Music
Small screen supermen
Robin Holloway
Amid the yawning chasm of candy on television over the country's annual close- down, one programme stood out for its evocation of a lost world of high spiritual distinction — a BBC 2 feature in two parts, presenting some great conductors of the past filmed at their rehearsals or perfor- mances. This calling was pursued by artists whose physical magnetism (and sometimes actual good looks) was comparable to a film star's, physical prowess to an athlete's, and explicit or latent power to that of a charismatic religious or political leader. Indeed, the footage ordered and intercut so skilfully by Sue Knussen brought these legendary creatures to functioning life with a vivid ferocity, recalling contemporary glimpses of the great dictators that many of them crossed the Atlantic to flee.
The most famous of these is Toscanini. To see his rod of iron, to hear his hector- ing tantrums, confirms what his late recordings have always revealed — that by the final stage of his long career, discipline and drill are largely their own end. That it was not always so is proved by his superb pre-war recordings. A more human dynamo of animal energy came from that epoch: Fritz Busch's incandescent close of the Tannhauser overture, purging the usu- ally all too obvious trombone theme in a glorious nimbus of flickering flame.
The visual clarity of these two, even at fever pitch, seemed to originate in the ear- liest conductor to be filmed, Arthur Nikisch. His elegant, eloquent gestures convey clear information even when, in the absence of sound, no one knows exactly what music he's demonstrating. And though Strauss is phlegmatic and Wein- gartner animated, the clarity of their instructions to the orchestra is umambigu- ous. This congruity between gesture and result is maintained by some of the Euro- peans who ended up heading famous American orchestras — Reiner at Chicago, Szell at Cleveland. Especially when they 'I had no idea that it extended to votes.' can, as here, be seen in rehearsal — Reiner reptilian, Szell with his dangerously feline smile — asking for, and gradually achiev- ing, what they want. Even the beat of half- paralysed Klemperer can still be decoded; English concert-goers will retain an image (confirmed by recordings) of granitic grandeur with no fuzzy edges. And Bern- stein, though his extravagant volatility could not be more different, patently puts into the music what then comes out of it.
But it's when there is no apparent reason for the result that these bits of film were most absorbing; as with two further great Europeans who became identified with great American orchestras: Kussevitsky (Boston) and Stokowski (Philadelphia). Indeed Stokie's utterly inauthentic bad- taste version of Dido's Lament from Pur- cell's opera (shown, as it happened, with English players) was the most affective moment of all. His urgent signals to inten- sify or decline could not be misunderstood. But where, in the arabesques of his naked hands, was the beat that kept the strings together in such breadth of phrase? And from what visible source came such exact nuancing of the wide dynamic range, and such heartbreaking beauty of tone?
Discrepancy between effect and cause is most startling of all with Furtwangler. His openings were notoriously tricky. A tense game of out-waiting; then a convulsive spasm, along which at some point somehow the music unanimously begins. The rehearsal of the first movement of Schu- bert's Unfinished symphony showed that this dangerous living is not confined to openings, the emergence of the singing sec- ond subject in cellos was the more lovely for being inexplicable (though not in the slightest tentative).
The film's principal coup was a newsreel of the Berlin Phil. visiting England in the early 1950s for a 'festival of reconciliation', playing under Furtwangler the closing stretch of Brahms's fourth symphony. Per- haps because of the unspoken emotions inherent in such a visit, perhaps because the extract did not arise from the complete work, this was the extreme of an extreme. Such demonic intensity, wild yet in no way coarse, and wholly responsible to the music, frightens the viewer with its disinter- ested passion, into which drill and game- playing alike are wholly subsumed.
These programmes contained pleasures quite apart from the overwhelming interest of the ancient, vanished supermen. The commentary was a trifle jejune (all those 'storm clouds gathering over Europe', but nothing specific about why some of these artists chose to leave and most were com- pelled to). But the snippets of interview with living musicians captivated with their expertise or their charm. Sometimes both; like the old Berlin Phil. timpanist who, years before, his head buried in the score during one of his long rests, became aware of a subtle glow of extra distinction in the playing all around him, and eventually looked up to see that Furtwangler had entered the hall. He didn't say whose rehearsal it was, nor, when the same orchestra appeared later under Karajan, could the viewer make out the timpanist, the camera filming only his drums and arms.
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