BRAHMS: Alto Rhapsody, Op. 53. Vier ernste Gesänge, Op. 121. Sapphische Ode, Op. 94 No. 4. Botschaft, Op. 47 No. 1. Two Songs for Contralto with Viola Obbligato, Op. 91. SCHUMANN: Frauenliebe und -leben, Op. 42.
Kathleen Ferrier, contralto; London Philharmonic Male Choir and Orch/Clemens Krauss; John Newmark and Phyllis Spurr, pianists; Max Gilbert, viola
NAXOS 8.111009 (B) (ADD) TT: 71:12

HUMPERDINCK: Hänsel and Gretel
Elisabeth Grummer (Hansel); Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (Gretel); Josef Metternich (Peter); Maria von Ilosvay (Gertrud); Else Schürhoff (The Witch); Anny Felbermayer (The Sandman/The Dew Fairy); Loughton High School for Girls Choir; Bancroft's School Choir; Philharmonia Orch/Herbert von Karajan, cond. Highlights rec. 1928-1937 sung by Conchita Supervia, Ines Maria Ferraris, Gerhard Hüsch, Elisabeth Schumann, Meta Seinemeyer and Helen Jung
NAXOS 8.110897/8 (2 CDs) (B) (ADD) TT: 2:07:21

BEETHOVEN: Sonata No. 22 in F, Op. 54. Sonata No. 23 in F minor, Op. 57 "Appassionata." Sonata No. 24 in F sharp, Op. 78. Sonata No. 25 in G, Op. 79. Sonata No. 26 in E flat, Op. 81a "Les Adieux."
Artur Schnabel, pianist
NAXOS 8.110761 (B) (ADD) TT: 66:04

BEETHOVEN: Sonata No. 27 in E minor, Op. 90. Sonata No. 28 in A, Op. 101. Sonata No. 29 in B flat, Op. 106 "Hammerklavier."
Artur Schnabel, pianist
NAXOS 8.110762 (B) (ADD) TT: 72:49
(NOTE: Only 8.110761 is available in the U.S.)

Of these four Naxos CD restorations from the archives – all of them remastered with painstaking care by Mark Obert-Thorn – first prize goes to the collection of Brahms and Schumann by contralto Kathleen Ferrier (1912-1953). In a career of only 11 years before she succumbed to cancer at the age of 41, Ferrier became a legend, in part because she defied Walter Legge’s attempts at EMI in 1944-45 to mould her interpretations, and switched to London/Decca in 1946. Her brief but indelible, inpeccable trove of mono recordings for Maurice Rosengarten’s fledgling company culminated in Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde and three of the five Rückert Lieder with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Bruno Walter. The year was 1952 and she was already suffering the onset of the disease that killed her not only cruelly but in her prime. On this disc (with a generous 71+ minutes of playing time) we have her first orchestral recording: the 1947 Alto Rhapsody of Brahms to Goethe’s text, made in London with the Philharmonic and its Male Choir under the cosseting hand of Clemens Krauss.

I was put off just two months ago by Stephanie Blythe’s prosaic singing of this same work, citing Ferrier as one of three artists whose versions were landmarks. But, truth to tell, it was the memory of Ferrier – without documentation at hand – that served me as a benchmark for more than 40 years. Now, thanks to Naxos and Obert-Thorn (who discovered that all of Ferrier’s disks, 78s, LPs and CDs, were underpitched, and he therefore transferred them with stunning vibrancy of tone at the standard A = 440 Hz), we have the real article to move us, along with Brahms’ Four Serious Songs from 1950, and two more Lieder as well as Songs with Viola Obbligato dating from 1949. However, the glory for me is Schumann’s Frauenliebe und -leben cycle, recorded in July of 1950, during the same week as Brahms’ Four Serious Songs, with superb John Newmark the pianist. She may have sung this cycle even more beautifully in concert as Malcolm Walker claims in his program note, but that is unimaginable, listening today to these eight songs with their poignant piano postlude, “of a woman’s love, marriage, motherhood and finally bereavement” in Walker’s words. This CD belongs in every collection of great singing and interpretation.

