Eugen Jochum - Centenaire Eugen Jochum. Vol. 1-3 (2002)

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Eugen Jochum - Centenaire Eugen Jochum. Vol. 1-3 (2002)

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Eugen Jochum (1 November 1902 – 26 March 1987) was an eminent German conductor. He became famous primarily as an interpreter of Anton Bruckner's works. He became the first conductor to perform a complete recording of the nine symphonies of this composer.

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Eugen Jochum - Centenaire Eugen Jochum. Vol. 1-3 (2002)

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Tahra have long been devoted to the art of Eugen Jochum - witness their CDs of Concertgebouw performances from 1976-80 (Tahra 232/5), the World War II broadcasts (229), the Romantic Concerto album with Gilels and Arrau and the Bruckner album (162/70) shared with his brother Georg-Ludwig. Some indeed of the above make an appearance in this Centenary Anniversary collection of three boxes each comprising four CDs, conveniently split across two slimline doubles. And here Tahra have outdone themselves because each box, elegantly designed, typographically attractive, with full matrix and recording details sets a new gold standard in presentation for this company. At a stroke these boxes become cornerstone purchases for admirers of the conductor and cover a large amount of ground discographically including broadcast performances of lasting value. Reviews of the other two boxes will follow shortly but it’s as well to point out now that each box contains a different species of documentation – the first volume contains a biographical portrait, the second contains his discography (less the hundreds of as yet unissued broadcast archive performances) and the third focuses on his repertory. Each is worth an article in its own right.

Volume One is devoted to pre- and Wartime recordings – including two broadcasts made in 1944 (the Corelli, in Hamburg and Beethoven’s Fifth, Berlin, 1945); the Fifth is also to be found on Tahra 229, which also adds a performance of the Pastoral Symphony from June 1943 which is also to be found in Volume II of this Centenary edition. So in the first volume we can concentrate on core repertory by a man who, when this series starts, is thirty-one (there’s some slight typographical confusion in the documentation with both 1933 and 1938 quoted as the year of his Tannhäuser Overture recordings but it’s the former that’s correct). There’s an amount of surface noise present but it’s soon filtered out of the mind and sufficient high frequencies have been retained to make the aural journey comfortable. Jochum is generally presented as a Furtwängler acolyte, one whose tempo modifications and sense of subjective freedom, whilst not as convincing as the older man, were nevertheless powerfully expressive. There’s clearly a degree of truth in that which is not the same as admitting that Jochum lacked profound individuality, even in his relative youth. The von Hausegger pupil forged an independent path, leaving Berlin to succeed Muck in Hamburg and clearly made sufficient impression to be signed for a prestigious series of Berlin Philharmonic discs for Telefunken in the late 1930s. Tannhäuser is sonorous but sensitive, the strings phrasing with elegance and precision, the fairly frequent portamenti applied with discretion and stylistic aptness. Brahms’ First Symphony receives an already eloquent reading from the thirty-six year old conductor; at a steady tempo, which fluctuates within the accepted subjectivist norms, Jochum’s strength and attention to detail are notable. He gives great life to the winding lower string themes and retards the climaxes in the interest of dramatic tension, a feature of his performance that will doubtless not appeal to all. His slow movement, measured and resonant, shows, as an incidental pleasure, the splendid cellos and basses of the Berlin orchestra in highly effective form, and the leader’s solo is sweet with a narrow vibrato and aurally very well captured by Telefunken’s engineers. Jochum’s Allegretto is fresh, equable, with piping woodwind well captured spatially and the finale once more vibrant and measured (but not too slow). There’s a weak edit at 8.01.

