To pianist Arthur Rubinstein, he was “the only conductor I never really liked.” To former Chicago Symphony Orchestra co-concertmaster Victor Aitay, he was “a very difficult man.” To Leonard Bernstein, he was “responsible for my very own high standards.”
Famously irascible, impatient, tough, sarcastic, even sadistic in the demands he made of orchestral players, Fritz Reiner did not so much elicit music from an orchestra as bully it out of them.
But if the Hungarian conductor was not apt to win any popularity contests among musicians, he was generally conceded to be a baton technician and orchestra builder without equal–a musician of prodigious skills and vastly detailed knowledge of the scores he conducted who could make a band of 100 musicians jump through hoops.
Nearly 33 years after his death, Reiner’s artistic achievement looms more formidably than when he lived, partly because it is no longer obscured by his irascibility. He has taken his place in the pantheon of conductorial legends, right beside the other masters of his generation–Arturo Toscanini, Wilhelm Furtwaengler, Leopold Stokowski, Serge Koussevitzky and Bruno Walter. Knowing that he would one day arrive on Olympus might have brought a glimmer of a smile to his perpetually scowling visage.
The high regard in which Reiner is now held owes largely to the studio recordings and recordings of live performances made with Reiner and the Chicago Symphony from 1953 to 1963, the decade he served as the CSO’s music director–and, at the close, its musical adviser. Those recordings constitute his greatest legacy. And the Chicago Symphony continues to unearth broadcast material from various archival sources that plugs important gaps in Reiner’s commercial discography.
The latest trove of Reineriana is at hand. In fact, there are two troves. A pair of two-CD sets has been released as premiums for those pledging support to the Chicago Symphony in Radiothon ’96, the orchestra’s annual radio fundraiser, which began at 7 a.m. Saturday and continues until 10 p.m. Sunday on WFMT 98.7 FM.
The first set, “The Reiner Era,” marks the first appearance on compact disc of material originally released on LP for the 1986 Radiothon. It holds extraordinary performances, all drawn from Reiner’s fifth season (1957-58), of Schumann’s Second Symphony, Vaughan Williams’ Tallis fantasia, Schoenberg’s “Transfigured Night” and overtures by Berlioz and Wagner. Those who missed it the first time around should not hesitate.
The second set, “The Reiner Era II,” holds Reiner/CSO performances in digitally remastered recordings never before issued to the public in any format.
Listening to these recordings, made in concerts (and, in one case, a rehearsal) at Orchestra Hall and in the WGN Studio Theatre between 1954 and 1960, helps put the achievements of Reiner’s Chicago years in perspective.
One has to wonder what Reiner, with his uncanny ear for precision of ensemble playing and his penchant for textural transparency–even in heavily scored passages–would have thought of the quite intentional attempts by a later music director, Daniel Barenboim, to subvert the very qualities Reiner had driven the CSO so mercilessly to achieve. In none of these 11 performances does one hear the intrusive kind of score-distortions the present public has been given to accept as “spontaneous,” “romantic” interpretation.
One also has to acknowledge the fact that, although Georg Solti drew the credit for making the world sit up and pay attention to our orchestra, it really was Reiner’s Chicago Symphony the world was admiring. He had taken over a demoralized band and, within weeks, rubbed away years of tarnish and restored internal pride. Within just a few seasons, Chicago had a world-class orchestra. And this was the ensemble Jean Martinon preserved for five seasons and Solti inherited in 1969.
Sadly, neither Reiner’s first four Chicago seasons nor his last five were broadcast over radio. But beginning with his first season with the CSO, the maestro did take part in as many as 70 television broadcasts originating from the WGN studio in Tribune Tower. Because of economics and tight studio space, the orchestra was reduced to some 40 or 50 players, leading some to feel the Chicago Symphony’s name should have been taken off the weekly TV programs.
No one is certain how many of those old kinescopes survive, although the Reiner Library at Northwestern University is in possession of several. Of the extant WGN material, three performances–audio-only, of course–are included in “The Reiner Era II.” The earliest recording is the Prelude to Delius’ opera “Irmelin,” from 1954. There also is a Reiner-led Debussy “Nuages” from 1957 along with excerpts from Berlioz’s “Romeo et Juliette,” recorded in 1959.
The lack of a large string body in the Debussy is noticeable but not fatal. More to the point is how burnished every strand of the tonal fabric appears. No blurry Impressionism for Reiner–everything is audible, including a few mysterious tapping sounds, perhaps made by his long baton.
