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PAUL KLETZKI (1900-1973) Brahms Symphony No. 4 in E minor Op. 98 Schweizerisches Festspielorchester Luzern (Recorded: Lucerne, 5. – 7. September 1946) Conducting score and engraved template: Brahms’ autograph of symphony No. 4 in E minor, op. 98 Schubert Symphony No. 9 “Unfinished” Philharmonia Orchestra (Recorded: EMI Abbey Road Studio 1, London, 10. & 13. November 1946) Brahms Symphony No. 4 in E minor Op. 98 - I. Allegro non troppo Brahms Symphony No. 4 in E minor Op. 98 - III. Allegro giocoso

Contents:

Historic sound storage media in the Zentralbibliothek Zurich

In the music stocks of the Zentralbibliothek Zurich, especially among the more than 150 remaining works of musicians, there are a number of sound storage media. They constitute a brilliant document of the artistic creations of interpreters and composers, who perform their own work. These are usually sensitive formats, such as shellac records (78’s), tapes or live recordings, which urgently require restoration and protection. The new edition of important recordings is therefore welcome in two respects: on the one hand, recordings that are out of stock or in private ownership can be made available to the public, on the other hand, these sound documents are at the same time being protected. With the existing series, the Zentralbibliothek Zürich would like to present historic recordings from their stocks in loose succession. For licensing reasons, only sound storage media which is fifty years or older and private recordings (live recordings) can be considered.

The series starts off with two recordings created in 1946 by the conductor Paul Kletzki, whose musical remains have been in the Zentralbibliothek Zurich since the year 2000. The present CD with the 4^th symphony by Johannes Brahms and Franz Schubert’s 8^th symphony answers the purpose of our series “Musik from the Zentralbibliothek Zurich” on two counts: not only the sound storage media, but also the music originates – at least in part – from our own stocks, as the manuscript of the 4^th symphony by Johannes Brahms, the only preserved autograph source of the work, has been in the Zentralbibliothek since 1927. Thus, the following presents a closer look at the history of this valuable manuscript and its connection to Zurich.

 Conducting score and engraved template: Brahms’ autograph of symphony No. 4 in E minor, op. 98

On 24 January 1887, just over a year after the première, symphony No. 4 by Johannes Brahms was performed for the first time in Zurich under the baton of Friedrich Hegar during a subscription concert of the Allgemeine Musikgesellschaft (AMG). Adolf Steiner, the music critic of the newspaper, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, acknowledged the occasion with the following words: “The piece of work has certainly impressed on the whole; it would almost be a bad sign (that is for the piece of work) if on hearing it for the first time, everybody would have liked it immediately. […] what is great and new seems almost frightening at the beginning; what has been created for generations, must hold an abundance of attractions, which are only gradually recognised after a more thorough acquaintance and are gradually understood by ever increasing circles.” In spite of the highest esteem, which the people of Zurich and especially Steiner, who belonged to the circle of friends around Brahms, Kirchner and Hegar, had for the composer, this formulation does nevertheless express that perplexity and that lack of understanding, which the work initially also left behind elsewhere. The première in Vienna a year before, for instance, was a failure: Hugo Wolf entitled his review “E minor and never again”. However, the utmost significance of this symphony was soon undisputed.

At that time, following the première in Zurich, which was to be followed by a celebrated repeat performance a week later, nobody could, of course, suspect that the autograph score of this piece of work would find its final location in Zurich with the participation of the same protagonists barely 20 years later: in 1906 Friedrich Hegar resigned as the conductor of the Zurich subscription concerts and of the Tonhalle Orchestra. Among the gifts and presents of honour, which he was given after more than 40 years of commendable work, there was also the autograph of the 4^th symphony by Johannes Brahms as a gift from a circle of “faithful friends”, not named in anymore detail. Adolf Steiner, the then president of the AMG, was given the honourable task of acquiring the autograph from the publishers Simrock and presenting it to Friedrich Hegar. Undoubtedly, Hegar must have regarded the Brahms autograph as a particularly personal and thoughtful present. He had been on friendly terms with Brahms since the 1860s and had always looked after his work with great interest. After Hegar’s death in 1927 the manuscript became the property of the Allgemeine Musik-Gesellschaft Zurich by way of testation, where it was then incorporated in its library. As this has been as a depot in the Zentralbibliothek Zurich since 1917, it has acquired this significant autograph, indeed not de jure, but nevertheless de facto.

