Samuel Barber Antonin Dvorak Richard 1 Strauss - Bruno Walter Edition StraussBarberDvork (7 tracks) +Album Reviews

Great performance, but a caveat...

Xyp | Cincinnati, OH | 08/24/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Let me be another in the long line of people to shower praise on Bruno Walter: it seems that every time the man stepped on the podium to record, the results were at the very least exemplary- and when he was at his best, the man couldn't be beat. It is unfortunate that many of his recordings were made before the advent of stereo, and that is my only caveat for the potential buyers of this disc. Many of the Bruno Walter Edition discs are in warm Columbia stereo that will bring you back again and again- but there are also a few that aren't, and this is one of them. Know that you will be getting mono sound that bends under the weight of this great conductor and orchestra in the more intense sections of the Strauss and Barber. For historic readings of the Strauss in stereo, try either the Szell (sony) or Reiner (rca). I do recommend this CD, but only to those enthusiasts of these particular pieces or those who do not mind dated sound."

Walter bet and won except for Dvorak!

Hiram Gomez Pardo | Valencia, Venezuela | 12/16/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"At first glance, to relate Richard Strauss with Bruno Walter arouses all kind of questions. However when a gentle friend made me this gift two days ago, I decided by myself to leave aside any prejudice and listen it with devoted attention. The result was surprisingly effective. Don Juan is fluid, expressive and rewarding. Walter creates the required atmosphere to show us the mystery, charm and tragedy of this mythic personage. Death and transfiguration exudates the nerve and poetic elusiveness like just a few versions (Victor De Sabata `s version with the Vienna Philharmonic in 1953 in Salzburg is my first choice, by far).

Barber's First Symphony was another formidable finding. In honor to the truth I didn't know this work, but the approach given by Mr. Walter was excellent. The Opus has no cuts between its four movements. There are sublime moments and once I listened I wondered why this work is not performed with major frequency in the concert halls.

Finally I must confess Dvorak's reading was entirely disappointing. I really think Walter felt uncomfortable and absolutely out of focus with this famous composer. A mere comparison with Vaclav Talich, Vaclav Neumann or Rafael Kubelik -for instance- carves in relief the idiomatic misunderstanding and the lack of expressive affinity between composer and director.

This was the only stain in this album.

"

It's odd to have the Barber, but everything is superlative

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 12/15/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"There is one transcendent performance on this CD, the Strauss Death and Transfiguration, recorded in excellent mono sound on the same day in 1952 as the Don Juan preceding it. The Don Juan is fine--not fierce or virtuosically beating its chest as we came to expect from Karajan onward. Instead, Walter gives us smaller-scale musicmaking with expert phrasing and a few abrupt jolts (it's hard for this piece not to play itself once the rocket is launched).

The Tod und Verklarung is a much trickier piece, one that can easily sink into bathos or sanctimony. Walter has a magic touch, though. He actually sustains interest in the opening section, with its agogic heartbeats and dying murmurs. The stroke of death and subseeqquent exaltation are honestly moving--how rare. Walter's urgent tempos help, and the NY Phil. plays superbly.

The music of Samuel Barber was conducted by all the major maestros, including Toscaninni, around WW II before he had the misfortune to be labeled a harmonic reactionary. Walter gives an intense, committed reading of the Sym. #1 (mono, 1945) with the wartime NY Phil. sounding quite good, and the sonics as well. Barber's lyric gifts were strong from the start, although his version of modernism was barely ahead of Strauss's, if at all. There's too much semi-amateur writing for this symphony to really endure.

The colleciton is capped by a single Dvorak Slavonic Dance from 1941 (recorded on the same day as the excellent Moldau found on another Bruno Walter Edition CD). It's a four-minute afterthought, especially when one hears how surprisingly stodgy it sounds. That aside, this is one of the high points in the Sony Walter series and his only venture into Richard Strauss."

Rare and indispensable stuff for the Walterite

Discophage | France | 08/05/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This CD belonged to the second batch of releases in the Bruno Walter edition that Sony released in the mid-1990s and it contains significant material for the Walterite. As the liner notes aptly recall, Walter's relation to Strauss dates back from the not-yet-then conductor's early years. At the end of the 1880s Walter, aged 14, had heard of the young composer's (then 25) growing reputation, and he attended the world premiere of Death and Transfiguration, conducted by Strauss himself with the Berlin Philharmonic at the invitation of Hans von Bülow. Walter was bowled over and the composer was to be a major influence on his early artistic development. The liner notes go on trying to establish the existence of a rivalry between Walter and Strauss in the latter's capacity as a conductor and man of influence, but I find that the claim is not really borne out by the documents that are quoted, except for the episode when, much later, in 1933, Strauss declared himself ready to step in in replacement of Walter who had been brutally barred by the Nazis to conduct a concert with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. But in 1947 Walter staunchly defended Strauss against accusations that his Metamorphoses were a secret homage to Hitler.

Strauss' Don Juan and Death and Transfiguration, both recorded at the same sessions in December 1952, are if my information is correct Walter's second and last official commercial recordings, after those made with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in 1924 (Death and Transfiguration) and 1926 (Don Juan). There are other, live recordings now available on various labels, but none (and no commercial recording) from the stereo era. These two pieces are in fact the only Strauss of significance Walter did in the studio (there is also, apparently an early Dance of Seven Veils with the Berlin PO from circa 1930) and there is not much Strauss by him anyway (add live performances of Symphonia Domestica, Till Eulenspiegel and excerpts from Rosenkavalier, and that's it). For all these reasons, this is important stuff for the Walter (or Strauss) admirer.

Walter's forays into 20th Century music were rare (well - granted, Strauss "technically" belongs in that category, but like Mahler and Rachmaninoff I tend to place him in the 19th Century "Late Romantics" department. I guess the dividing line could be the kind of musical training these composers received, steeped or not into 19th Century tradition - but then Stravinsky, with all his Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov influences, would also be a "19 Century" composer - so I guess it is also a quesiton of the kind of musical language used, although the sometimes neo-Romantic Barber is somewhere at the cusp. Oh well...). One finds live recordings of Bloch's Evocations-Suite (NYPO, 1941), Busoni's Violin Concerto (with Adolf Busch and the Concertgebouw in 1936), Debussy (La Mer with the NYPO in 1941, Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun with Philadelphia in 1947 and the LAPO in 1949), Hindemith (Sinfonia Serena, NY 1948), Pfitzner (excerpts from the opera Palestrina, recorded at the Vienna Opera in 1937), Ravel (a 1937 concert of the Left-Hand Piano Concerto with the Concertgebouw and the Concerto's commissioner Paul Wittgenstein - with superbly powerful conducting and shamefully sloppy piano playing), Vaughan Williams (Tallis Fantasia, NY, 1953), and a 1940 concert of Vincent d'Indy's Ishtar and Ravel's Rhapsodie Espagnole with the NBC SO has recently surfaced.

It is all the more surprising then to find Walter recording in the studio Barber's First Symphony. Walter had not premiered the work (dedicated to Menotti, it was completed in 1935 and played in December 1936 by Rome's Philharmonic Augusteo Orchestra under Bernardino Molinari, with an American premiere by the Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Rudolf Ringwall the next month), but he did create the revised edition from 1943 with the Philadelphia Orchestra, in February 1944, and made the present recording in January of the next year (the liner notes are regrettably silent on Barber - I owe these informations to Wikipedia, with gratitude). It is a reading of great power and passion, again indispensable to the Walterite. The specifically Barberite can also find it on a Pearl collection entirely devoted to early recording premieres of the composer's works: Barber Premiere Recording.

"

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