Leinsdorf in Cleveland, 1946

Erich Leinsdorf

Erich Leinsdorf was only 31 when named the music director of the Cleveland Orchestra in 1943, in succession to Artur Rodziński. But he had already achieved success as an assistant to Bruno Walter and Arturo Toscanini, and at the Met after coming to America.

Leinsdorf's Cleveland reign was to be short and uneasy. He was drafted soon after his appointment, and by the time he returned, the board and the public had shifted their affections to George Szell, who had excelled as a guest conductor.

There are, however, a number of remembrances of Leinsdorf's tenure in the form of a series of recordings he and the orchestra set down in February 1946 - after Szell's appointment as his successor.

Today we look at two of the longer works they took before the microphone - Schumann's Symphony No. 1 and Rimsky-Korsakov's Antar - together with a three shorter works only issued on 78.

Schumann - Symphony No. 1 (Spring)

Veterans like me who recall Leinsdorf's later, impassive podium manner may be surprised to discover that the young conductor was notably volatile on some of these discs. His reading of the Schumann Spring symphony is nothing if not urgent. I coincidentally listened to some of Herbert von Karajan's Schumann the other day, and that dignitary's grandiloquent air could hardly be different from Leinsdorf's straightforward approach.

Leinsdorf's Schumann has never been considered a competitive reading, but I enjoy a conductor who presses ahead in this symphony, as he does. The orchestra was then in a state of flux due to the war, with turnover of about 50 percent in a few years. Nonetheless, the ensemble does sound in good form. That said, the orchestra had but 84 members at the time, and its strings were considered a relatively weak point.

Rimsky-Korsakov - Antar, Suite for Orchestra

Leinsdorf was known for his interesting programs; here, he somehow talked Columbia into setting down Rimsky-Korsakov's wonderful but even today neglected Antar, a suite for orchestra that Rimsky initially called a symphony. (The conductor had tried to interest the Columbia folks in a George Antheil work, but they demurred.)

The Cleveland performance was to be the second complete recording; Piero Coppola had done one with the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra in 1933. Victor had Pierre Monteux set down a competing version in San Francisco only a few weeks after the Cleveland sessions.

As with the Schumann, Leinsdorf's manner is insistent from the first bar. Where some conductors lean into the exotic qualities of the score and its underlying tale, Leinsdorf's approach is to begin developing tension immediately.

The Clevelanders again play well.

Mozart, Schubert, Josef Strauss

To fill out the program, I've added three works issued as singles. One 78 coupled Mozart's Minuet (K. 409) with some of the ballet music from Schubert's Rosamunde. The second encompassed a performance of Josef Strauss' lovely Music of the Spheres waltz.

The Schumann and Rimsky works first came out in 78 albums. I transferred those works from LPs in my collection. In the process, I discovered that my Schumann 10-inch LP sleeve actually contained a Bruno Walter Beethoven performance, so I resorted to a good-sounding 12-inch reissue from the mid-50s. The Antar comes from the 10-inch LP edition. I remastered the singles from lossless needle-drops found on Internet Archive. The sound is very good on all of these records.

The download includes a variety of cover images, including scans of both 10-inch LPs and the front of the 12-inch album.

Note (July 2024): this has now been remastered in ambient stereo.

LINK