Koussevitzky
(pictured right) is an unfashionable conductor. Everyone
and his dog still knows Toscanini, these days tagged by RCA as
‘The Immortal’. Stokowski lives on enshrined in Disney’s Fantasia,
a snatch-bag of Hollywood films, to say nothing of his many
recordings. Of the great conductors active in America before the
Second World War, Koussevitzky alone languishes untouched in the
vaults of recording companies, his shining Boston Symphony largely
dismantled by Ozawa’s lackluster 29-year tenure. Judging from
these recordings, it’s high time for a Koussevitzky renaissance.
His contributions to music are so vast that his present neglect
seems perverse. He was one of the last century’s greatest
recreative musical minds, and apart from sponsoring and premiering
a massive chunk of the twentieth century’s greatest symphonic
music, he turned the Boston Symphony from a fledgling provincial
ensemble into a sparkling virtuoso instrument the likes of which
have rarely been approached, let alone surpassed.
Koussevitzky’s
affinity for Sibelius (pictured left) is well known—it was
he, after all, who tracked down the septuagenarian composer in the
forested recesses of Finland and almost persuaded him to complete
his Eighth Symphony—and his gramophone records of the Sibelius
symphonies vied in their time with Kajanus’ for supremacy. It is
good to see that these performances have made their way onto CD,
for even today they make powerful claims to our attention.
Contrary to his critical reputation, there is nothing overblown or
bombastic about Koussevitzky’s Sibelius performances: the overall
line of each work is adumbrated with startling power and the
propulsion of climaxes is overwhelming. Koussevitzky may be
excoriated by present-day critics for indulging in such
large-scale rhetoric, but the grandeur of line and gesture in
which he here revels provides a refreshing change from flaccid
facelessness which characterizes contemporary Sibelian
interpretative trends.
The Second Symphony often
sounds like wanton juvenilia but here is revealed as a
masterpiece. The Russian émigré may not have been known for the
incisiveness of his beat, but his personality clearly galvanized
the Boston Symphony Orchestra to achieve miracles: rhythms are
powerfully sprung, ensemble never falters, internal lines are
etched in stunning detail. Compared to this, Colin Davis’
celebrated RCA recording with the same orchestra sounds positively
anemic. Koussevitzky’s conception of the Sibelian sound-world is
an essentially stoic one. There is little of the platonic warmth
of a John Barbirolli, to say nothing of the cultivated glamour of
a Karajan. The ‘big tune’ of his last movement, broadly drawn with
a hint of steel, may lack the dramatic immediacy of Beecham’s and
Barbirolli’s more-or-less contemporaneous accounts, but
Koussevitzky moves the music with an inevitability that eludes the
Englishmen, and it is his grasp of architecture which proves to be
the most memorable.
Koussevitzky’s
(pictured right with his doublebass) astonishing
performance of the Fifth Symphony, even more than his Second,
brings orchestral playing of a caliber largely lost to the earth.
Those used to the fluidity of a Karajan may be jarred by
Koussevitzky’s tempo fluctuations, which range from the broad to
the frantic. A grand sense of line is always maintained, however,
and there is an elemental thrust to Koussevitzky’s conception that
makes every vacillation seem organic. Koussevitzky’s transition
between first and second movements is a source of perpetual
wonder, and no other conductor has built towards the final five
chords with such sweep: what in most recordings comes off as an
anticlimax here is paced with soul-shuddering inexorability,
convincingly carrying the structure of the whole work. The only
comparable accounts, Karajan’s Berlin Philharmonic and Simon
Rattle’s Philharmonia readings, both on EMI, may possess far
superior sound, but neither conductor conceives the work in nearly
as powerful terms, and neither orchestra responds as flexibly as
the Boston Symphony.
It is true that Koussevitzky occasionally departs from the letter
of the score in his pioneering recording of the Sibelius Seventh
with the BBC Symphony, but it seems pedantic to fault him for this
when the reading is of such compelling urgency. The newly-formed
English orchestra, suffice to say, had not the personality nor the
propulsion of Koussevitzky’s own Boston Symphony, but they play
within an inch of their lives and the results are thrilling. A
fevered intensity is sustained at a pitch that, far from being
self-indulgent, as many critics have suggested, only serves to
emphasize the extraordinary concision of Sibelius’ formal logic.