The following month Jochum returned to set down Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. There are some queasy moments in the first movement amidst the horns’ headlong rush and some then-conventional portamenti – downward and succulent; the famous Berlin basses are well to the fore here, their saturnine playing wonderfully expressive. Jochum, as one would expect, takes a slow tempo in the Allegretto maintaining the line with fine string blending and an elevation of spirit and he is particularly expressive in the central section of the following Presto. His finale is about as fast as Toscanini’s in 1936 – well articulated. For Brahms’ Third Symphony, a recording made just before the outbreak of the Second World War, Jochum returned to his own orchestra in Hamburg. This had a much leaner, less saturated sound than the Berlin Philharmonic with brass that was less ideally blended. Nevertheless they were experienced musicians and contribute strongly with an elevated sense of nobility and direction. The Andante is perhaps somewhat subdued, the Scherzo correspondingly solemn (but with excellent woodwind) and the Allegro finale forward looking and carrying the thematic material with conviction.

The second of the doubles housed in this four CD set gives us more Beethoven as well as Mozart, Corelli and Reger. Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony (Berlin, 1941) has some eloquently romanticized violin phrasing in a first movement notable for Jochum’s affectionate treatment, rich string moulding in the slow movement, charm in the Allegretto and a degree of strength (perhaps not ideally enough) in the finale. The Reger Serenade receives a loving and winning performance. It was one of Jochum’s wartime Concertgebouw recordings (the issue of German conductors playing and recording with orchestras from occupied countries is extra curricular to this review but should be noted, albeit the Catholic Jochum made his own views with regard to the Nazis very evident when he left Berlin for Hamburg in 1933). The Reger is saturated in high spirits, lissom strings and piping woodwind in the Allegro, sectional discipline excellent, strings splendidly expressive, Reger’s use of rusticity and fugato ideally matched by the Concertgebouw’s elegant virtuosity - nothing’s overplayed either or straining for effect. Jochum’s rhythmic sense is exemplified in the burlesque second movement and the affectionate phrasing in the slow movement – rich and beautifully veiled string lines – most impressive. Note the mass trill as well – stunning. The work ends in the sunset splendour of the Allegro con spirito and brings to an end a performance of admirable engagement, spirit and execution in the warm and sympathetic acoustic of the Concertgebouw.

After which we come to the only disappointment in the first volume, recorded amazingly only a couple of days after the Reger with the same forces. Given Jochum’s later position as a most eminent interpreter of the last symphonies it strikes me as perplexing that this recording of the Mozart G Minor Symphony should be so flat. Others doubtless will have their own position but it strikes me as rather dead and listless, with a first movement seen as if through a glass darkly, curiously detached and untouched. The slow movement is a very subdued affair and the Minuetto quite fails to come to life; the degree of clarity delineated in the finale is never at odds with the music but neither is it sufficient to vest it with any real meaning. Odd. The last two performances here are live recordings made in 1944 and 1945. The Corelli La Follia with his Hamburg forces is a massive Stokowskian affair - overlapping strings, hugely and – to me at least, but I’m partial to this kind of thing – wonderfully irresistible. There’s a prominent harpsichord and string soloists framed by the gargantuan, Brucknerian sized orchestra. His Beethoven Five has a strong and romantic first movement, big boned, with the brass perhaps a little raucous, sectional discipline not quite what it had been in 1938 - and the recording is somewhat over reverberant (but this was Berlin in January 1945) but otherwise excellent. There are certainly some rather rhetorical phrasal ploys in the slow movement, caesuri that draw attention to themselves, but are nevertheless powerfully engaged and this is clearly an emotive performance with a finale that drives ahead with fluctuating tempi in a way that serves only to intensify the complexity and spirit of the music.

This is an excellent conspectus of the earlier recordings of Eugen Jochum. Tahra’s attention to detail and their sensitive production values have been amply rewarded. The strong recommendation I make for this set applies equally to the three boxes as a whole. But start here for Jochum’s first explorations of the canon on record and for an insight into his expressive and intellectual approach to music making that remains compelling to this day.