I once owned but hadn’t really remembered EMI’s 1953 mono recording of Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel. The first version of that charming if overlong opera was the New York Metropolitan’s first commercial recording, in an English translation for American Columbia under Max Rudolf’s direction, with Nadine Conner and Risë Stevens as the children. It disappeared from circulation rather quickly, not undeservingly. But EMI’s 1953 follow-up was still being listed in the 1990 Penguin Guide of Compact Discs: not only that but as the preferred version (over a Cologne version in stereo led by John Pritchard, and Solti’s high-powered but hardly charming Vienna version). Missing from the list, however, was an EMI stereo remake also with the Vienna Phil under André Cluytens that costarred Anneliese Rothenberger as Gretel and Irmgard Seefried as Hänsel – a needful and welcome difference in soprano timbres markedly absent from the Legge/Karajan collaboration a decade or so earlier. When I put on Naxos’ disc I remembered all too vividly the child-voiced affectations of Schwarzkopf as Gretel (why am I reminded of Lili Tomlin?). They were offputting 40 years ago and have not become more ingratiating with the passage of time. And while Elisabeth Grümmer as Hänsel was a spinto of great dignity in other roles on discs, here she could have sung the Mother instead. Actually, the two singers’ timbres were often indistinguishable when Schwarzkopf wasn’t overacting. The irony then and still was that sweet-voiced Anny Felbermayer sang both the Sandman and the Dew Fairy, whereas she would have made a fine foil as Gretel for Grümmer’s heavier Fach. But then she wasn’t Legge’s wife, or given the Schwarzkopf build-up. Please don’t mistake me: in 1954 and numerous times after during the ‘60s. I heard Schwarzkopf with great pleasure and sometimes great emotion in concert, recital and opera: her Four Last Songs of Strauss with Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony, both on Thursday night and Friday afternoon, were incomparably beautiful and unmannered to boot. Her Mignon-Lieder of Hugo Wolf could tear your heart out on a vocally poised day; only Seefried sang Schubert’s “Seligkeit” more beguilingly, and Schwarzkopf’s “Plaisir d’amour” in the ‘50s was the decade’s most beautiful. But her Gretel was a serious mistake, Legge-inspired I have little doubt; and since Karajan was conducting the opera for the first time ever, probably he didn’t risk correcting the unintentional comedy. The rest of the cast is par for the Humperdinck course, but the recording was not one of Douglas Larter’s golden several. The sound is a little (how to say it?) pudding-y, despite Obert-Thorn’s ministrations. But there is a bonus on side 2 for vocal collectors (Humperdinck’s third act lasts just under 42 minutes) -- 20 minutes of historical excerpts beginning with the start of Scene 1, sung (in Italian) by soprano Ines Maria Ferraras as Gretel and the inimitably bewitching Conchita Supervia as Hänsel, recorded at Milan in 1928. The father’s “Besenbinderlied” follows in a vivid version by Gerhard Hüsch (with an unidentified Mutter), recorded at Berlin in 1937. Next comes soprano Elisabeth Schumann’s overdubbed end of Act 1, both leads sung most fetchingly, made in London in 1935. A mediocre Witch’s “Hurr hopp hopp hopp” in Act 3, arranged for orchestra, and the siblings’ Waltz sung by Meta Seinemeyer and Helen Jung with the Berlin Staatsoper Orchestra under Frieder Weissmann, dating from 1929 for Odeon, ends this Appendix a tad anticlimactically.

The Naxos issue of Arthur Schnabel’s complete Beethoven sonatas, recorded between 1932 and ‘35 in Studio 3 at Abbey Road, London, has reached all but the last three – Opp. 109, 110 and 111, to which his “Diabelli” Variations and two more discs of shorter works are yet to be issued. bringing the final total to 11 CDs. Here the smaller, not to say lesser, sonatas impress the most (I write this not having heard intervening sets since Vol. 1), although Schnabel’s “Les Adieux,” Op. 81, remains a classic version, along with the two-movement E minor, Op. 90. But Vol. 8 with the latter also contains the two least attractive performances of Beethoven by him that I know: a finale in the A major Sonata, Op. 101, not only technically messy but expressively berserk, and what has to be the dirtiest performance ever recorded, as piano playing, of the mighty “Hammerklavier,” Op. 106. Not only does Schnabel tend to rush the tempi – or seem to – except in the slow movement, but the concluding Fugue is chaotic, music as gnarly as anything Beethoven wrote including the Grosse Fuge, Op. 133 for string quartet. I have treasured since 78-days versions I could find stateside that Wilhelm Kempff began recording in 1935 (neither of his complete postwar versions, the first in mono, later in stereo, matched the early strength of tone or firmness of touch). A couple or so years ago I discovered three CD reissues on French Dante that included Opp. 106-111 – nowhere close to the restorations of Obert-Thorn but nonetheless sonorous enough if the gain is boosted. I put on the “Hammerklavier,” in which Kempff’s tempi are virtually identical throughout to Schnabel’s, and listened four times – in the process learning a piece I could never begin to play in my keyboard days as a teen, not even the slow movement as written, and realized what a superlative performance Kempff’s of 1936 was! Schnabel’s Volumes 7 and 8 on Naxos, meanwhile, also include his powerful “Appassionata.” But if truth be told, what Artur Rubinstein recorded in RCA Victor album 848 was not only finger-perfect but musically convulsive. I have never heard it more grippingly played. For those who want all of Schnabel’s 32 (and be advised that the “Diabelli” to come is probably his greatest solo recording of Beethoven), be aware that his enduringly stellar reputation was based on mind and musicality, not on fingers, or for that matter on consistency. Otherwise, keep an eye out for those Dantes by Kempff, if they turn up anywhere. No dedicated Beethovenian should be denied their depth of insight.

R.D. (January 2005)