Thinning down my collection

Appraising one’s records over the years brings a bulimic collector to the point where he has to restrain his diet to the essential or burst. Essential being something else for me and something else for you. Of course. Then let me see: which are mine. Look at the batches of repeated items on your shelves: how many Eroicas, how many Middle and Last quartets, how many Bruckner 7ths are there. Pick the best of them all! No? Refuse to?

Then pick the worse.

In a bunch of bests there is at least one that’s worst. It’ s a law of nature. Thrice happy harem owners must face the same dilema. Which for now – which for never again. Say you have to select at gunpoint. Your life or your worse Eroica ever. Don’t start chanting «all have something to say in such a work». So pick one, the oldest, the scratchiest, noisest, impossible to hear again. Vocally dated, orchestrally shallow, uninvolving, chorally compromised by a small body of singers who try too hard and never ever take off with the music, blah blah blah... who’s to blame. But pick that one bedeviling your nights with economical reappraisals of what you might have gotten in its place for the amount you paid for it.

Now. Which Rosenkavalier you could do without. Which Verdi Requiem? Which Eroicas? Think on them once equals listen briefly through your mind’s ear and give the verdict.

I remember gnashing my teeth when I read (surprised - so innocent was I then…) Gramophone’s dismissal of Verdi Requiem with Reiner/VPO – my best. “A non starter I am afraid” wrote the sage; and my heart stopped. A non starter?

Yes, boy. There was the glorious EMI Giulini with the Philharmonia, with Schwartzkopf, Gedda, Ludwig, Giaourov and the Philharmonia Chorus directed by Wilhelm Pitz. How to resist? A pure English bred recording that stood for everything the English public (or Gramophone’s reviewers) stood for – always. I swallowed my shattered pride as a listener. I almost swallowed it completely so went out and got the EMI. And even thought I liked it. For some time. Proud owner of a perennial classic if there was one. Who wouldn’t be?

Then after years I listened again to my fallen from grace non-starter. But years had passed, I had given Gramophone up for many reasons (explained earlier below) and I was a free man – a free listener.

What a recording!

Point by point it stands head over shoulders above the Giulini. It is better conducted, it is better played, it is better sung AND it is better recorded.

A non-starter indeed. How deaf can you be?

Schwarzkopf totally out of her depth – the less Italian sounding soprano that ever sang the Requiem (she even DID Liu in a hapless – Legge produced! – Turandot otherwise graced by Maria Callas and Eugenio Fernandi!). Totally unconvincing. AND unpleasant. Scratch.

Then, Christa Ludwig – an alto alter ego to Mme Schwarzkopf: cold and uninvolving, as always singinging vowels only.

Then Gedda – well, a Swede against Decca’s other Swede… Bjoerling! Who would have thought? Next he should tackle Radames, poor Nicolai. Scratch.

And then the Bulgarian Giaourov, insensitive and imposing. The reviewer likedhimalot.

Then measure the Philharmonia with the VPO. Smile.

Then measure Giulini with Reiner. Oh my!

Are all Italians Toscaninis, De Sabatas, Serafins? I don’t think so. Guilini is one of the most overrated conductors of last century. A man with very good posts and contracts, replaced Klemperer for a Don Giovanni that remains a classic and was Our Man in Italy for the Requiem when Legge decided he had to get one for EMI.

Then listen to the EMI recording. Messy, congested. Go to the DECCA. Sofiensaal or Grosses Musikvereinsaal – whichever. And the orchestra, the sections, the instrumentalists, their sound – brass, percussion, strings, woodwind, the works. Crystal clear. Tender, sensitive, shrieking in terror or pounding thunderbolts on the head of the damned. And then…. Leontyne Price, a dream, Rosalind Elias, a stunner, Jussi Bjoerling, a legendary voice giving the most heart-rending Ingemisco ever recorded. And Tozzi – a true Italian basso who can also SING.

A non starter my foot. For, how would EMI sell, and how would Gramophone get their adds and survive? And how would the public be aware that Britain still ruled the waives?