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Eugen Jochum - Centenaire Eugen Jochum. Vol. 1-3 (2002)

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Volume Two continues the good work I warmly welcomed in my recent review of the first of Tahra’s three big beautifully produced four-CD boxes devoted to Eugen Jochum. Contained here, in place of the conventional notes – volume one contained a mini biography – is Jochum’s discography minus a large number of as yet unissued broadcast material (Bavarian Radio alone has some 210 unissued items). Amongst the tantalising things awaiting issue are items missing from his commercial discography – the Sibelius Violin Concerto, Honegger’s Symphonie Liturgique, Janáček’s Sinfonietta, Hartmann’s Fourth Symphony and Furtwängler’s Second as well as things one might have assumed he would have recorded – Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben and the Four Last Songs and Dvořák’s Cello Concerto amongst them.

Volume 2 begins in 1948 with a live Berlin performance of a favourite of Jochum’s, Mozart’s Symphony No. 33, the first of two performances enshrined in this set – the other is a 1961 Amsterdam performance. It may seem strange but this was the Mozart work Jochum essayed most often and after a late start – he first played it in Hamburg in 1942 – he performed it in total no less than 121 times, which means it ranks alongside a known Jochum speciality like Bruckner 7 in his list of his most performed works. For the record above them in first place was Beethoven 7, followed by the Eroica, Bruckner 4, Brahms 4, Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel and Brahms 1. This vests the Mozart with a considerable weight in performance terms – and some indication is given by the fact that he performed it twice as often during his career as the G Minor, a work he first performed fifteen years before he first conducted the B flat. The wartime Berlin performance is punchier in the outer movements than the Concertgebouw traversal taped some 19 years later whilst in Berlin his Andante possessed a special rapture that he couldn’t quite replicate in his more fluent and fleet Montreux reading. The 1961 performance is attractively phrased and affectionately spun with a pliant and well aerated finale – airborne, full of ease and naturalness though not as fast as the wartime taping. Coupled with the earlier Mozart is Beethoven’s Pastoral, a commercial recording of 1951 that joins the Fifth and Seventh from the first volume in presenting Jochum’s Beethovenian credentials. He opens the Allegro ma non troppo first movement with a calculated, slowly articulated sense of laziness but is soon marshalling some strong bass weight and encouraging some particularly piquant and characterful wind contributions. Indeed they are a defining feature of Jochum’s slow but not indulgent Andante, which sports some really chewy cello tone and thrillingly trilled violins. I enjoyed his persuasively lyrical way with the Symphony.

Brahms’ German Requiem was recorded live on 26 October 1951 in Munich with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and soloists Clara Ebers and Karl Schmitt-Walter. Jochum elicits some expertly calibrated choral entries (exceptionally quiet in Selig sind) and some stylishly expressive oboe playing though it’s true that there’s a slight edge to the violins’ tone. Some tentative ensemble problems crop up now and again in Denn alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras and the brass can be buzzy and occasionally brazen. This is though a broadly traditional performance even though it lacks the invincible and majestic inevitability of, say, Klemperer or of Furtwängler in his Stockholm performance, taped three years earlier than Jochum’s. One can detect a slight strain at the top of his compass in Schmitt-Walter’s voice but he is a cultivated artist and whilst he may lose colour occasionally when forcing tone he makes up for it in expressively contoured singing. The Bavarian choir is good, strong, though once or twice lacking polish; they don’t always blend optimally. Clara Ebers shines in Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit – clarity and depth and insinuating use of portamento (she recorded the Requiem commercially and was a noted exponent of the role) whilst Jochum drives the conclusion home with considerable conviction.