Brahms’ 4^th symphony was created in Mürzzuschlag in Styria, where Brahms used to spend the summers, in two work stages: the 1^st and 2^nd movement in the summer of 1884, the 3^rd and 4^th movement one year later. At the end of August 1885 Brahms finally satisfied the curiosity of his closer circle of friends – Clara Schumann, Elisabeth von Herzogenberg, Hans von Bülow – and that of his publisher Simrock, thus confirming the previous rumours about the creation of a new symphony. On 8 October 1885 he presented the new piece of work on two pianos together with Ignaz Brüll in the salon of the Viennese piano-maker Friedrich Ehrbar in front of a circle of invited friends. Those present were among others Max Kalbeck, the music critic Eduard Hanslick, the surgeon Theodor Billroth, who Brahms had met in Zurich, where Billroth worked until he took up his appointment in Vienna in 1867, and Hans Richter, the conductor of the first Viennese performance. – The audience reacted with scepticism; after the 1^st movement, for instance, Hanslick summarised his feelings, as Kalbeck records, with the following comment: “Throughout the whole movement I felt as if I was being beaten up by two terribly witty people.” Kelbeck himself recommended Brahms to bin the 3^rd movement, the scherzo “with its abrupt keynotes and rather banal secondary notes”, to publish the 4^th movement “the fantastic chaconne as an independent work of variation” and instead to write two new movements, which would go better with the others.

Brahms, however, was not in the least deterred by all this, and the première, which became a great success, already took place in Meiningen on 25 October 1885. The Meininger court orchestra, under its leading conductor Hans von Bülow, was considered to be one of the most renowned German orchestras of its time. Brahms conducted the première of this piece of work in person, doing so from his manuscript score. Subsequently, the Meininger court orchestra went with Brahms on a concert tour to West Germany and Holland. The composer conducted his symphony in total nine times between 3 and 25 November, that is in Frankfurt, Essen, Elberfeld, Utrecht, Amsterdam, Den Haag, Krefeld, Köln and Wiesbaden. He always conducted from his manuscript. In 1886, ten further performances followed with local orchestras (among others in Hamburg, Leipzig and Dresden). Brahms did not conduct them all, sometimes it was also Hans von Bülow or, in Berlin, Josef Joachim. Brahms took advantage of the rehearsals to edit the music text in view of practical realisation. Various retouches and corrections resulted from this, which were reflected in the manuscript and make the work’s developing process, at least in the last stage, comprehensible. An important source for this refinement process is the correspondence with Josef Joachim during the period of the Berlin performance. On the one hand, Brahms asked Joachim for advice on various occasions, as to how one part or the other could be optimised in practice, on the other hand, he himself explained other aspects. The following remark concerning tempo modification, for example, which was addressed to Joachim on 20 January 1886, is rather illuminating: “They (the modifications) might be useful, even necessary, for a first performance. Unfortunately, they are therefore also often (for me and others) under pressure – where they mostly do not belong. Such exaggerations are only necessary, as long as a piece of work is unknown to the orchestra (or the virtuoso). In such a case I cannot do enough to urge and hold, so that the passionate or calm expression is felt, which I want. Once a piece of work has become second nature, that, in my opinion, is out of the question, and the further one abandons this, the more inartistic I find the performance.”

In the middle of June 1886 Brahms sent the manuscript to his publisher Fritz Simrock in Berlin, where it remained until it was sold to Zurich. The printed score appeared in October of the same year.
Dr. phil. Urs Fischer © 2006

