The Spin Doctor Europadisc's Weekly Column

For many people, the festive season is the perfect time of year for as good old moan. Whether it’s how good Christmases used to be (before modern life mucked everything up), the miserable end-of-year weather, or the state of the nation, nothing seems to brighten up the long winter nights than a licence to complain. In tribute to this alternative Christmas spirit, the Spin Doctor has decided to air a couple of pet gripes, as well as a few suggestions for comfort listening to escape the winter blues.

Gripe no.1: Availability
Scarcely a week goes by that we’re not asked by customers to obtain a classic recording recommended by one of the classical music magazines or Radio 3’s ‘Building a Library’. And nine times out of ten (or so it feels), that particular disc – praised to the rafters by erudite reviewers – will be out of print, available only as a download, or buried away in a vast box set that will cost them more than their monthly disposable income. Although one is tempted to call out the magazines and reviewers for not choosing a performnace that’s more readily obtainable, a survey of best recordings of a particular piece of music would be impoverished indeed if it were limited to what’s available in single-issue format at any given moment.

The fault is rather with the record companies, who let acclaimed performances drift in and out of the current catalogue seemingly at random, often repackaging them in ever more extravagant and costly boxes, with little thought for the customer who might be just one disc short of, say, a particular pianist’s Beethoven cycle, and wants to complete the set without shelling out a small fortune. Of course, there’s always YouTube, the (vanishing number of) second-hand stores, and online marketplace sellers. But this is of little help to the sizeable number of classical music listeners who don’t have easy access either to well-stocked charity shops or a computer.

A couple of recent examples include Rudlof Kempe’s classic Dresden account of Richard Strauss’s Don Juan (available only as part of a – mercifully cheap – complete set of his Strauss recordings on Warner), and Brahms’s Violin Sonatas recorded for Decca by Josef Suk and Julius Katchen, and currently unavailable as either a single disc or part of a larger set. Not for long, we sincerely hope...

Gripe no.2: Conductors – Who do they think they are?
For many years, the Spin Doctor has joked that cover artwork of conductors ought to show them as they appear to audiences during performances, i.e. from the rear. But it’s always their great big mugs that stare out at us from CD and LP covers, most ridiculously Karajan in his jet-set, all-flying, all-sailing, leather-jacket-wearing phase of the 1970s. With tongue slightly less in cheek, we’ve grown rather tired of maestri mounting the podium in what looks like a high-end, silk-lined, boutique, made-to-measure version of the Nehru suit, when the poor souls of the orchestra have to sport uncomfortable-looking evening wear, usually with white-tie get-up for the men.

Of course, one understands the need for a conductor to feel comfortable, especially in a job that relies increasingly on ease of physical gesture rather than the many hours of rehearsal available in days of yore. But don’t the rank-and-file musicians deserve (and need) to play in comfort too? And, if they can make music in outfits straight out of the early 20th century, why on earth shouldn’t conductors? To use a seasonal metaphor, what’s sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander. Or are conductors so very special that they deserve special exemption? Soloists may present a special case, but a conductor, to paraphrase the great Rafael Kubelík, is essentially an extra member of the orchestra, and should not be beyond dressing as such.

In fairness, this maestro exceptionalism goes back quite some years now, probably at least as far as Toscanini and Bruno Walter. But the problem has now reached epic proportions, and many of the current guilty parties can hold a candle to neither...

Gripe no.3: Poor documentation
Many budget-price labels (yes, there are still a few) get by on negligible documentation for their releases, in an effort to keep costs down. This is understandable: you pay for what you get. But our particular beef is with those premium-priced releases from the larger music companies who seem to think it acceptable to issue new recordings with sub-par booklet notes, often puff pieces or ‘as told to’ interviews with next to no information about the actual music that’s been recorded, little insight, minimal if any sung texts, and tiny print on ill-judged background colours that might look swanky, but are almost impossible to read from. Texts and translations ‘available online’ are useless for those who don’t have access to a computer, and in any case the links often lapse after a year or two.

Please, record companies, think about your customers! Most of them aren’t art directors who wouldn’t be seen dead at a classical concert unless work’s paying: they are dedicated music lovers who save hard to be able to afford your products, and the least they deserve is performances and accompanying bumf of decent quality and a high standard of informativeness.
Having got all that off our chest, and quite independently of our weekly reviews elsewhere on the Europadisc website, here are a few of the ways we’ll be keeping musically warm over the coming weeks. Schubert, like Haydn, is one of those composers one can turn to for comfort when all else fails, and for us one of the quintessential Schubertian masterpieces is his ‘Nacht und Träume’, D827, of 1825. With its deceptively simple accompaniment and magical halfway modulation from B major to G major, this compact hymn to the world of night and dreams is the best alternative we know to a warm embrace.

For musical indulgence, we'll probably return to Ravel’s solo piano music as recorded for Erato back in 2015 by Bertrand Chamayou, which still casts an utterly magical spell, whether in the formidable technical and musical challenges of Gaspard de la nuit, the limpid textures of Jeux d’eau or the neoclassical delights of Le Tombeau de Couperin. Of this year’s releases, Héloïse Werner’s astonishing Delphian album ‘Phrases’ has never been far from our CD player. And for the perfect seasonal album? It has to be the late Harrison Birtwistle’s Gawain, set at the Christmas court of King Arthur and his knights, and a perennial festive favourite in the Spin Doctor’s meagre hovel.

Recommended recordings:
- Ravel - Complete Works for Solo Piano (Chamayou) 2564602681
- Héloïse Werner: Phrases DCD34269
- Birtwistle - Gawain (ROH/Howarth) NMCD200