Search - Otto Klemperer :: Mozart Schubert Symphonies

The Other Klemperer

T. Beers | Arlington, Virginia United States | 08/05/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Most people today know Otto Klemperer only from his EMI stereo recordings which represent a kind of "Indian Summer" period in the great conductor's career. They are (mostly) treasurable performances that still sound wonderful in EMI's current CD remasterings. But the Klemperer of those recordings almost always delivered magisterial, broadly-paced performances that many people have always judged to be "too slow." I think that criticism is too blunt to do justice to what are, on the whole, some of the most insightful recorded performances of the great classics I have ever heard. But there is no question that Klemperer in his earlier decades was a more consistently dynamic conductor than he became later. Not that much remains of his music making back then. Klemperer made a (very) few commercial recordings in the 20s, and then nothing until Vox began recording him in Paris and Vienna in the late '40s. That Vox series ended in Vienna in 1952, just before the conductor signed his first contract with EMI's Walter Legge. Over the past 10 years, Vox has remastered all of its Klemperer recordings for CD, and this Mozart/Schubert coupling from 1950 (along with other CDs of Bach concertos and Mendelssohn symphonies) represents the final installment of the series. The two Mozart symphonies are fleet, fast and muscular. They are quite similar to "live" Klemperer performances of the same period (& to EMI's earlier mono recordings now available on the Testament label). The Schubert 4th also is quick and dramatic, although it rather seriously lacks charm; to my knowledge it is the only Klemperer recording of the piece. Klemperer has his French orchestras playing with noteworthy, un-Gallic precision. The 'Paris Pro Musica Orchestra' which plays the Mozart symphonies is/was a pseudonym for a studio band Vox assembled to make its early French recordings; the Lamoureux Orchestra which plays in the Schubert 4th was a very real and famous Parisian ensemble. The CD's sound quality is surprisingly good considering the original tapes were recorded over 50 years ago: the Mozart symphonies sound the best, the Schubert 4th is more constricted, but still highly listenable. (But certainly, the sound on this CD is much better than that offered on the companion Vox 2-disc set presenting Klemperer's fascinatingly athletic 1946 recordings of the Bach 'Brandenburg concertos.') Given the Vox price, Klemperer fans shouldn't hesitate, especially given the rarity of the Schubert."