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Really interesting article about Reiner, though I'm sure many here are familiar with Reiner's reputation as dictatorial and, at times, needlessly cruel. We often read that his recordings with the CSO were among the best ever. I'm wondering how those participating here feel about that. Do his recordings stand up to modern ones? Are they really that special?
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My significant other is an orchestral player (from Chicago, and he has played with CSO). A huge admirer of Reiner and the CSO of that era, he heard them live many times in his youth. One of his violinist friends recounts the tale of the fine principal flute player Ernest Liegel. In rehearsal one day, Reiner was apparently displeased with Liegel's playing, pointed at him and raised 2 fingers, all without breaking tempo or stopping. That was the signal that the musician was fired with 2 weeks notice. Liegel was fired just that quickly. Of course, these were the days before the musician's unions had as much power as they do today.For me, the CSO of that era is a great orchestra, and Reiner is a great conductor. I still treasure their Bartok, Mahler, Respighi and Strauss recordings.
Edits: 10/23/16
as commander of a Roman legion. Which explains why he gets "Pines" right. Almost alone among major conductors, he seems to have understood that legionnaires burdened with at least 70 pounds of gear and rations weren't likely to have double-timed down the Appian Way.
Judging by his approach to Ravel (I find his reading of "Rapsodie Espagnole" downright magical), I assume he must have served in Gaul.
Jim
http://jimtranr.com
I'm a fan, for the most part, of Reiner's Strauss, Bartok, Respighi, and Mahler. Earlier music, much less so. I don't think it's an accident that these were all leading active contemporary composers in central Europe during his youth and early professional career in Hungary and Germany in the early 20th century. Bartok was one of his teachers. Strauss was an important mentor.
Song of the Nightingale, Isle of the Dead, Rapsodie espagnole, Alborada del gracioso, Scheherazade (by general consent - I know Amphissa doesn't agree), Colas Breugnon Overture, Night on Bare Mountain, Marche slave, Rachmaninov First Concerto with Janis, Tchaikovsky First with Gilels. . .
Even that notorious Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto recording with Rubinstein (which led to their parting of the ways) is an outstanding example of the dynamism that Rubinstein was capable of when goaded on by Reiner's sadism. (Of course, Reiner even had the chutzpah to try the same kind of one-upmanship with Rachmaninoff himself, who quickly put Rat-Eyes in his place - LOL!)
And, while I'm thinking about it, how about Spanish music (Three-cornered Hat, El Amor Brujo with Price, etc.), or a couple of Beethoven symphonies (the Sixth and Ninth in particular)? I think Reiner was generally outstanding in a pretty broad swath of repertoire, even outside his axis of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Germanic and Hungarian composers
Somehow, I own most of those, and of course his versions are generally successful, but none are my favorites. One reason is, there's a lot of relentless intensity in many of those that wears on me. There are other reasons, but it's getting late. ;-)
And years later I heard that guy phone in a Brahms concerto, but, hey! It was in the sticks! (Providence, RI.)
My fave Scheherazade has been Dutoit's OSM; but, if you ignore the rest of the music-making, Herbie Karajannis had the best concertmaster, Michel Schwalbé.
IMHO.
JM
I remember during my student days he very briefly took the position of concertmaster of the NY Philharmonic on an interim basis before Glenn Dicterow took over, so of course I heard him live then.
The Reiner/CSO Scheherazade is imperfect in a number of ways IMHO, among other things it isn't served as well by the minimalist early RCA stereo recording techniques as were some others from that era. The violin solos are among the problems.
How old was he when you heard him in Providence?
So he would have been about 60.
I did not find his technique lacking; there was just a sense that he would have rather been somewhere else.
JM
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Although R-K is my favorite composer, Scheherazade is far from my favorite of his works. So I might defer to others on this question. ;-)
BTW, I got to hang out with Leon Spierer, another of the Karajan-era BPO concertmasters (besides Schwalbe) for a couple of days. He was a friend of my piano teacher and I had written the program notes for his recital in San Francisco. (He must have gotten some time off from the BPO to do the recital.) It's funny, but the only work on this recital that I remember now is the Schoenberg Phantasy, Op. 47 - a tough nut to crack, even for committed Schoenbergians.
And here he is!
