Historical performances from SWR Classic (Sanderling and Hindemith conduct Bruckner and Rachmaninov)

Bruckner, Anton                      Symphony No. 7

Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR

Kurt Sanderling

SWR Classic 19410CD

Bruckner, Anton                      Symphony No. 7

Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR

Paul Hindemith

SWR Classic 19417CD

Rachmaninov, Sergei              Symphony No. 3

Mussorgsky                             Prelude to Act 1, Kovanshchina

Radio-Sinfonie0rchester Stuttgart des SWR

Kurt Sanderling

SWR Classic 19050CD

SWR Classic is the in-house label for the SWR (Südwestrundfunk = Southwest German Broadcasting Company), issuing recordings from three principal orchestras –Baden-Baden and Freiburg (combined), Saarbrücken and Kaiserlautern (combined), and Stuttgart. Among SWR’s many releases comes a very welcome set of historical recordings from the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR, including these three recordings, which have been digitally remastered from original tapes in the SWR archives.

The Stuttgart orchestra has a very distinguished history. Founded In 1945 by the occupying Allied forces, it has had some celebrated principal conductors, including Sergiu Celibidache, Neville Marriner, and Roger Norrington. It also hosted a veritable panoply of visiting conductors, including the two represented here, Kurt Sanderling and Paul Hindemith.

This performance of the Third Symphony was recorded in March 1995, when Sanderling was in his 80’s. Sanderling spent much of his early career in Russia, after leaving Nazi Germany in 1936. He had a particular affinity for Russian music in general, and in particular the music of Rachmaninov, whose symphonies he thought to be sadly underrated. The Third is a powerful symphony, highly expressive but with subtle orchestration. Sanderling gives a fine performance. The disc also offers a welcome bonus of the Prelude to Mussorsky’s unfinished opera Kovanshchina, evoking the Moscow river at dawn.

Sanderling’s Romantic style is very much to the fore in his December 1999 performance of Bruckner’s Seventh, which he performs in the Nowak edition. His approach is expansive, taking 71 minutes for the symphony (longer than the majority of performances listed in John Berky’s Bruckner discography) and 25 minutes for the Adagio, which is particularly successful. But he is in no way self-indulgent (in the manner of Celibidache, for example, who somehow manages to get 86 minutes out of the Berlin Philharmonic). Sanderling comes across as a conductor of great discipline, although definitely an old school Bruckner conductor.

Paul Hindemith is certainly better known as a composer than as a conductor (he was also a leading viola virtuoso), but he led (and recorded with) many of the leading orchestras of his time, particularly after WWII, when he began to wind down his viola-playing career. This recording of Bruckner’s Seventh dates from June 1958,five years before his death in 1963. As might be expected from a composer famous for his neo-classicism, his approach is much more restrained than Sanderling’s. His performance (of the Gutman edition, which is fairly similar to the Nowak edition) lasts only 59 minutes, with the Adagio a full seven minutes shorter than Sanderling. But it is compelling. The composer of the Matthis der Maler symphony was himself a devotee of counterpoint and clearly is at home in Bruckner’s harmonic language and musical architecture.

The sound quality on all three discs is excellent, even on the Hindemith recording from 60 years ago. I look forward to more fine performances from the SWR backlist.