Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2, Ashkenazy/Klemperer, 1969
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Vladimir Ashkenazy, piano
New Philharmonia Orchestra
Otto Klemperer, conductor
Live concert, Royal Festival Hall
28 JAN 1969
During the "Indian Summer" of his long career, conductor Otto
Klemperer made relatively few concerto records compared to his
compendium of purely orchestral music. Perhaps this was due to the
relative lack of suitable pairings with soloists in EMI's stable,
perhaps the reason was the personality involved.
Klemperer recorded the Schumann and Liszt No. 1 Piano Concerti with
his longtime close friend Annie
Fischer; one would assume THEY got along together! With David
Oistrakh, a similarly strong
musical personality, he did the Brahms Violin Concerto, but in France,
not with the Philharmonia, the orchestra that Klemperer could most
call "his own." With Daniel Barenboim, who despite his youth was a
kind of kindred spirit, Klemperer did the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 25
and the Beethoven cycle. Years before, he had recorded Chopin No. 2
and Beethoven No. 4 with Novaes on Vox.
In concert, Klemperer performed more often in the concerto format,
because a concerted work was pretty much expected in most concert
programmes. Notable are Klemperer's collaborations with Claudio Arrau
in Beethoven with the Philharmonia. EMI had loosely planned for
recording Arrau and Klemperer but with Arrau's Beethoven records with
Galliera already on the market, chose to wait a while...and when they
were ready, their plans were upset by one or another of Klemperer's
many illnesses.
Among the works that Klemperer never recorded for a record company in
his entire career are the Brahms Piano Concerti. It has been written
that that EMI wanted to record with Arrau and Klemperer but that did
not happen before Arrau left EMI and signed with Philips. Fortunately,
tapes of broadcasts exist, preserving two performances of the Brahms
Concerto No. 2. The earlier one, from April 1954 in Cologne, is with
Geza Anda, who made a kind of specialty of this concerto. The Cologne
Radio Symphony performance is available in a multi-CD set with
Beethoven and Hindemith, for which it was to be the first of a series
of issues from Cologne on the Andante label. But alas, with Andante's
financial difficulties, it was not to be, though this set is still
available new from Amazon and CD Universe, among others.
Fifteen years later in London, Klemperer. the New Philharmonia and
Vladimir Ashkenazy collaborated on this same concerto. It was issued
on a CD by Hunt in the UK; but the company and its issues were short-
lived.
Here is a restoration of that performance from the Hunt CD, from the
collection of Simon Clark. It sounds as though Hunt did very little
in the way of enhancing the sound of tape from which they produced the
CD. It sounds like an amateur tape (though as we'll find out later in
an important restoration currently in progress, the origin of a tape
from the broadcaster is no guarantee of high quality). The overall
sound of the original is "honky" and though there is information at
the frequency extremes, it is far depressed. I've flattened out the
response and edited out some extraneous audience noises, though the
applause at the end of the last track remains, as there is no break
separating it from the end of the music.
The performance is leisurely, slower than the rather brisk Anda/
Klemperer Cologne performance. Part of this is probably due to
Ashkenazy; the timings of the movements on his commercial recording of
the concerto with Haitink on Decca (infamously attributed to Joyce
Hatto and Rene Kohler in that scandal) are only slightly shorter in
three movements, and longer in the third. Especially in the first
movement, I felt the tempo to be too slow at first; but Klemperer may
have said, as once he told recording producer Walter Legge about his
unique tempo in the third movement Ländler in Beethoven's Sixth
Symphony, "You will get used to it." I did.
One more technical matter here: it seems strange for a record made
from a 1969 broadcast to be in mono. But that, it is.
Four FLACs:
weary flake
Isn't the Hunt CD of a 1960 performance and not 1969? re:,
a review of the Cologne performance on Andante by
Mortimer Frank:
http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=109299
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===================================================
Peter Heyworth's biography of Klemperer confirms the 1969 date.
Perhaps I've imprinted on some other, slower recordings of this
concerto (I have been looking for the
Ashenazy-Klemperer for years and when I found it, the source
encouraged me to share it); but
the Cologne performance sounds rushed, especially in the last
movement.
weary flake
> > > unique tempo in the third movement L�ndler in Beethoven's Sixth
> > > Symphony, "You will get used to it." �I did.
> >
> > > One more technical matter here: it seems strange for a record made
> > > from a 1969 broadcast to be in mono. �But that, it is.
> >
> > > Four FLACs:
> >
> > >http://www.mediafire.com/?tzlubozvf187o
> >
> > Isn't the Hunt CD of a 1960 performance and not 1969? re:,
> > a review of the Cologne performance on Andante by
> > Mortimer Frank:
> >
> > http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=109299
>
> ===================================================
>
> Peter Heyworth's biography of Klemperer confirms the 1969 date.
>
> Perhaps I've imprinted on some other, slower recordings of this
> concerto (I have been looking for the
> Ashenazy-Klemperer for years and when I found it, the source
> encouraged me to share it); but
> the Cologne performance sounds rushed, especially in the last
> movement.
The 1969 date does make more sense, and I'll take it the
date given on the Hunt CD is wrong.
weary flake
The information I gave was false, the Hunt CD clearly gives
the correct 1969 date.