I don't believe I ever heard that Maazel/BPO version either - it comes from a time when DG's recorded sound with the BPO was at its worst IMHO (when the Tonmeisters seemed to be thinking "the more microphones the better!"), so I'm sure that that influenced my decision not to investigate it. Maazel certainly had his moments - as an interpretation, it might be pretty good.
That's him..
And it ain't half bad.
I've read both the Philip Hart and Kenneth Morgan biographies, and the article you linked to provides a good overview of what it must have been like to play under this guy. From what I can tell of the three best-known "tyrant" conductors (Reiner, Szell and Toscanini), it seems that Reiner must have been the most terrifying of the three. A few years ago, I was accompanying a trombone player whose teacher was in the CSO during the middle and late 50's - the prime Reiner years. I tried to get the teacher to tell me some anecdotes about Reiner, and it was obvious that he still had the same hate for Reiner more than 50 years later, that he had had earlier as a CSO member under Reiner. Not only would he not tell me any anecdotes, but he also muttered some choice epithets about Reiner too - obviously, his own emotional scars lasted for more than half a century!
Ah - but the recordings! Of the three tyrants I mentioned, Reiner was by far the luckiest in the sound quality provided for him on his recordings, whereby even today we can hear what a magnificent, flexible orchestra the Chicago Symphony was at that time. Reiner may have been a sadistic over-controller, but, unlike Szell's for the most part, Reiner's performances on recording almost never give me the impression of music on too tight a leash, as some of the Szell recordings do. The Reiner/CSO recordings have such an attraction to me that I've continued to re-buy them as various formats have come along: LP, CD, a first series of SACD's (the Soundmirror series), a SECOND series of SACD's (the Analogue Productions series). . . Fortunately, I never suffered from Reiner's sadism, and I guess you could say I have a continuing fascination with his recordings - although I will point out that, for all the vaunted precision of Reiner's performances, some of the ensemble is imperfect even on these great Living Stereo recordings!
After Reiner, I think Solti certainly got a lot more publicity, but Decca's use of their Storm consoles was a big stumbling block for me in appreciating the Solti/CSO sound, as it became more and more obvious that more and more microphones were crowding into the environment with each new Solti/CSO release. If you want to have a revelation, listen to Ashkenazy's recording (with Solti and the CSO) of the Beethoven Fourth Piano Concerto and compare it with Cliburn's recording (with Reiner and the CSO): if you don't come away from that comparison with the idea that something in the sound quality deteriorated (quite obviously!) in those years since Decca replaced RCA as the CSO's recording company, then I would begin to fear that we don't even have a commonality of understanding as to what constitutes decent sound quality! ;-)
I agree with what you say about the sound quality of the recordings of Reiner and Solti, but I think some of it has to do with the degradation of the acoustics of Orchestra Hall when air conditioning was installed above the ceiling.
A lot more was done than just the air conditioning. The stage was changed somewhat in shape requiring a lot of reworking of concrete. I was there thru all those years and despite 3 re modelings, the last one costing 90 million dollars the hall never sounded as good again as the original hall. I love the RCA Reiner recordings and the performances for the most part are good to great.
Alan
IMHO his other audiophile favorites don't work for me.
Heldenleben has some of the most beautiful string sound ever recorder. Pines/Fountains are glorious recordings
Alan
I also like his Mahler 4
The Soundmirror SACD, the Analog Productions SACD, and the JVC XRCD24 (don't forget the K2 processing! - LOL!). Ever since I obtained it, I've been leaning toward the Analogue Productions SACD as the best representation of this album, but in truth, all three are pretty close.
,
Beyond his R. Strauss, Bartok, Respighi, and Rimsky-Korsakov offerings, Reiner left some fine performances of the German romantic repertoire, including one of the best performances of Beethoven's 6th symphony I know of. It's affectionate and lyrical where it needs to be. And there is an exciting performance of Beethoven's 7th.
I don't know of a better performance of the Brahms Piano Concerto 2 than Gilels/Reiner/Chicago. It's much more dynamic than the later Gilels recording with Jochum. Then there is the Brahms Sym 4 with the Royal Philharmonic.
There are fine stereo recordings of Mozart 41 and Haydn 88, too. Also Rossini overtures.
I don't like his charmless Strauss waltzes, but the cover, which includes this pic of a Hitler wannabe, is good for a laugh:
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