Recording the Classics

Maestros, Music, and Technology

James Badal

• Publisher: The Kent State University Press
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781612774862
• Topic: Médias et arts de la scène
• Subtopic: Théorie et appréciation de la musique

"There is no doubt that this book will appeal to specialists, including conductors, recording enthusiasts, musicologists, and performers. It provides unique information about conductors' views regarding the artistic, procedural and commercial aspects of recording. Of greatest importance is the inclusion of 16 conductors who, while expressing varying viewpoints, are among the most important conductors of the past 15 years. James Badal's interview technique successfully leads the conversation into many important areas, but allows each conductor to engage in some exploration of issues unique to the individual's background, career, and areas of specialization." —Wayne Gorder, Conductor and Associate Professor of Music, Kent State University

In this collection of interviews with major orchestra conductors, James Badal explores the impact of recording technology on contemporary musical culture. Spanning more than a decade with masters such a Vladimir Ashkenazy, Christoph von Dohnányi, and Christopher Hogwood, these discussions offer valuable commentary on the digital revolution and subsequent compact disc explosion.

One issue addressed in Recording the Classics is how recordings have significantly raised the general public's level of musical knowledge. Classical music discs provide both entertainment and education—the traditional, ideal vehicles for increasing the appreciation of great music among those who lack access to recital halls and opera houses. However, listening to music in private affords an essentially different experience that that of attending a live concert; both the public and the musicians are absent from the home listening environment.

Badal and maestros Pierre Boulez, Ricardo Chailly, Andrew Davis, Colin Davis, Antal Doráti, Charles Dutoit, Neeme Järvi, Erich Kunzel, Erich Leinsdorf, Lorin Maazel, Kurt Masur, Simon Rattle, and Leonard Slatkin as well as Ashkenazy, Dohnányi, and Hogwood examine the effect of technology no only in the listening public's perception of music, but also on the matter in which music is made.

ANDREW DAVIS

THE FIRST MAJOR release on Columbia under Andrew Davis’s baton was a two-LP set of the three Borodin symphonies coupled with the usual orchestral excerpts from the composer’s Prince Igor. For a young, still relatively unknown British conductor recording for a major label, it was a shrewd choice of repertoire: relatively familiar music, somewhat removed from the center of the so-called standard repertoire, certainly not overexposed on disc. Davis discussed the early phase of his recording career rather extensively in our interview, making it clear that much of his Columbia discography was selected with similar care.

Though his subsequent move to EMI yielded such significant issues as the live recording of Tippett’s The Mask of Time, his recent affiliation with Teldec further illustrates how important to a successful recording career finding and exploiting the proper niche can be. The German company promptly teamed Davis with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and, under the heading “The British Line” prominently displayed on the CD booklet, began recording music of English composers—a generally praised series that so far includes works by Vaughan Williams, Elgar, Britten, Delius, and Holst.

Arranging an interview during the Blossom summer season is always a tricky affair, and the fact that Davis was temporarily beyond the reach of a telephone in the Canadian wilderness further complicated plans for this conversation. We ultimately talked on a late August afternoon in 1987 by the pool of his hotel. In spite of the heavy rehearsal load and the brutal heat, he appeared relaxed and casual. His patience and humor received a major test that weekend when a sudden violent thunderstorm interrupted his performance of the Brahms Symphony No. 4 and rendered WCLV’s broadcast tape useless. During the intermission, while the elements continued to rage, one orchestra member offered the delighted audience a surprise rendition of “Stormy Weather.”

BADAL: Maestro, I think everyone accepts the fact that recordings have a great deal of artistic importance. It would probably come as a surprise to people outside the music business, however, that they also have tremendous economic and public relations value for an orchestra as well. Before you went to Toronto, the orchestra really hadn’t done that much recording.

DAVIS: No, the Toronto Symphony before I went there had not—apart from some records for the CBC. We still continue to make records for the CBC, and they have a series now called the SM 5000 series. We’ve made quite a few recordings for them which are theoretically available in stores. I mean, theoretically they have international distribution; in fact, they don’t. The CBC has never quite gotten its act together as far as distributing its commercial recordings is concerned. So the orchestra made quite a few of those, although not that many otherwise. Seiji Ozawa recorded a couple of things, I think, with the Toronto Symphony for RCA. He recorded Messiaen’s Turangalîla and Takenmitsu’sNovember Steps.

