Cheap Klemperer in Hamburg: Two Complete Concerts with the NDR Symphony, Bach, Mozart, Bruckner (Music) (Klemperer, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Bruckner) Price

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Customer Reviews of Klemperer in Hamburg: Two Complete Concerts with the NDR Symphony, Bach, Mozart, Bruckner

Not The Klemperer You Know
Sadly many listeners' impressions of Otto Klemperer come from studio recordings made towards the end of his life when illness dominated and restricted his activity. His broad tempos worked at times but the results were often stodgy. Anyone who has heard recordings of Klemperer from radio broadcasts in the 1950's and 60's are often quite surprised to hear a more fluid and spirited conductor. Music and Arts provides a fine example with two concerts with the North German Radio Symphony. The sluggish tempos of the studio are gone being replaced, especially in the Mozart 40th and Bruckner, with a spirited drama. Some of these recordings have floated around on pirate labels but the present ones are from North German Radio's original mono masters. While the sound is more than acceptable the 1950's concert is slightly restricted which is why I give the set 4 stars instead of 5. Very nice packaging and extensive notes by M & A.

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Kapellmeister Klemperer in Hamburg
The Orchestra of North German Radio in Hamburg came into being under Allied supervision during the reconstruction of Germany after World War Two. The victorious powers understood the centrality of music to German cultural life and saw the opportunity to foster great good will by reestablishing concert-programs and regular broadcasts, while employing musicians who had shown a clean bill of political health in the de-Nazification hearings. The Orchestra of North German Radio recorded one of the most celebrated of classical music broadcasts - the 1951 performance of the Brahms First Symphony under Wilhelm Furtwaengler. The Orchestra's permanent director for twenty years, Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt, shaped his players from early raggedness into a thoroughly competent band, capable in a wide repertory, including Mahler. The boxed set from Music and Arts presents performances with the orchestra under the guest direction of Otto Klemperer. These comprise separate concerts from 1955 and 1966. We hear a lively, musically incorrect performance of Bach's Suite No. 3, an energetic Beethoven Seventh, two muscular-lyrical Mozart symphonies (A-Major [K 201] and G-Major [K 550]) and a particularly supple Bruckner Seventh. Mozart's K 550 and Bruckner's Seventh come from the 1966 concert. The set spreads the items over three discs. (At fifty minutes, Disc 2 is on the skimpy side.) Klemperer's Bach always rewards. Although, among his contemporaries (Walter, Abendroth, Furtwaengler), Klemperer most satisfied the criteria for a modern, as opposed to a romantic, interpreter, his Bach remained decidedly nineteenth century, with a fairly large body of strings. I like the performance; it's gutsy and athletic. So too the Beethoven Seventh, which boasts an especially well-calculated Allegretto. Both sound and ensemble improve in the 1966 concert, in warm, spacious monophonic broadcast acoustics. (It's not a complaint - but one would have thought that German Radio would have been employing stereo by the mid-1960s. They had pioneered it during World War Two.) Klemperer brings out a surprising largeness in Mozart's G-Minor Symphony. I agree with the booklet that this Bruckner Seventh is better, despite not being in stereo, than the one that Klemperer recorded with the New Philharmonia for EMI around the same time. Music and Arts has always offered an interesting product. In recent years they have really upgraded the presentation. The booklet is informative and attractive; so is the box. The discs are all imprinted with Klemperer's beaky likeness leaning over a score at rehearsal. Recommended.