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The Spin Doctor Europadisc's Weekly Column

The Shock of the Old (Part 1)
11th May 2021

11th May 2021

To their admirers they are objects of fascination and even veneration, collectible to the point of addiction, while to detractors they are incomprehensible, fatally flawed by inadequate sound quality and mannered, often wayward interpretative traits. Today, with more examples than ever easily available (though with an annoying habit of often being out of the catalogue just when you want a particular one!), historical recordings are big business for such a ‘niche’ market. Vastly improved techniques of sound restoration and pitch correction by specialists including Mark Obert-Thorn and Ward Marston typically remove decades of patina while preserving those qualities that make each example so special, from peculiarities of interpretation to the distinctiveness of timbre and balance. Dedicated labels including (to name but a few) Naxos Historical, Testament Records, Eloquence Classics, APR, Orfeo d’Or and the Barbirolli Society are hugely popular with collectors, and among online specialists selling direct to the customer, Pristine Classical – based in France – have a huge following.

So what is it that makes old recordings so fascinating? Is it just the comfort of hearing something one grew up with, repackaged to a format one can access with just a few clicks of a switch and compatible with modern sound systems? Or can these shadows from the past teach us something more about the music, its creators, performers, bygone audiences and society, and even ourselves? From the dawn of sound recording in the late nineteenth century, through the muffled sounds and cramped spaces of the acoustic era, to the often revelatory interpretations of the electrical era (starting in the mid-1920s), and the superior sound of late mono and early stereo on the magnetic tape of the post-war technological revolution, the topic covers a vast range. From the barely-perceptible voice of Brahms before he launches into one of his Hungarian Dances in December 1889, through landmark early recordings by the likes of Stravinsky and Elgar of their own music, to the ‘golden age’ of Cortot and Schnabel, Toscanini and Furtwängler, of Flagstad, Schwarzkopf and Callas, and even such treasurable examples of classic stereo as André Cluytens’s 1962 account of Daphnis et Chloé, with the still utterly French-timbred Paris Conservatoire Orchestra and its unmistakable French wind instruments.

Many of these recordings are not merely historical but also historic, marking significant moments in musical and performance history. Artur Nikisch’s 1913 recording of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony with the Berlin Philharmonic may not be the first complete recording of the work (that distinction actually belongs to Friedrich Kark and the Odeon Symphony Orchestra in Berlin some three years earlier), but as a rare example of the art of perhaps the most admired conductor of his time it is still a precious and remarkably compelling document. In 1926 Stravinsky and Pierre Monteux went head-to-head with rival ‘first’ recordings of The Rite of Spring (Monteux, who had conducted the work’s tumultuous premiere in 1913, pipped the composer to the post by three months); both accounts convey the frisson of a work that was still palpably ‘new’, its technical demands still posing formidable challenges to the musicians of the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris (Monteux) and the Orchestre des Concerts Walther Straram (Stravinsky).

This sort of excitement, generated by performances where there’s a clearly audible tension between the physical and expressive demands of the music and the technique of its performers, is one of many reasons that historical recordings can be so absorbing. The first complete recording of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, by Artur Schnabel, was set down for HMV between 1932 and 1935, when the pianist was already in his early 50s, yet the oft-noted fluffs in fingerwork (not nearly as frequent as some would make out) are less to do with technical shortcomings on Schnabel’s part than with the sense of élan and sheer velocity he taps into in this music – as few other pianists have come close to. It is the spirit (over and above the letter) of the score that is so abundant here, and a similar atmosphere of white-hot re-creativity inhabits many other key recordings from the age of electrical recordings. The famous recordings of Smetana, Dvořák and Suk made by the celebrated Bohemian (Czech) Quartet in 1928 contain moments of hair-raisingly forthright playing, with the players (including Josef Suk himself on second violin) often skating wildly across strings, employing the generous portamento characteristic of the period, as well breathtakingly elastic tempo variations which would now be thought de trop. All these features bear witness to an age where musical priorities were markedly different from those valued today: variety, volatility and excitement rather than blend, clarity and consistency were the key, and one can’t help thinking that, for all the subsequent advances in recording technology and playing technique, something immensely valuable has been lost in the process.

Perhaps the epitome of this style, certainly in the world of conductors, was Wilhelm Furtwängler, evident more often in his live than in his post-war studio recordings. Yet, as many of his subsequent imitators have all too often demonstrated, it is a style that is damnably hard to reproduce today – hence the immense value of the surviving recordings. The preservation of impossible-to-recapture playing styles is another reason why rare discs by not just composers themselves (Elgar, Stravinsky, Rachmaninov, Richard Strauss…) but also those musicians most closely associated with them are so important: Karl Muck in Wagner, Oskar Fried and Bruno Walter in Mahler, Ricardo Viñes in Debussy, and Kajanus and Beecham in Sibelius, all spring to mind.

With such a vast subject, one can barely hope to scratch the surface (if you’ll forgive the pun!), which is why we hope to return to it at frequent intervals, not least to consider something we’ve barely touched on above: singers, song and opera, which are generously documented from the earliest days of recording. If you have any particular areas of historical recordings you’d like us to explore, if you’re a fan or even if you find them maddening, do let us know!

Key recordings:

Beethoven - Complete Piano Sonatas (Schnabel) 9029597505

String Quartets by Smetana, Dvořák & Suk (Bohemian Quartet) PACD96058

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