EMI publishes a splendid set of 12 live recorded CDs
After a first 11 CD set of Celibidache's live recordings, EMI issued a
second 12CD set entirely dedicated to Bruckner.
This issue was specially awaited, as the late Rumanian conductor, was
unanimously appreciated in these works. It is incontestable that he has
developed Bruckner's renown among music lovers, although some others
great ancients - FurtwçÏgler, Jochum, Klemperer, Mravinski, Bm - had
also their role. But music lovers won't consider that these conductors'
fervent and real devotion to Bruckner has created the same link that the
one that existed between Burckner and Celibidache. Of course, this
doesn't mean that these great conductors weren't as authorized and
important as Celibidache. Jochum's performances during the 1950s and
1960s (Philips, DGG), FurtwçÏgler's performances and Mravinski's
strangely stiff and sharp reading of the 9th have their place in the
Brucknerian Pantheon.
Celibidache was against records. He built a part of his renown on this
attitude, totally at the opposite of Glenn Gould. The Canadian pianist
decided to play no more live and only to record. Paradoxically, these
two sorts of communication with the public sometimes miss their point:
the editing of some of Gould's records is not as excellent as it should
be, Celi's original live tracks are musically and technically much more
blameless than many studio recordings.
It's a clichthat the sound of live recordings is not as good as the
sound of studio recordings, that live performances are not
instrumentally perfect as performances specially thought for studio
recording. The 12 CDs have been chosen among dozens of tracks recorded
between 1982 and 1995 by a conductor and an orchestra perfectly aware of
the acoustics of the place where they used to play and by a technical
staff who was given the time to place correctly the microphones. The
result is splendid.
This being said, the technical success of a recording depends also on
the ability of the conductor to make the music sound clear because he
masters all the pure sound-parameters and on the ability of the
technicians who can't record what doesn't exist in the theater when the
music rises.
Celibidache's Bruckner reaches a kind of ecstatic perfection whose sound
is free of any terrestrial attraction. The melodies always rise without
falling back, always higher, always more beautiful and fervent. We're
probably beyond any concept of interpretation in the common meaning of
the word, but we are indeed listening to the fusion of a score and of
its performance.
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Gene Halaburt
genehal at csi.com