WALTER NBC Vol. 4: Beethoven, Berlioz, Corelli, Mason, R. Strauss (1939) - PASC742

BRUNO WALTER: “Toscanini’s merits for music in America are tremendous. He’s a spiritual comfort. It is wonderful to have him walk among us. He has an artistic and mobile power which produces unforgettable results, The secret of music is eternal youth; Toscanini has it. He lives for music.

“The NBC Symphony orchestra which has felt his master touch is marvelous. Although only a year old it gives full response; It has good-will and capacity. If Toscanini does something we know that it is the best. He has amazing energy and youth. With every right he should be proud of this orchestra, and he is. Toscanini has taken great music to the masses; they might never have heard Beethoven, Brahms and Mozart speak so directly to their hearts.

“This radio machine is building up a new kind of community. The people are being united in the spirit of Beethoven and Brahms by listening in. A new harmony is brought into the world, not so harmonious otherwise.

“Personally, I prefer to be present at a concert rather than to listen by radio; however, I realize that every one cannot attend, and that is where radio opens the door to opportunity. It’s the same in music as in love; like talking to a sweetheart by telephone instead of being with her. But the San Franciscan can hear the beating heart of music in New York; also shut-ins, who cannot reach the concert hall.”

* * *

“Radio studios and concert auditoriums cannot be compared. Radio studios are designed primarily for hearing outside, not necessarily inside. The vibrations are different. The microphone must avoid certain vibrations and reverberations which would be bad for broadcasting, but in a concert hall the orchestra can just let them go with full force.

“I am very content, however, to broadcast from Radio City. The same difference exists between studio and concert hall as whether the foot is on or off the piano’s pedal. Radio studios give an exceptionally clear sound. I can best describe it as ‘dry.’ The studio audience does not become submerged in sound, but to me this is a rather charming feature.

“It is true, of course, that old seasoned wood in the auditoriums, such as Carnegie Hall and the Boston hall, make music more noble. The older the wood the truer the sound. Just think of the nobility of tone in a Stradivarius; it’s the same in the old music halls of America and Europe. They are adapted to noble music.

“Old age gives charm to people, to violins and concert halls. Age makes sound more beautiful. As radio develops it will learn from experience how to replace what now, in its days of youth, seems to be the best.

“The radio studios are engineering marvels; they are designed to meet different conditions than were the halls built thirty years or more ago. One is for an invisible, and the other for a visible audience. In one the ear is present, in the other miles away. We must, therefore, have great confidence in the radio control man. I think it is quite all right for them to regulate the electrical music. I'm content with the way it sounds in the studio and on the recordings of the broadcast.”

* * *

THE conductor, however, “cannot just make music and let it go” in the radio studio as in the old concert hall, Mr. Walter has discovered. He must give the basses more weight, because they do not go over the air as easily as the higher octaves. The microphone favors selections that do not have too powerful instrumentation, he observes, and that is why the fortissimos have to be cut down by the control operator.

Too much volume might blast in loud-speakers; if uncontrolled it would “kick“ stations off the air. Mindful of this Mr. Walter selected a Mozart program for his opening broadcast. After a concert he makes it a practice to listen to the recordings of the performance to note how the various shadings came through. This analysis, he explained, often gives clues on how to improve broadcast music. As he pointed to one of the latest instruments in his room, he was asked if he listened to it often. He said, “Yes, I listen much.”

Excerpts from an article by Orrin E. Dunlap Jr., The New York Times, Sunday, March 26, 1939. 

This release brings you a fourth volume of Bruno Walter's appearances with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, from the latter parts of the orchestra's second season in March and April 1939.

As well as offering superlative musicianship and performances, they appear to raise one or two questions about Walter's relationship, if not with the broadcaster, then surely perhaps with certain announcers!

These two concerts were the third and fourth of five that Bruno Walter would conduct in the second season of the NBC Symphony Orchestra - he would return the following spring of 1940 to conduct a further five concerts. With one exception, which I'll come to in a moment, the repertoire for these two concerts was pretty much mainstream. 

Due to the length of the musical items in the first of the two concerts, I have had to significantly edit down the announcements before and after each of the items, so much of Gene Hamilton's erudition has sadly been lost in this release. The Beethoven Symphony No. 1 was played, according to Hamilton, almost on the 139th anniversary of its first performance - where, we are told, it received a lukewarm critical reception. 

Hamilton's oddly brief introduction to possibly the only recording of Mason's Suite After English Folk Songs went as follows: "Daniel Gregory Mason has long been an eminent figure in American music, and is known equally as composer, writer and teacher. He is the head of the music department at Columbia University in New York City."

He then proceeded to read a lengthy introduction to Richard Strauss's Death and Transfiguration, the piece which would follow the Mason, before finally announcing the title of the work by Mason which was about to be heard! There was no further mention of Mason, nor the titles of the five individual folk songs which make up the suite, beyond the briefest of obligatory back-announcement after the work was complete. In the introduction to the start of the programme, the work was referred to simply as "a modern American suite", without even a mention of the composer. 

It seems Daniel Gregory Mason and Bruno Walter were good friends, and Walter did what he could to try and promote the composer's works. It also seems that this promotional effort didn't greatly appeal to NBC's announcer - of the 97 seconds taken up with the introduction to the Mason, he chose to spend 87 seconds talking instead about the Strauss, a work that was still more than 20 minutes away!

It is possible that the all-Berlioz concert was inspired by the seventieth anniversary of the composer's death some three and a half weeks (and 3 concerts) earlier. In this case the announcer for our second concert presented here, Robert Waldrop, made no reference to this recent anniversary, despite it being relatively unusual repertoire for the conductor to choose and what would appear to have been a perfect excuse to produce an all-Berlioz evening. Having shoe-horned a rather obscure Beethoven near-anniversary into the previous broadcast, why no mention of a much more significant Berlioz one?

In both cases, the broadcasts have survived remarkably well in the 86 years since they were first heard, and these Ambient Stereo XR remasters bring with them exceptional sound quality for anything of this vintage.

Andrew Rose