BADAL: He performed November Steps here in Cleveland at about the same time.

DAVIS: Oh, I’m sure, yes. I mean, he did that piece all over the place at one time with two Japanese instrumentalists. He recorded the Symphonie fantastique also, but that was about it.

BADAL: I’d be interested in the politics of the situation. Did you bring the contract with you to Toronto?

DAVIS: Yes. I had at that time an exclusive contract with CBS. It was an exclusive contract, but it was only for—oh, it was never for more than two records a year. But it was a contract. And so therefore, when I went to Toronto, CBS decided they’d like to make some records there. During the whole time I was under contract to CBS, I was making records both in London and Toronto.

BADAL: It would seem to be a very difficult situation for a young conductor to make recordings. You have to make them to be well known, but you have to be well known to make them.

DAVIS: Yes, that’s right.

BADAL: It seems to me that young conductors tend to record on what I call the fringes of the repertoire; there are certain things they will leave alone. The first recordings of yours that I was aware of were the Borodin symphonies. I remember thinking what a good idea that was, because your name was beginning to be known, and that was repertoire that no one else had done at that time.

DAVIS: Yes. All two-and-a-half symphonies, one should say, really.

BADAL: How was the repertoire you recorded in Toronto selected?

DAVIS: Well, you know, I had discussions with CBS at some length about it. As you say, the problem is to find repertoire. I mean, obviously no record company is going to invite some younger man like myself to record Beethoven symphonies and Brahms symphonies.

BADAL: Would you even want to at this point?

DAVIS: Well, no. No! In fact, I certainly wouldn’t—although I have recorded three Brahms symphonies in Toronto with the CBC, and I’m quite happy with them. But for a major label … Well, I don’t think any major label, as I say, would ask for them; and for me, it wouldn’t have been right. So then we talked about various areas of the repertoire which were of interest to me. The Borodin symphonies idea, I must say, came from CBS. At that time Paul Myers was the A&R [Artists and Repertoire] guy in CBS. He’s actually responsible for signing me up. He had the LSO [London Symphony Orchestra] booked, and someone canceled. So he said, “Okay! We’ll get Andrew to do some stuff.” So I did. My first record for them was the Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra and the Prokofiev Cinderella with the LSO. So he and I discussed the Borodin idea, and it kind of appealed to me. I mean, I don’t think the Borodin symphonies are great, great, great music, but they are fascinating.

BADAL: And they should be recorded.

DAVIS: Yes, absolutely! They are important.

BADAL: And they should be done well.

DAVIS: They should be well done; and at that time, I don’t think there was a complete recording of them. The Second Symphony, of course: there were probably eight recordings of it in the catalogue, actually. That piece seems to have been done quite a lot. But the others—and I think the First has some wonderful things. Beautiful slow movement in the First Symphony. So I was very happy to do them. I think the second record we recorded in Toronto was Janáček: a suite from The Cunning Little Vixen and Taras Bulba, which is a record I’m very fond of. It never did very well.

BADAL: You’ve got to be Czech.

DAVIS: You’ve got to be Czech or … not so much that, but that coupling wasn’t that successful, I think. Neither of those pieces is really that popular. I mean, you’ve really got to do the Sinfonietta to make an impact. But I’m really very fond of the recording. And then we did the complete Nutcracker, which was more popular.

BADAL: You raise an interesting point with the Janáček record. There are some composers, such as Beethoven and Brahms, which everyone records. There are those areas of the repertoire, however, in which we try to match the nationality of the conductor with the composer. We want to hear Italians do Rossini and Frenchmen do Ravel.

DAVIS: I guess so. Yes, that is certainly true to a certain extent, although I think one can oversimplify. As I say, I’m very happy with that recording; but it never really took off. Then we recorded several other things. The complete Boutique fantastique of Rossini-Respighi which, again, is a very, very fine recording, I think.

