These Recordings Have a Familiar Ring

A half-dozen years ago, manufacturers of the then-new digital compact disc decreed that CD represented the ultimate in recording technology and would-- could --therefore propagate only the newest and latest. Sorry, no pre-stereo recordings. Ciao, Toscanini. Auf Wiedersehen , Furtwangler. At least that gave us reason to hold on to some of our 12-inch black vinyls.

But in 1989, ‘historical reissues’ are no longer synonymous with recordings from the 1970s but have come to include the same, ancient material--extending back even to pre-World War I vocals--that quickly became part of the microgroove revolution 40 years ago.

The recording classics are immutable and keep returning, whatever the latest technological wrinkle. Scratchy 78s resurfaced as scratchy LPs and they, in turn, are now transformed into scratchy CDs--although less scratchy, thanks to the efforts of musically sensitive engineers and the little silver disc’s imperviousness to surface wear.

Technology may change, but it has not created a new Caruso.

These musings are inspired by the latest generous release of EMI/Angel’s Great Recordings of the Century (GROC to the initiated), remasterings of recordings dating from the mid-1920s to the mid-’50s. Recordings that, like Godzilla (and Caruso), refuse to die.

In the “they don’t make ‘em like that any more” category are three GROC tenors. Lauritz Melchior, with a collection of Wagner arias recorded between 1928 and 1931 (69789), should make the CD generation marvel, as did their LP-reared predecessors, that anything human could emit such gigantic, stirring, sustained, vibrant sounds. Or that there was ever a sweeter-voiced, less sentimental yet more moving interpreter than John McCormack of Irish ballads and other home-and-hearth tidbits. Imagine craving another chorus of “Pale Hands I Loved Beside the Shalimar,” one of numerous treasures in this 1930-’40 collection (69788).

Then be seduced by the artful manipulation of that most suave and worldly pracitioner of the Viennese operetta aria, the ultimate golden glottis, Richard Tauber, captured by the microphones in his glorious prime: 1927-1932 (69787).

One becomes wary of greatly hyped matter more often discussed than reissued, such as the work of the young Yehudi Menuhin, drooled over in books but deprived of widespread recirculation by the erratic career of the mature artist.

Well, Menuhin was a blooming wonder at age 16, as evidenced in 1932 recordings of the six solo sonatas and partitas of Bach (63035, two CDs) where sovereign technical command is joined to tremendous communicative power.

No less striking is the 16-year-old’s lovingly probing treatment of the Elgar Violin Concerto, with the aged composer conducting the London Symphony. The coupling (on 69786) has Beatrice Harrison as the compelling protagonist in Elgar’s Cello Concerto, again under the composer’s baton.

Considering the availability of some awful post-prime playing from violinist Jacques Thibaud and pianist Alfred Cortot, one could be forgiven cynical anticipation of their collaboration on the three centerpieces of the French repertory: the duo-sonatas of Franck, Debussy and Faure (63032).

Again, GROC offers a stunning reproof to the doubters. The playing (from 1927 and 1929) is silken in tone, incomparably idiomatic, with a tasteful romanticism that overdoes none of the “enhancing devices”--above all the employment of expressive violin slides--that can make a modern listener wince at the mere thought of old-style playing.

GROC cannot resist resurrecting the classic conductors’ confrontation--interpretive armageddon, the ultimate faceoff: the mystical master of Romantic subjectivity, Wilhelm Furtwangler vs. old clear-eyes-in-a-level-head, the composer’s humble handmaiden, Arturo Toscanini.

From Furtwangler we hear the oft-reissued 1952 Vienna Philharmonic studio recordings of Beethoven’s First and “Eroica” symphonies (63033) and the “Pastoral,” coupled (on 63034) with a dim-sounding, live 1948 Beethoven Eighth with the Stockholm Philharmonic.

The clever folks at EMI have obviated hackneyed comparisons with the aged Toscanini of the NBC Symphony recordings. Rather, they take us back to live, late-1930s performances with London’s BBC Symphony: Debussy’s “La Mer” and Elgar’s “Enigma Variations” (69784) and the Brahms Fourth Symphony and “Tragic Overture” (69783).

These recordings project the intensity familiar from later Toscanini outings, but lack their freneticism, with suppler phrasing and even, in a hugely dramatic and lyrical Brahms Fourth, some string portamento!

The career of conductor Guido Cantelli, Toscanini’s protege but interpretively very much his own man, which ended with his death at age 36 in a 1956 plane crash, is recalled on a pair of GROCs made with London’s Philharmonia Orchestra.

These ears have forgotten what to listen for in Tchaikovsky’s “Pathetique” and “Romeo and Juliet” other than scrappy execution, sluggish tempos and rhythmic flab, none of which is in evidence here (69785).

That Cantelli’s was a distinctive interpretive intelligence can be gauged from the coupling of Brahms’ Third Symphony (the only one of these GROCs recorded in stereo)--taut yet majestic-- and a Schumann Fourth notable for its propulsiveness and textural clarity (63085).

The “what did they see in this?” question may arise in conjunction with a (mostly) 1930s collection of Bach concertos in which the soloist and conductor is Swiss pianist Edwin Fischer (63039).

The question is answered with the observation that hardly anyone else was playing this music then, and that those few who did probably didn’t play it with Fischer’s contempt for Romantic indulgence.

Finally, a treasure from another short-lived artist, who became a cult object after succumbing to leukemia in 1950 at age 33: the Rumanian pianist Dinu Lipatti.

Lipatti was an unlikely hero. His finically honed repertory was small, his public appearances relatively few, his style the very antithesis of flamboyance. Yet he touched the sensibilities, as a tragic poet, perhaps--in the vein of Chopin himself, whose B-minor Sonata Lipatti plays with such touching songfulness and simplicity, along with works by Liszt, Ravel, Brahms and Enesco, on GROC 63038: one of the piano buff’s recorded indispensables.