Schubert: Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D759 'Unfinished'

This concert was given as a memorial to the British publisher, liberal humanitarian and music-lover Sir Victor Gollancz (1893-1967). The founder of the influential Left Book Club, Gollancz started his own publishing company in 1927 which came to specialise in left-wing and American books. He was also a prolific writer on political and humanitarian subjects and, eventually, on music. His life was informed by his unconventional religious beliefs – a combination of the Judaism into which he was born, his individual version of Christianity and readings into other faiths. This motivated a life-long activity in human rights issues. It was typical of Gollancz to have been a campaigner both for rescuing Jewish victims of Nazi persecution (and the first to predict a six million death toll) during the Second World War and for giving increased aid to German civilians once the war was over, contesting Field Marshal Montgomery’s plan to allow the population only a little more than concentration-camp rations.

The repertoire for the concert was chosen by Gollancz’s widow Ruth and his daughter Livia and represented all his favourite composers bar Verdi. The programme opened with an appreciation by his friend, The Observer music critic Peter Heyworth, and incorporated quotes from Gollancz’s own writings on the music being performed.

The Schubert, Beethoven and Mozart were old friends of Klemperer’s repertoire; he had first recorded the Unfinished and the Beethoven item with the Berlin Staatskapelle in the 1920s, re-recording them with the Philharmonia in the 1960s. The Love Scene from Roméo et Juliette harked back to Klemperer’s Strasbourg days under Pfitzner when, in 1910, he gave the complete symphony its local première.

The concert programme ended with Gollancz’s praise of music from his 1952 autobiographical sketch My Dear Timothy. ‘Why has no one ever included, among the various “proofs” of the existence of God, the musical? Music is as much mimesis, imitation, as any other of the arts: Beethoven doesn’t invent anything, he perceives something and tries to reproduce it. Then how does it happen, what Beethoven tries to reproduce in, say, the E flat quartet? Can anyone imagine that it happens accidentally?’

No less an interpreter of Bruckner than Günter Wand once called the Fifth Symphony ‘the most perplexing work in the composer’s canon’. Under Otto Klemperer performances of the Symphony (which he had substantially to relearn when the new Robert Haas edition restored a 122-bar cut in the finale) were always something of an event, even if audiences outside Austria and Germany – especially American ones in the late 1930s, and Walter Legge in the 1950s – at first found the work something of a trial.

Klemperer first conducted the Symphony in June 1927, in his last days as general music director at the Wiesbaden Opera. He repeated this programme in October 1932 when he had become sole director of the Berlin Staatskapelle concerts, ignoring a request from Furtwängler to substitute another symphony to avoid duplication with the Berlin Philharmonic later in the season. Enthusiastic reviews preferred Klemperer’s ‘sharper outlines and clear, cooler light’ to Furtwängler’s ‘essentially romantic’ approach. The Berliner Börsen Courier found that ‘Klemperer gave the enormous Symphony all the splendour of colour, the pathos, the hymn-like fervour it calls for. The structure was entirely clear, never before has one experienced the intellectual unity of the finale so strongly... precisely because Klemperer never exaggerated... everything was contained by a calm that comes with complete maturity’. It was Furtwängler who had to change his programme that season.

This is now the ninth performance of a Klemperer Schubert Unfinished to be preserved. It follows an early 1924 studio version with the Berlin Staatskapelle (one of Klemperer’s first discs), the EMI Philharmonia recording of 1963, and ‘live’ performances in Budapest, Turin, Jerusalem, Munich, Vienna and London (the last two also available on Testament). The Symphony was always a Klemperer favourite and one which responded well to his characteristic forward woodwind balance... Klemperer’s choice of the Symphony to open the programme for Bruckner’s Fifth made for a less abrasive, perhaps more relevant start to the concert than the Beethoven and Mahler he would have preferred before the war.

Melodiya presents recordings of the outstanding Soviet conductor Alexander Melik- Pashayev.

His performing career at the USSR Bolshoi Theatre lasted more than 30 years and made up a whole era in the life of the famous company. His numerous recordings of opera sets, including those awarded with prestigious foreign prizes such as Borodin’s Prince Igor, Prokofiev’s War and Peace and Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, are very well known. However, he is less known as a symphony conductor, but Melik-Pashayev’s concerts with the Bolshoi orchestra were some of the brightest ones in Moscow’s eventful music life. Melodiya revisits this part of Melik-Pashayev’s conducting legacy.

Schubert’s last two symphonies are ambitious in scale and brimming with striking ideas, though only two movements of the Symphony No. 8 were finished and the score rediscovered and first performed 43 years after the composer’s death. The ‘Great’ C major Symphony marks the summit of Schubert’s achievement in the form, combining his unforgettable lyrical gift with the spirit of Beethoven. Michael Halász has been acclaimed for his “delightful performances” of Schubert. (Penguin Guide on 8553094, Symphonies 3 and 6)

Rarely mentioned in the same breath as his illustrious colleagues Talich, Kubelík and Ančerl, Karel Šejna (1896-1982) was perennially second-in-command, yet despite failing to receive the credit he deserves he too played a crucial role in shaping the history of the Czech Philharmonic. Initially solo double-bass of the orchestra, he began conducting upon Václav Talich’s request and in 1939 was officially named its second conductor. And he also remained deputy after the departure of Talich, who was replaced by Rafael Kubelík, as well as after Kubelík’s emigration, when Karel Ančerl was appointed (originally against the orchestra members’ will) to the vacant post of chief conductor. Consequently, still playing “second fiddle”, Šejna went on to conduct dozens of concerts and make numerous recordings, which today rank among the finest in the Supraphon archives. Period critics branded him a flexible and vivid conductor who always required an understanding of the style and consistently worked with detail. In 1972, Šejna rounded off a half-century of work for the Czech Philharmonic with Mahler’s Symphony No. 4. Šejna’s sensitively remastered recordings from 1950-1962, from the bracing Mozart played “with a light hand” to Mahler’s fourth, are now released by Supraphon for the first time on CD.

Recorded live at the Philharmonie, Berlin, January 1977

Between 1976 and 1978, Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra made recordings of the complete Schubert symphonies for Decca, as well as some of the incidental music for Rosamunde. Other than the Schumann symphonies, it was the only symphony cycle this tremendous Decca artist made for the label. The recordings were all made in the Mann Auditorium and were all produced by Ray Minshull, who, together with John Culshaw and Christopher Raeburn, worked extensively with Mehta during his exclusive Decca years. 29 April 2011 marks the 75th birthday of Zubin Mehta and this cycle is being issued as a homage to this great musician in his birthday year. Volume 1 contains the first four symphonies as well as the mighty Eighth, the ‘Unfinished’.