(It’s unfortunate the Reiner “Nuages” has been separated from its companion work, “Fetes,” taped at the same concert, but the latter recording can be found on the CSO’s 12-CD centennial set, released in 1991 and still available, at $185, from the Symphony Store, 220 S. Michigan Ave.)
Reiner introduced the complete “Romeo et Juliette” to CSO subscribers at the opening concerts of the 69th season and never conducted it again. What we are given here are purely orchestral excerpts, four in all, but they give a good idea of Reiner’s special way with Berlioz’s music. Even heard through dry studio acoustics, Reiner’s reading is rich in atmosphere–a quality also to be admired in the “Irmelin” Prelude by Delius, one of the few British composers in his repertory.
With a single exception, the rest of the live Reiner material comes from tapes made in 1957 and ’58 at Orchestra Hall as part of a series of concerts radio station WBAI broadcast in New York but never in Chicago. WBAI engineer Stephen Temmer recorded the Thursday subscription concerts, flying the tapes to New York the next morning for broadcast that night. Although a good number of selections from those Reiner concerts have been released as part of various CSO archival sets, there still were gems to be unearthed.
At various times, Reiner tried to persuade his record company, RCA Victor, to record a complete Beethoven symphony cycle with him in Chicago. At one time they even considered recording the symphonies with orchestral forces identical in scale to those of Beethoven’s time. But nothing came of the plan.
As luck would have it, WBAI broadcast Reiner performances of two of the three missing symphonies, Nos. 4 and 8, and a WGN video of a 1954 Reiner performance of the Second Symphony is reported to reside in the Northwestern archives. Symphony No. 4 was issued as part of a 1988 Radiothon set honoring Reiner’s 100th birthday anniversary. No. 8 appears on the newest set.
Reiner does not treat the F-Major as a “little” symphony; he makes this music sound important all the way through. The performance is fleet and superbly articulated in the Toscanini mold, but is not hard-driven, as Toscanini was wont to be. The first-movement exposition repeat is observed, the wind chording is miraculous and the string playing is wonderfully springy. Other conductors have made more of the score’s bluff humor but few versions have been better played.
The second disc begins with more Beethoven–a firm, dramatic account of the second “Leonore” overture–the recording marred somewhat by a deficiency in bass response that is unfortunately typical of most of WBAI’s work in Orchestra Hall.
Pride of place goes to Richard Strauss and Bela Bartok, composer-contemporaries of Reiner’s whose works invariably brought out the best in him.
Strauss is represented by “Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks,” recorded in October 1957, just a week after Yehudi Menuhin delivered the reading of Bartok’s Violin Concerto No. 2 included here. Although Reiner made two commercial recordings of “Till,” neither was with the CSO, so this is a valuable document. Here is brilliant, high-spirited Strauss, without a shred of vulgarity; the playing from all departments of the orchestra is glorious.
The Bartok violin concerto is another reminder of what a superbly attentive accompanist Reiner could be, and how complete was his understanding of his countryman’s musical idiom. Menuhin, of course, championed the work for many years and made four commercial recordings of it, none finer than this. The CSO is issuing this live performance in honor of the renowned violinist’s 80th birthday April 22.
Reiner began his podium career in the opera house and often programmed operatic excerpts in his orchestra concerts. So it seems fitting that the set should include several of these pieces–Auber’s “Masaniello” Overture; Mussorgsky’s “Khovanschina” Prelude; and, best of all, the Prelude to Act I of Wagner’s “Lohengrin.” The latter is a rare document of Reiner in rehearsal, delivering a few barely audible remarks to his players and occasionally humming along with the celli and basses–on-key, of course.
Although Reiner’s repertory reflected his interest in contemporary music, he never warmed to the works of the Second Vienna School–Schoenberg, Berg and Webern. (The only Schoenberg score he apparently ever directed was the early “Transfigured Night.”) A 1957 account of Webern’s Six Pieces for Orchestra under Reiner’s direction, included here, shows what might have been. His fanaticism about inner clarity and textural detail is just what these atonal, aphoristic vignettes require.
With running times of 76 and 77 minutes, respectively, the discs are generously filled. Liner notes are by Philip Hart, CSO associate manager during most of Reiner’s tenure in Chicago.
For those listeners who want to be reminded–or to discover–what Fritz Reiner’s commitment to the highest standards of orchestral performance meant to the Chicago Symphony and its public during that golden decade, these live recordings make required listening.
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Each set–“The Reiner Era” and “The Reiner Era II”–is available for a $60 pledge, or $100 for both albums. These albums will not be released commercially at the present time. The Radiothon phone number is 312-279-2100; outside the metropolitan area, 800-USA-WFMT.
