HORENSTEIN Dvořák & Janáček (1952/61) - PASC603

The Gramophone, November 1953
Previous New Worlds have not been altogether satisfactory, but the present Vox issue is more than acceptable and the best of the three LP versions available. The Decca one (New Symphony Orchestra under Jorda) is unidiomatic, and dimly recorded. Kubelik's with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (a Mercury recording released in England by H.M.V.) could not be called dim—on the contrary, for a good deal of the time the tone has an almost unnatural brightness. But Kubelik overplays the work. The Larghetto is fast, insensitively fast; the outer movements are driven. Jascha Horenstein, with far less daemonic energy, almost leisurely at times, elicits in fact a performance of far greater vitality—because his phrases are sensitively and feelingly shaped. A comparison of the opening passages of the third movement is an easy and fair one to make—and decisive in favour of the Vienna disc. The Vox recording is excellent; if it never quite achieves the startling brilliance of Mercury's “Living Presence”, it is also free from the faults of the H.M.V. Record. This is a performance one could live with.

Andrew Porter, The Observer, 25 October 1953

The best of the 'New Worlds' is a new Vox made by Jascha Horenstein .

The Gramophone, February 1954

To reassure myself that I was not just getting tired of the work, I went back to the Vox disc by Jascha Horenstein and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra (PL7590).

Now, however, we come to a fine “From the New World” Symphony recorded in 1952 and captured in very clear mono sound with appropriately forward woodwind balances. Granted, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra isn’t going to win any major awards for tone quality: grainy cellos, edgy brass, and the occasional sour oboe point to a typically post-War European orchestral experience. What’s far more important, though, is how carefully Horenstein makes his band observe Dvorák’s detailed phrasing and accent marks, and how flexible this performance is tempo-wise. And as luck would have it, Horenstein re-recorded the work in 1962 with the Royal Philharmonic in stereo, also a very fine performance in which we can clearly hear the conductor “de-Romanticizing” his style while still retaining significant elements of the earlier performance. Let’s compare the two and see what we can learn.

The first movement introduction (’52) contains a near disaster, when the horns enter a beat early for all of their fortissimo eruptions beginning at bar 10. This should have been corrected. In both versions, Horenstein launches the first movement allegro with great energy. The 1952 ensemble balance highlights the clarinet over unison flute and oboe in the transition to the second subject despite the composer’s clear dynamic markings to the contrary–an interesting touch all the same. When the famous flute theme arrives, Horenstein gets some lovely, elegant phrasing from his Viennese players, while a decade later he’s a shade less generous with his rubato at a marginally faster tempo. Although I miss the extra affection of the earlier version, the later one sets up the transition to the development better and maintains a higher energy level. Finally, in 1962 Horenstein had much better horn players, and evidently didn’t feel the need for the big ritard introducing the coda (letter M) that we hear ten years previously.

The Largo reveals the biggest differences between the two recordings. Horenstein takes two extra minutes in 1952 (14+ minutes in all), and while the English horn player hasn’t the most lovely timbre, he phrases sensitively and in tune. The very slow tempo compared with 1962 makes for a much larger, even abrupt contrast between the first and second themes. However, the London Horenstein retains the speed-up, slow-down treatment of the quiet string passage at measure 30, as well as the strictly in tempo approach to the big climax. At the movement’s end in the earlier version, at the top of the main theme’s concluding phrase (measure 113) as played by the strings for the last time, Horenstein inserts a stunningly effective sforzando that’s sadly absent in the remake. And if the 1962 scherzo has greater energy at a swifter tempo than this one, the earlier version has two lovely touches that vanish later: a sweet little ritard at the end of trio’s second half (both times around), and an uninhibitedly ferocious return to the scherzo proper.

Both finales treat the opening in the brass as a slow introduction, and then accelerate impulsively to the string’s triplet theme at letter B. Once again, the earlier effort exploits this contrast more boldly than the later one. In both versions, however, Horenstein is one of the very, very few conductors who get the cymbal part right: suspended and struck with a soft stick, rather than two plates clashed. This isn’t an especially important matter, but it is indicative of the conductor’s attention to the finer points of detail, a characteristic of both performances. The mono recording’s focus on the winds invests the finale’s development section with plenty of color and rhythmic interest, and Horenstein has the strings attack their wild triplets at the big climax just before the coda with impressive power. In 1962, there’s less emphasis on expressive shaping of details and a stronger sense of linear continuity, while both recordings bring the work to an exciting close.

Glasgow Herald, 31 August 1961

After the somewhat enigmatic Karajan, and the fastidious discipline of Kempe, the Berlin Philharmonic were conducted at the Usher Hall last night by Jascha Horenstein. And a missing musical link fell into place.

Greatness, majesty, mastery: these we had been given in previous concerts, yet there had been a certain aloofness, a detachment. Hard to place, for there was nothing to fault in the superb playing. We felt as Francis Thompson felt about Milton, that with Karajan and Kempe we had music making to which we must all bow the knee, few or none the heart.

Last night we bowed the heart to Horenstein. There is a homeliness about him, a sense of affection which draws a spontaneous response from his players. They were "with" him, eager, ardent. He can be stern, but it is a kindly, patriarchal sternness.

The programme gave us Gluck, Janacek and Beethoven, and heroic as the "Eroica" admittedly is, and heroically as it was given full value last night, to some of us the most rewarding playing came in the "Taras Bulba" of Janacek.

It is "story" music, illustrative, a music drama without words, and it answers the snooty cliques who affect to disdain any music that dares to paint pictures, bring out an emotion: any music that has in its veins warm, pulsing, passionate blood in-place of the desiccated sawdust of a later Schoenberg.