Friday 23 December 2011

My father, who played his double bass in the London Symphony Orchestra throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, had an immense regard for Pierre Monteux and one can hear why in a recording by Monteux and the LSO (1959) of Sibelius's second symphony. A commentator to this blog pointed me towards this recording: fortunately. It's a CD I picked up a couple of decades ago, probably in America in the days when one could ferret around in foreign record stores and come up with something unobtainable elsewhere (the CD notes are entirely in French, so I may have picked it up in Boston as an over-stock from Canada. Whatever). I complained about Riccardo Chailly not allowing his Beethoven works to “breathe” – whatever that may mean. What it does mean is what you can hear with Monteux and the LSO; the music sounds exactly right at Monteux's tempi, and there is a luminousity about the orchestral playing that puts this performance right at the top. Also on the CD is Elgar's Engima Variations played by the same forces, a recording that was highly thought of in its day and still strikes me as pretty well ideal. I can hear why my father liked Monteux so much (and, as an orchestral player, he generally did not think much of conductors). Monteux gets the orchestra to play, without drawing too much attention to the conductor. That is a great and welcome art. I am tremendously glad I had this recording in my voluminous archives; it won't be buried again.

1 comment:

don said...

I'm gratified that you had a chance to hear this recording and that you share my sympathies towards it. Luminous is such an apropos adjective towards the playing. Your father would have been tickled that I recently played this work to two students, both total newcomers to the symphonic music of Sibelius -- and both study the double bass. They were wholly taken with it, particularly with the strong architecture of the sound upwards from a clear bass footing. Oddly enough, my CD has a coupling of -- of all things -- the Firebird.