Clara Haskil – a Mozartian to her fingertips – makes a welcome appearance in the Jeunehomme, K271. Her piano unfortunately sounds rather plummy whilst the orchestra sounds very bright and the two are never reconciled, at least aurally. Nice lyrical string counter themes decorate the first movement and Haskil is fluent with eventful little left hand runs. The Andantino is probably the worst movement to be affected by the congested sound because though one can appreciate the orchestral gravity and the outlines of the rise and fall of the dynamics, the lyrical "rightness" of the conception, the detail is rather too often mired in indistinctness. Rhythmic freedom runs throughout the finale and considerable ebullience from Haskil, as well as wit and a sense of gallantry. One or two smudges from her hardly matter when the playing is so full of high spirits. Jochum conducted Pictures at an Exhibition, Boris Godunov and the Songs and Dances of Death so he was not an inexperienced Mussorgsky conductor when in 1959 he accompanied the splendid Kim Borg in the last named. His conducting sounds perfectly idiomatic, black brass, flexible tempi and Borg in fine voice. The sound is extremely good and catches the way in which Borg darkens and coils his voice in Trepak and his strong sense of narrative, the vast changeability and volatility of his characterization. The drama and conviction of his hoarse toned Field Marshal is truly excellent.

Mozart completes the last disc in this set. Eine kleine Nachtmusik is genial and suitably determined in the slow movement – where necessary – even with one or two off stage noises. The rondo finale is full of frivolous wit. In the Oboe Concerto Haakon Stotijn comes to the fore. The Dutch oboist has a very individual tone and in terms of a Concerto performance is not sympathetically recorded in this live performance from the 1961 Montreux Festival – he sounds as if taped in glorious if disconcerting spatial isolation. He is a neat and tasteful player and comparison with Goossens and Colin Davis shows the Englishmen are very much slower and more reverential – they also point a quasi-operatic, distinctly vocalised profile here, which informs and characterises everything they play. Stotijn and Jochum are very much straighter and less inclined to linger. Both are – in their own ways – affectionate in the slow movement but conceptions of the Allegro finale vary once again with Goossens and Davis deciding to interpret it very much as "ma non troppo." As a soloist I prefer Goossens but as a performance I prefer Stotijn and Jochum.

Considerable care has gone into the production of this series and the booklet is no exception. Don’t be put off by the centrality of much of the repertoire in the discs. Jochum always had wise and important things to say here as he did elsewhere. The combination of commercial and off-air recordings continues to add spice to the mix and so another warm welcome to Volume II in this splendid series.

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Eugen Jochum - Centenaire Eugen Jochum. Vol. 1-3 (2002)

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This is the third and final volume in Tahra’s celebratory series that takes Jochum’s 1902 year of birth as a welcome pretext for twelve CDs packaged with distinction in black and white/sepia tinted boxes. The Three Ages of Jochum in fact, for each box sports a photograph of the conductor, left facing for reasons of conformity, another thoughtful Tahra touch – the curled and wiry haired, quietly smiling and bespectacled youth of Volume One leads on to the silver haired, quiet gaze of the middle aged man and the august and benign strength of the elderly Jochum, his dramatic Roman nose obscured by the omnipresent glasses.

What is the least likely repertoire one can think of when it comes to Jochum? Coleridge-Taylor maybe or Mascagni? For all his benign appearance one doesn’t much associate him with frivolity or lollipops. And so, no Coleridge-Taylor and no Mascagni of course but leafing through the repertoire listing which is included in volume three – the first volume includes a biography and the second a discography – is a most intriguing experience. So at random here are some surprises – at least to me – amongst his repertoire; Fricker’s First Symphony, Glazunov’s Violin Concerto, Honegger’s Fourth Symphony (though he was an avid performer of the Fifth), Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass, Kletzki’s Violin Concerto, Krenek’s Johnny spielt auf, Lassus, Malipiero’s Cello Concerto, a lot of Frank Martin, Martinů’s Concerto for two pianos and Concerto grosso, Roussel’s Fourth Symphony, Sibelius’ Seventh and Violin Concerto, Tippett’s Ritual Dances, Vaughan William’s Tallis Fantasia; and too many Dutch works to mention, not at all surprising given his close association with the Concertgebouw. The final volume however is both a consolidation of expected verities and a welcome exploration of the Franco-Belgian repertoire that again is not much part of Jochum’s discographic inheritance; Debussy, Berlioz and Franck.

