. She is not too literal, but rather musically apt. She imparts romantic qualities, but they’re never out of place. The sonata in C-sharp minor is ghostly; other sonatas are positively heavenly. Haskil makes full, unabashed use of the piano, and she settles any question, as far as I’m concerned, about whether this music should be played on the modern instrument. It fairly must.
A remarkable spirit, Clara Haskil. Does she have any heirs today? One would have said Murray Perahia—but in mid-career he came under the influence of Horowitz, and changed. One wonders whether the old Perahia—of which there’s still a portion, to be sure—will return.
A second Westminster conductor was Pierre Monteux, the long-lived Frenchman with the bushy mustache. It was he who conducted the famous premiere of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in 1913. He was also a noted teacher of conducting. In his eighty-seventh year—1962, two years before his death—the company captured him with the London Symphony Orchestra in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Monteux was known primarily for French and Russian music, but he was a fine conductor of Beethoven, as of everything else.
Monteux’s opening movement, while unorthodox in certain ways, is a thing of beauty and inspiration. It has clarity, strength, and majesty, with all problems nicely worked out. The playing is precise, natural, and unburdened. We feel we’re in for an unusual, light-filled Ninth. The Scherzo, unfortunately, is fraught with technical errors. It is sloppy, lacking crispness and fire. It is sort of spongy, tired, and should have been re-done. The Adagio is smooth and adequate, but it’s not especially yearning or revelatory. It also includes some odd fluctuations in tempo.
The final, choral movement features a very strong quartet: Elisabeth Söderström, Regina Resnik, Jon Vickers, and David Ward (a Scottish bass, now essentially forgotten). There is much to admire about the old man’s handling of this movement. Not least, there is a touch of holiness about it, and a translucence. When the strings introduce the famous theme, all is radiant. But the movement is plodding in spots, and the execution, as in the Scherzo, is ragged. Vickers, however, is his usual heroic self, one of the best Beethoven singers, in any vocal range, we’ve ever had. The singing of the quartet generally is sensitive, warm, and moving. Yet the performance seems poorly rehearsed, and the movement is strangely uneven, full of fits and starts: it has moments of uplift, and it has moments—long ones—of indifference and mediocrity.
I wouldn’t attribute this unevenness to Monteux’s advanced age: he was commanding, as well as angelic, until the end. And this recording, despite its serious defects, is worth listening to, for Monteux is a powerful musical mind, even when he’s not at his sharpest.
A conductor very much at his sharpest —at his towering peak—was Hans Knappertsbusch in his Westminster recording of Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony (and more). “Kna” directs the Munich Philharmonic, and his Eighth is a marvel. It has everything it needs, chiefly musical and spiritual vitality. At every moment in this long symphony, Knappertsbusch is alert. That may seem unremarkable, but it isn’t: Knappertsbusch never puts the music on “autopilot” or “cruise control,” as is so common in conducting, particularly in Bruckner. Under this baton, the work is taut, not sprawling, not flabby, not overly languorous. This is Bruckner with a Beethoven-like oomph. Of course, there is reverie when appropriate; it’s not that the reading is without introspection; it’s that it is always moving, having a purpose.
The Scherzo lifts you out of your seat. Everything is perfectly timed, perfectly weighted. It gives the impression of riding a horse, of letting the animal freely gallop, while keeping a proper grip on the reins. The thrill of Bruckner is easily lost when inferior conductors are involved, and this recording restores that thrill, for those who may have forgotten. As for the Adagio, it is a long, gorgeous thing, whose internal logic the conductor must understand, as Kna surely does.
The Finale is—quite simply—stunning. The nobility and strength here are shattering. Knappertsbusch was a glorious combination of head and heart—an instinctual musician with a healthy respect for the score. He brings out the triumph—the spiritual triumph—that is perhaps at the core of Bruckner. The Beethovenian shaking fist, followed by triumph. Knappertsbusch was a big musician—not unlike Otto Klemperer—who shone in a big work like this.
There are smaller pieces of Wagner on this disc, starting with the Lohengrin Prelude, ethereal, shimmering, dreamlike. This account does not have great beauty of sound or precision of technique, but it is musically unimpeachable. Then we have the Siegfried Idyll, Wagner’s little birthday gift for Cosima. Kna gives it the right intimacy.
Last, there is the Prelude to Parsifal, the opera for which Knappertsbusch was best known. To say that he understands this music is saying a lot—many don’t. Most important, he doesn’t back off the Prelude, isn’t afraid of it, doesn’t quake around it. He plays it relatively straightforwardly, which results in the natural sublimity. As with all sacred music, the holiness is inherent. It doesn’t need to be drawn out; it will emerge when allowed (and sometimes even when not). Kna builds layer upon layer in an exemplary rendering.
There’s more in the Westminster “Legacy” line, and still more to come in future releases. Already we have—in addition to the discs reviewed above—the young Daniel Barenboim playing Beethoven, the worthy but obscure conductor Hermann Scherchen in the Mozart Requiem, and the return of the practically unknown violinist Erica Morini. The compact disc, and the lives it resuscitates: how did we ever live without it?