The filler items are no less great, too; particularly notable is
the powerful and deliberately rough-hewn Tapiola with the
Boston Symphony that showcases to an even greater degree than the
Symphony that concentration of purpose that is a defining feature
of Koussevitzky’s Sibelius. The readings of Pohjola’s Daughter
and the Grieg Maiden with the Roses resolutely avoid
gushing sentiment, and some may find them a little bleak, but
there is no questioning the authority that Koussevitzky brings to
these admittedly second-rate works.
These are, for me, the greatest recordings of Tapiola and
the Seventh Symphony; some may prefer the more muted approach of a
Maazel or an Ashkenazy, but Koussevitzky’s blazing grandeur makes
them sound almost inconsequential. It is a pity that the recorded
sound isn’t as well balanced as on the other Koussevitzky Sibelius
discs; it tends to emphasize extremes of treble and bass, and
lacks a really concrete spatial presence—though this can be put
down to the fact that it is a live recording.
Koussevitzky
(pictured right) is an unfashionable conductor. Everyone
and his dog still knows Toscanini, these days tagged by RCA as
‘The Immortal’. Stokowski lives on enshrined in Disney’s Fantasia,
a snatch-bag of Hollywood films, to say nothing of his many
recordings. Of the great conductors active in America before the
Second World War, Koussevitzky alone languishes untouched in the
vaults of recording companies, his shining Boston Symphony largely
dismantled by Ozawa’s lackluster 29-year tenure. Judging from
these recordings, it’s high time for a Koussevitzky renaissance.
His contributions to music are so vast that his present neglect
seems perverse. He was one of the last century’s greatest
recreative musical minds, and apart from sponsoring and premiering
a massive chunk of the twentieth century’s greatest symphonic
music, he turned the Boston Symphony from a fledgling provincial
ensemble into a sparkling virtuoso instrument the likes of which
have rarely been approached, let alone surpassed. 
Koussevitzky’s
affinity for Sibelius (pictured left) is well known—it was
he, after all, who tracked down the septuagenarian composer in the
forested recesses of Finland and almost persuaded him to complete
his Eighth Symphony—and his gramophone records of the Sibelius
symphonies vied in their time with Kajanus’ for supremacy. It is
good to see that these performances have made their way onto CD,
for even today they make powerful claims to our attention.
Contrary to his critical reputation, there is nothing overblown or
bombastic about Koussevitzky’s Sibelius performances: the overall
line of each work is adumbrated with startling power and the
propulsion of climaxes is overwhelming. Koussevitzky may be
excoriated by present-day critics for indulging in such
large-scale rhetoric, but the grandeur of line and gesture in
which he here revels provides a refreshing change from flaccid
facelessness which characterizes contemporary Sibelian
interpretative trends. 
Koussevitzky’s
(pictured right with his doublebass) astonishing
performance of the Fifth Symphony, even more than his Second,
brings orchestral playing of a caliber largely lost to the earth.
Those used to the fluidity of a Karajan may be jarred by
Koussevitzky’s tempo fluctuations, which range from the broad to
the frantic. A grand sense of line is always maintained, however,
and there is an elemental thrust to Koussevitzky’s conception that
makes every vacillation seem organic. Koussevitzky’s transition
between first and second movements is a source of perpetual
wonder, and no other conductor has built towards the final five
chords with such sweep: what in most recordings comes off as an
anticlimax here is paced with soul-shuddering inexorability,
convincingly carrying the structure of the whole work. The only
comparable accounts, Karajan’s Berlin Philharmonic and Simon
Rattle’s Philharmonia readings, both on EMI, may possess far
superior sound, but neither conductor conceives the work in nearly
as powerful terms, and neither orchestra responds as flexibly as
the Boston Symphony.