Boult and Jochum Conduct Brahms

Two Johannes Brahms symphonies today, with similar approaches although from different conductors and eras. First we have a follow-up to a recent post of Brahms' Symphony No. 2, as led by Sir Adrian Boult - the Symphony No. 1 in a splendid 1972 performance from the same cycle.

Then, a worthwhile version of the Symphony No. 3 as conducted by Eugen Jochum in a 1939 recording from Hamburg.

Boult Conducts the Symphony No. 1

"Judged by this performance, Sir Adrian [then 83] seems younger than ever. His Brahms performances have lost nothing of muscular buoyancy and exuberance in allegros ('bracing' is perhaps the best word), while his insight goes ever deeper, without in the least trying to make points." So wrote Trevor Harvey in The Gramophone when the record was issued. And even 50 years later, the performance seems fresh.

The performance is striking from the first bar. Harvey: "The very opening, for example, with pounding timpani is not very slow; it sounds perfectly marvelous without one feeling that the conductor is out to make the greatest effect possible."

Sir Adrian

The entire work is just as fine, the finale in particular - beautifully balanced and controlled but with great impact. The London Philharmonic is in prime form, and the recording could hardly be better. This symphony - unlike the second - was done in the more resonant Kingsway Hall. My transfer comes from a Korean pressing of the original issue.

1973 HMV ad

Jochum Conducts the Symphony No. 3

Today's reading of the Third Symphony comes from Hamburg, where Eugen Jochum (1902-87) was the music director from 1934-49. In his New York Times obituary for the conductor, John Rockwell called him "one of the last representatives of the traditional German school of conducting.

"From his earliest recordings, Mr. Jochum's interpretive profile seemed well formed. He was neither an intense literalist like Arturo Toscanini nor a brooding mystic like Wilhelm Furtwängler, whom he much admired. His conducting - in Bach, Haydn, Beethoven and Brahms as well as Bruckner - flowed purposefully but genially forward, responding to the music without imposing his will upon it in a self-conscious way."

Eugen Jochum in 1941

Although he was relatively young, Jochum was a seasoned recording conductor in 1939, having started making discs as early as 1933. He was to record the first and third Brahms symphonies in the Musikhalle Hamburg for the Telefunken company, turning to the other symphonies later in his career.

This transfer comes from a 1949 LP release on the US Capitol label, one of a series that the label reprinted from the Telefunken catalogue. The critic of The New Records was impressed: "Here is as fine a Brahms Third as we have ever heard. Jochum gives it a well knit, vital reading that is interesting, exciting, and satisfying, and all this without doing malice to the score. His tempo is a shade brisk occasionally, but his conception of the music is so valid, and his projection of it so convincing, that it stands as a great performance."

The sound is good for the time, and is now enhanced by ambient stereo. The Hamburg orchestra was not as skilled (or perhaps as large) as Boult's LPO, but more than adequate and responsive to Jochum's conducting.

The conductor has appeared here previously with Jean Françaix's Serenade for Twelve Instruments, also from Hamburg. It is now available in a new ambient stereo version.

Wieland Wagner in 1954 with three notable conductors: Joseph Keilberth, Eugen Jochum and Wilhelm Furtwängler

Jean Françaix

Here are two delightful neoclassical pieces by Jean Françaix, recorded shortly after their composition. Unexpectedly - at least to me - both come from German orchestras.

The soloist in the Concertino for Piano is Françaix himself. The music manages to be memorable even though the whole piece lasts less than eight minutes. Telefunken recorded this with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1937. The conductor was Leo Borchard, who became the BPO music director for a few months after the second world war, until a sentry killed him by accident.

Jean Françaix

Eugen Jochum led the 1939 recording of the Serenade for 12 Instruments during his residence as Hamburg music director from 1934-49.

This record is one of a series that Capitol sourced from Telefunken circa 1950 - many of them recordings by the Concertgebouw Orchestra under Willem Mengelberg. All have this same drab cover style - particularly unsuited to Françaix's sparkling music.

Note (September 2023): this recording has now been remastered in ambient stereo.