There’s plenty of clarity and purpose in his Debussy and if the 1963 sound is a little cramped it doesn’t do too much damage. I liked Sirènes for its boldness and for the singing of the women of the Toonkunstkoor choir that, although rather recessed and indistinct, still manages to register strongly. Benvenuto receives an affectionate and occasionally quite brash reading – Jochum first began conducting it in 1935 and along with Romeo and Juliet was the only Berlioz in his repertoire. With Wagner we are on known territory. The Good Friday Music (Concertgebouw, 1972, live – as are all these performances in this last volume with the exception of the Berlin Schubert) is splendidly eloquent and nuanced whilst the overture to the Mastersingers is resilient, strong and firmly handled. Elly Ameling joins the Concertgebouw for Bach’s Wedding Cantata, taped in 1973. With her are Hermann Krebbers and oboist Cees van der Kraan as well as an unnamed harpsichordist. Ameling had an almost perfect voice for Bach, pure yet vibrant, well supported at the bottom and yet capable of secure extension at the top. Here she steals in with exquisitely controlled breathing almost before one has noticed her. The coffee house intimacy of the Cantata is reinforced by the refinement and appositeness of the accompanying instrumentalists – a small band – and by the soloists, principally Kraan (excellent) and Krebbers (delightful). Ameling’s affectionate phrasing and winning way with words and mood register even more strongly as the cantata develops – this is a well paced and durable performance. When it comes to César Franck one finds Jochum relishing the Wagnerian moments as well as some beautifully veiled string tone. The rise and fall of his phrasing is charted with determination though his overall conception is certainly not over fast. It’s a strong, good but not outstanding performance.

Brahms’ Fourth Symphony opens with a slow but intensely elastic sense of sculpted movement; wind detail is very much to the fore in the opening Allegro as well as some splendidly subjective phrasing. I don’t suppose anyone has vested the Andante with as much unstoppable and emotion laden hysteria as Knappertsbusch in concert in Cologne in 1957. Jochum is of course far more decorous, seeing to sectional discipline even within a chastely emotive patina, bringing sophisticated technique and purposeful individuality. And how well he encourages some diaphanously draped flutes in the Allegretto – truly delightful – and negotiates some powerful ritardandos in the finale where strong weight of tone reinforces the sense of the strain that Jochum seeks to convey. His first violin entries are clearly audible here and not covered by the brass as they sometimes can be and he balances sections with great acuity, as one would expect. Something has gone wrong with the timing and tracking here though; the Allegretto lasts six minutes not twelve and the tracking of the finale doesn’t start until half way through the movement. The Grieg Concerto teams Emil Gilels with Jochum and his "second" orchestra once more, the Concertgebouw. This is a strongly characterised reading and very communicative, Jochum shaping feminine woodwind responses to Gilels’s masculine passagework. The pianist takes care though to shape his phrases with requisite finesse and both men seem in one accord in the Adagio, which is full of poetic spirit, and in the bracing and increasingly driven finale. The final and most recent performance is of the Schubert, the Great, in a May 1986 performance with the RIAS Orchestra of Berlin. Strong and songful in the first movement Jochum is occasionally gaunt and resolute in the Adagio. He is also very slow here but despite this it is no valedictory reading, no autumnal leave taking. On the contrary it’s a frequently candid, considered, well-paced and thoughtful traversal, flecked with moments of disruptive splendour.

There is much distinguished music making in this and in the two other Jochum sets that form this centenary tribute. As I wrote in my introduction to Volume I this now must stand as a cornerstone edition for those interested in the broad sweep of Jochum’s discography. Presentation is impressive, documentation thorough and intriguing in equal measure and the whole edition a conspicuously fine example of thoughtful intelligence applied to a most worthy object of homage.