Blasts--and a Bust--From the Past

It was with dread that we record buffs would greet the black diamond marking that, in the Schwann Catalogue of the LP era, indicated recordings about to be deleted.

We knew that those involving “legendary” performers would return. Others, remarkable but without benefit of big-name participants, were less likely candidates. And those odd discoveries, emanating from unknowns--shooting stars, in some instances--were likely to disappear without a trace.

Nowadays, any recording stands a chance of returning. Record companies, scouring their vaults for reissue material, are themselves rediscovering buried treasures and sharing them with us--at mid-price or less.

For example, an unlikely-to-reappear marvel has shown up courtesy of Supraphonet, the rock-bottom (that is, about $5 a disc) outlet of Supraphon, Czechoslovakia’s state-run label: a 1959 collection (1101) of all the Slavonic Dances by Dvorak, played by the Czech Philharmonic under Karel Sejna, the orchestra’s junior conductor under Karel Ancerl in the 1960s.

These are performances of unrivalled splendor, by virtue of the orchestra’s stunning virtuosity, equally evident in individual contributions and in the sonorous, impeccably crafted mass sound.

Sejna’s inspired, inspiring readings are fiercely, proudly joyous, his orchestra stomping out the sharply inflected passages with exhilarating rhythmicality and arching the lyric lines gloriously.

In the same vein of ensemble excellence and idiomatic uniqueness are Tchaikovsky’s last three symphonies, recorded, by Evgeny Mravinsky and his Leningrad Philharmonic, in London in 1960 and now available on two full-priced CDs (Deutsche Grammophon 419 745).

Mravinsky’s leadership is headily intense, with some tempos sufficiently fast and inflection so terse as to suggest that the project is about to run off the rails. The conductor keeps us in suspense, but his superb players make it all work without mishap, articulating clearly even at the hellish tempo chosen for the finale of the Fifth Symphony.

Other conductors might seem merely eccentric employing Mravinsky’s high-tension, high-wire methods. In these performances, however, the results are not only plausible in terms of revivifying spent warhorses, but also expressive because of Mravinsky’s odd predilections.

And my, what an orchestra--what a foreign orchestra, with its borderline hyper-lush strings and vibrato-laden brass! For the adventurous rather than the fainthearted listener--and not recommended to those who have never grown tired of the Tchaikovsky symphonies.

Easygoing, grandiose virtuosity of the kind dispensed by pianist Van Cliburn is at a premium today, if it exists at all--a thought inspired by the reissued 1960 pairing of the Schumann Concerto and the MacDowell Second Concerto, with Fritz Reiner and Walter Hendl respectively leading the Chicago Symphony in strong, sympathetic support (RCA 60420, mid-price).

Cliburn’s playing is hugely, broadly lyrical and resplendent of tone, but there’s no shortage of rhythmic lift in his work, a fact that isn’t immediately apparent in the midst of those waves of gorgeous, burnished sound.

Anyone curious about Richard Strauss as a conductor of his own music should have that curiosity satisfied with a three-CD set in Deutsche Grammophon’s mid-priced “Dokumente” series (429 925).

In recordings between 1926 and 1941 with the Berlin State Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic and Bavarian State Orchestra--all of which play quite dreadfully--the conductor dozes and galumphs his way through his most familiar tone poems (Enrico Mainadari is the droopy cello soloist in “Don Quixote”), the suite from “Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme” and lesser bits, including the egregious “Japanische Festmusik,” written in 1940 to celebrate the Japanese Empire’s 2,600th birthday--music free of japonaiserie but loaded with garish Teutonism of both the sentimental and brassy sorts, rather like a miniature “Alpine Symphony” laced with “Rosenkavalier” outtakes.

As regards Strauss the conductor, it isn’t that his tempos were slow, but that his interpretations were so uneventful, so lacking in tension and grandeur, equally inattentive to the delicacy of the solo passages and the details within the tutti massiveness that a first-rate Strauss conductor--a Reiner or Krauss--could reveal.

Strauss claimed not to enjoy conducting his own music. It shows.