Some Old Friends in New Guises and at New Prices

The thoughtful new management at BMG Classics, successor to the old RCA Victor recording company, has finally gotten around to restoring to us some of RCA’s principal treasures of the 1960s, including the complete Beethoven Quartets in the celebrated performances by the then-youthful Guarneri Quartet.

The interpretations retain their allure; it may even be enhanced due to the scarcity these days of an ensemble sound of such sheer voluptuousness as the Guarneri’s.

Certainly, the quartet’s in-progress Beethoven cycle remake for Philips is thus far inferior in both spirit and quality of execution to what the group gave us between 1966 and 1969 and which BMG/RCA now offers as three midpriced, three-CD sets: The Early Quartets (60456), Middle Quartets (60457) and Late Quartets (60458).

These have always been controversial interpretations, the identical quality being praised by one critical faction, excoriated by another: their unremitting beauty, in terms of ensemble sound as well as an interpretive suavity that can border on the cloying.

Missing is a measure of the nervousness, the element of danger lurking beneath the surface of even the blithest of the early quartets.

But while it is difficult to disregard that failing, it is even more difficult to resist the players’ technical mastery and their obvious pleasure in what they are doing.

The Guarneri doesn’t tell us the whole story. But then these needn’t be the only recordings of the Beethoven quartets in one’s collection. The counterbalance would be the Alban Berg Quartet’s more taut, unsentimental traversal on EMI/Angel.

The latest segment of the Guarneri Beethoven on Philips pairs the quartets in F minor, Opus 95, and A minor, Opus 132. The players--personnel is the same today as it was at the founding in 1964--sound tired, playing loose (but not particularly fast) with rhythms and, in the case of first violinist Arnold Steinhardt, with occasional edginess of tone and suspect intonation.

We are further in BMG’s debt for reissuing the complete symphonies of Ralph Vaughan Williams, a composer currently out of favor even in his native England. Those who love his music in all its splendor--and particularly for the ruminativeness that makes it anathema to many listeners--have long been partisan of the finely detailed, expressive and lively readings by Andre Previn and the London Symphony that first appeared 20 years ago on the RCA label.

In BMG/RCA’s midpriced reissues, the works are coupled as follows: No. 1, “A Sea Symphony” (60580); No. 2, “A London Symphony,” the “Wasps” Overture and “Concerto Accademico,” the latter with the admirable James Buswell as violin soloist (60581); No. 3, “A Pastoral Symphony” and No. 4 (60583); No. 5 with the Bass Tuba Concerto, soloist John Fletcher and “The England of Elizabeth” (60586); Nos. 6 & 9 (60588); Nos. 7, “Sinfonia Antartica,” and 8 (60590).

It remains astonishing that Previn, then a relatively inexperienced conductor and certainly not a specialist in this repertory, could prove such an incisive, sympathetic interpreter of these elusive scores.

BMG deserves praise not only for bringing these worthy performances to a new generation of listeners but as well for not messing with--that is, “improving”--their recorded sound, which emerges here with all the raw immediacy one recalls from the original LPs.

From another BMG subsidiary, Eurodisc, comes a return engagement for the five Mendelssohn Symphonies (6937, three CDs) in performances by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under its music director--and New York Philharmonic music director-elect--Kurt Masur. These low-key, finely honed and, as it turns out, durable interpretations were briefly circulated in this country in the 1970s.

Again, there is recent competition from the same forces, with Masur and his orchestra having completed the first installment, the First and Fifth (“Reformation”) Symphonies (Teldec 44933).

The new performances are slicker--the Gewandhaus strings are a more cohesive lot than they were 20 years ago--and Teldec’s recording has a resonant sheen that Eurodisc’s tighter sonics do not permit. But Masur’s hand was lighter in the old days, and listening to the present orchestra’s rather sour principal oboe is a bit of a chore.

It’s worth noting, too, that the Eurodisc set can be purchased for only about $3 more than Teldec’s single disc.