BBC Legends - Rudolf Kempe, Edith Peinemann: Michael Tippett, Alban Berg, Leos Janacek (2007)

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BBC Legends - Rudolf Kempe, Edith Peinemann: Michael Tippett, Alban Berg, Leos Janacek (2007)

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With Kempe at the helm we can be assured of elevated and noble performances. The BBC Legends issue captures him in two concerts given four months apart. The February 1976 concert was given at the Royal Festival Hall and gives us not unexpected fare – Berg – and decidedly unusual repertoire for Kempe in the form of Tippett’s Concerto for Double String Orchestra.

This positively crackles with rhythmic energy and dynamism, the strings responding with admirable precision and unanimity of attack. The result is a performance of real standing and a precious surviving example of Kempe’s small repertoire of British works. I think most listeners would find the Adagio cantabile the most arresting and remarkable of the three movements in this performance. It’s not just the palpable warmth of the phrasing; it’s the sheer depth of the warmth, the unusual tenderness and lyric freedom that Kempe locates at its heart. This is freely and fully sustained over ten and a half remarkable minutes, as the music ebbs and flows, buoyed by sure dynamics and a tremendous ear for balance and the peak of a phrase. But nothing in this performance should be underestimated. The finale too has buoyancy and admirable flexibility. And it’s a magnificent performance all round.

Kempe partners Edith Peinemann in the Berg Concerto. She plays with true architectural awareness and with a chamber intimacy that ensures that the concerto is projected with sympathetic and moving directness. This is not to imply that it’s too pliant a performance; far from it. She has plenty of grit in her Guarneri and she’s not afraid to coarsen the tone when necessary. It brings a multi-dimensionary quality to the performance. And nowhere is this more apparent than in the Chorale statement, which is lucid, calming and gentle. This is a potent survival and augments Peinemann’s sparse discography excellently. Due to misunderstandings with agents early in her career she wasn’t given the opportunities to record that should have come her way, given her excellence as a player. She is seventy at the time of writing and this is a valuable and lasting example of her art.

Kempe made a well regarded recording of the Glagolitic Mass and he was no stranger to Janáček. At the Fairfield Halls he leads a highly effective reading. If I sound equivocal I probably shouldn’t but a small detail bothers me. He’s rather ponderous in the central movement – maybe he’s projecting a specifically military tone and timbre here but it sounds to me rather staid at the selected tempo. And post-Bakala and Mackerras as Janáček proponents of this work Kempe’s instincts in the finale are perhaps rather too composed for real ascendancy.

There is good sound quality and minimal audience noise. Marshalled by Kempe this trio of performances has much to offer. The Berg and the Tippett are the most noteworthy and elevated; the latter remarkably so.

Review by Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb-International.com

Memory can sometimes play tricks. I thought it had at the beginning of Tippett’s Concerto for Double String Orchestra; the playing seemed just a little less certain than I recall, and the sound is rather dry and distant. The reproduction improves (and the ears adjust) – although the acoustic space seems rather artificial given this is the Royal Festival Hall – and then the performance seems every bit as wonderful as recalled. It was something that I recorded from BBC Radio 3 when broadcast live (on a portable cassette player) and listened to many times – until the tape snapped! This much-hoped-for issue on BBC Legends is, indeed, a treasure.

Rudolf Kempe conducts Tippett’s work as the masterpiece it is. He seems utterly convinced by Tippett’s invention, craftsmanship and contrapuntal command. Under Kempe the outer movements are vital and detailed, ardent and pulsating, driven but meticulous; Tippett’s rhythmic precision and his generously singing lines are superbly melded by Kempe and the BBCSO strings (and the division and interaction between the two orchestras is vividly relayed by the stereo recording). The slow movement, based on a Scottish folksong, has an arching eloquence, Kempe justifying his very slow tempo to moving effect. The finale, quite measured in speed, enjoys rhythmic point and burgeoning euphony, the coda ecstatically broad and intensely delivered.

This release of three great works from the twentieth-century – which were composed not that far apart from each other (the Janáček in 1926, the Berg in 1935 and the Tippett in 1939) – is an absolute triumph. Edith Peinemann (born in 1937 and, Tully Potter tells us in his booklet note, still playing and teaching) brings poise and passion to the solo part, and unvarnished timbres, to Alban Berg’s concerto written in “memory of an angel” (the daughter of Walter Gropius and Alma Mahler), a soulful and searching account that appreciates Berg’s extraordinary blending of meticulous musical thought and deep emotion. Kempe secures a vivid if not faultless orchestral response, which is both charged and respectful of Berg’s almost-obsessive concern for construction and Peinemann’s commitment is concentrated and her musicianship observant; all in all, this is a rather special account of Berg’s last completed work.

Kempe rounded-off the concert with Brahms’s Fourth Symphony (long available on BBC Legends). The disc is completed with Janáček’s Sinfonietta, which is not to be confused with a previous Kempe issue on BBC Legends of this work; that was from the Royal Albert Hall Proms while this current version was given in Fairfield Halls, Croydon (as I recall, this was a Sunday evening concert broadcast live on BBC2). Not as pungent or as brazen as some in this music, Kempe nevertheless brings out the interrelationships of the music and its joy and nobility – not unlike Rafael Kubelík, although the latter (on his Deutsche Grammophon recording) is the more ‘urgent’ interpreter. Although Kempe can be a little subdued at times, and without Kubelík’s relish, his is a discriminating ear, and has an ability to trace rather than bludgeon. The recorded sound, not from a BBC master-tape, is a little blowsy in terms of instrumental positioning, yet Kempe’s use of antiphonal violins suggests a reversal of channels (the Tippett and Berg are fine in this respect); but, musically, this is a refreshing view of Janáček’s concise blockbuster and an admirable close to a superb release.

Review by Colin Anderson, ClassicalSource.com

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BBC Legends - Rudolf Kempe, Edith Peinemann: Michael Tippett, Alban Berg, Leos Janacek (2007)

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BBC Legends - Rudolf Kempe, Edith Peinemann: Michael Tippett, Alban Berg, Leos Janacek (2007)

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