BADAL: The repertoire of some of your recordings does not seem to be particularly well chosen. I’m thinking of the record with nothing more on it than the Dvořák opus 46 Slavonic Dances.

DAVIS: The one I did with the Philharmonia! Absolutely! And that was never my intention. It only came out last year or two years ago, and it was recorded ages ago.

BADAL: Really?

DAVIS: Ages ago, yes. It must have been at least four years ago I did that, if not five; and they’ve been sitting on it for some reason. In fact, at one time we were talking about—you see, the problem with the Slavonic Dances is they don’t really fit. You can’t do both sets on one record.

BADAL: No, you really need three sides.

DAVIS: Three sides. Then you’ve got to find a filler.

BADAL:. You could probably get them all on one CD.

DAVIS: On CD, of course you could. On a CD you can get seventy-four minutes of music. Anyway, the other major area of the repertoire I recorded with CBS was Dvořák symphonies.

BADAL: Was that ever intended to be a complete set?

DAVIS: Yes! And in fact we recorded them all, and they had cold feet about issuing the first ones, which is too bad because they are of interest, especially the Third. I think the Dvořák Three is really crazy. It has this sort of Tchaikovskian, rather balletic first movement. Very beautiful. Then this wonderful slow movement which reminds one alternately of Berlioz—sort of Romeo and Juliet love scene music—and Wagner. I mean, there’s a lot of Wagnerian writing: brass and harps and things.

BADAL: I think the last movement of the Fourth Symphony is one of the worst bits of Dvořák I’ve ever heard.

DAVIS: That’s very unfortunate because the first three movements—

BADAL: The third movement is wonderful.

DAVIS: Yes, absolutely. The slow movement and the scherzo. And the first movement is nice, too, but the finale is very weak.

BADAL: When did you record these?

DAVIS: Oh, again, we probably finished them about five years ago.

BADAL: And you can’t do anything to get them released?

DAVIS: No, I never had the kind of contract that guaranteed—in fact, after I’d been with CBS quite a long time, when the contract came up for renewal, I said no because it wasn’t a particularly fruitful thing for me in the sense of being tied to one company for one or two records a year. It didn’t seem to make sense to me.

BADAL: Now you’re recording for EMI.

DAVIS: We recorded The Planets for EMI last year, and we’ve just recorded the Messiah for them in Toronto.

BADAL: Really?

DAVIS: Oh, yes. This is going to be—it should be out in September or October, I think. Very shortly!

BADAL: Which edition did you use?

DAVIS: Well, when they approached me about recording the Messiah, from the word go, I didn’t want to do another small one, because there have been several extremely good recordings to come out in the last couple of years with, you know, people like John Eliot Gardiner with his choir and the English Baroque Soloists. I think that’s whom he did it with. And Hogwood has done it. And so I thought, no! It’s time for us to do a slightly old-fashioned, maybe unfashionable, sort of large-scale kind of Messiah. And then, of course, we came to think, “Well, maybe it’s time for another Beecham Messiah.”

BADAL: When I talked to Christopher Hogwood, he said it would be interesting to see a revival of the Beecham-Goosens Messiah or the version by Sir Michael Costa.

DAVIS: Yes, well, in fact, I listened to the old recording of Beecham, and really it’s “over the top,” as they say. I mean, all this percussion!

BADAL: Cymbal crashes!

DAVIS: Cymbal crashes, and there’s even a whip in “Thou Shalt Break Them.” And string pizzicato all over the place. It’s a fabulous piece of orchestration in its own right, but I found it too much. And I looked at Mozart. Mozart is interesting.

BADAL: It’s been recorded.

DAVIS: It has also been recorded, and I don’t like all of it. I mean, there are some absolutely magic things in it. “The People who Walked in Darkness” is wo...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Author’s Note
• Introduction
• Lorin Maazel
• Colin Davis
• Kurt Masur
• Antal Doráti
• Erich Leinsdorf
• Christoph von Dohnányi
• Simon Rattle
• Charles Dutoit
• Christopher Hogwood
• Vladimir Ashkenazy
• Riccardo Chailly
• Pierre Boulez
• Andrew Davis
• Erich Kunzel
• Leonard Slatkin
• Neeme Järvi
• Bibliography