Search - Cantelli, Philharmonia Orchestra :: Conducts Rossini, Mendelssohn & Beethoven

A collection up to Cantelli's high standards

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 02/21/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The notes to this Testament reissue speak of Cantelli in the following moods during the recording sessions: distraught, volatile, demanding, irritated, and frustrated. Not an easy customer. Because he died at 36 we'll never know if Cantelli might have grown out of the role of short-tempered little dictator, but in any case I rarely hear a smile in his conducting, and yet as with George Szell, who exhibited the same moods, Cantelli's recordings are often relaxed, even serene.



The main work here is a Mendelssohn 4th Sym. recorded by EMI in good mono sound in 1955. It's broader and less frenetic than the one by his mentor Toscanini and exhibits a lot of patience in phrasing the second movement and finale. I don't hear a lot of perosnality, but the playing is alive and musical in eery bar.



The opening item is a La Gazza Ladra Over. from 1952, in somewhat dimmer, boxy sound, which I expected to be fast and tense. It is, if not to Toscanini's degree, but Cantelli was good at high-energy perforamnces, as he is here. The last item is not complete. It consists of the last three movements of the Beethoven Fifth. Completion of the recording was halted because of construction noise next door to the studio. The date was May, 1956, and Cantelli died that November in a plane crash before he could return to London and lay down the first movement. The mono sound is quite good, if a bit distant. Tempos are the same as on classic recordings by Bernstein, Karajan, and Carlos Kleiber, and Cantelli's version is certainly comparable to theirs. In all, this is one of Testament's best reissues of EMI material that was out of print or, in the case of the Beethoven, never released to begin with."