Of the important conductors who emerged in the immediate post-Second World War period to begin a significant international recording career, one of the most eminent is the Polish-born conductor Paul Kletzki.  He was born Paul Klecki in Lodz on March 21, 1900 and studied composition in Warsaw concurrently with the violin under another violinist-conductor, Emil Mlynarski (whose daughter Aniela was to marry Arthur Rubinstein in 1932). Kletzki’s progress on the violin was rapid; he became a member of the Lodz Philharmonic Orchestra at the age of 13, and was appointed the Orchestra’s leader three years later. Kletzki never wholly abandoned composition, and continued to compose songs alongside several chamber, instrumental and orchestral pieces. Amongst the more important of his later works are two symphonies. However, it was as a conductor that his musical career blossomed, notably during the years he spent in Berlin, where he lived from about 1921 to 1933. He confessed that during this period Wilhelm Furtwangler – chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic from 1922 - had a great influence on him. Quite what form Furtwangler’s influences had on Kletzki is difficult to discern from the evidence of recordings by both men: perhaps it was a spiritual approach to music-making, such as is contained in a saying by Brahms which Kletzki used to quote, to the effect that a performer has to understand what lies behind the notes “in the context of the tradition to which their composer belonged”, as the London Times so termed it. It is ironic that, much later, the travails Furtwangler suffered in the first years of peace after World War II led directly to Kletzki’s important initial recording for the gramophone – that of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony, contained on this CD. The rise of the Nazis led Kletzki to leave Berlin, and, after several peripatetic years spent in Russia and in Italy, he settled eventually in Switzerland. From about 1943 he conducted at all the Lucerne Festivals, and took Swiss nationality in 1947.   After 1945, Kletzki travelled widely as a guest conductor, making his British debut with the Philharmonia Orchestra in 1947 and later spending a season (1954-55) as principal conductor of the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.  Following tours in Central and South America he made his North American debut in 1959 with the Philadelphia Orchestra and became musical director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra from 1960-63.   He returned to Switzerland to become music director of the Berne Symphony Orchestra (1964-66), and, on the retirement of Ernest Ansermet, of the Suisse Romande Orchestra from 1967-70.

At the end of the Second World War, the months following the defeat of Hitler saw many uncertainties regarding the reestablishment of classical music-making across Europe. Two far-sighted and influential EMI record company executives, Walter Legge and David Bicknell, left London for the Continent in January 1946 to sign up as many of the most outstanding artists as they could find. Six months before this, Legge decided to form a new orchestra – the Philharmonia – engaging the best available musicians, which orchestra was signed to a new exclusive contract with EMI. With the Philharmonia having already made its first appearance under Beecham, and having made its first EMI recordings, including Beethoven concertos with Artur Schnabel, by January 1946 Legge and Bicknell were in a strong position to attract important musicians to EMI. 

Furtwangler was then in Lucerne, and Legge had arranged for him to make recordings there with the city’s Festival Orchestra. But Furtwangler was awaiting the outcome of his denazification tribunal – he had remained in Germany during the war, conducting the Berlin Philharmonic – and he was forbidden to conduct until he had been cleared of collaboration. Sessions with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra had been fixed for early September, but Furtwangler’s clearance did not come through until December 17^th.   Rather than lose the sessions, Legge substituted the 46-year-old Paul Kletzki, whom he had signed to English Columbia the previous May. The work they recorded was Brahms’s Fourth Symphony.

The sessions took place between September 5^th and 7^th, and went well. Within the first few pages, several things are already apparent from this performance. The first is the strongly-maintained yet fluently expressive basic tempo, so essential in this music. The second is the remarkable orchestral balance – particularly the integration of woodwind and horns within the texture.  One might expect that a former violinist would concentrate upon the string section, but the overall texture is notably detailed in observing aspects of Brahms’s scoring. As the performance progresses, it maintains these qualities to a remarkable degree.   Kletzki’s approach to the passacaglia finale is more flexible, but never to the detriment of the music’s inner sense of forward flow. Clearly, the conductor of this recording is a fine musician, his modest and gentle demeanour – remarked upon by all who met him – producing an excellent performance, faithful to the score.

Legge must have been pleased with the result, for two months later Kletzki was in London to make his first recordings with the Philharmonia.  He created a positive and welcome impression on the players, especially on the string section. He demanded the strings produce “the burning sound” – although whether he meant “burnished”, rather than “fiery” or “cutting”, as one might infer, is unclear. But the fact remains that in the recording they made at EMI’s Abbey Road studios on November 10^th and 13^th, the familiar rich string sound of the Philharmonia, for which the orchestra became world famous, is apparent.  At times, Kletzki would let his emotional response to the music come to the fore, a response which, as we can hear, he conveyed to the players in the version of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony they made on that occasion. Over and above this is his view of the emergence of Romanticism in the music of Biedermeier Vienna – not in Brahms’s Vienna of sixty years later – a view exemplified in this performance by the effective and organic molto meno mosso which Kletzki directs with considerable skill, beginning 18 bars or so from the end of the first movement. The long first movement repeat is not observed.  In the second movement, whilst observing the subtle difference in basic tempo between the movements, he gets the Philharmonia to play a genuine pianissimo – especially in the passages for solo woodwind and strings at bars 65 and 207 et seq.  These are not sudden changes of dynamic; they are done with much subtlety and expressive character as almost to cause one to hear these passages anew. This is masterly conducting, as Legge undoubtedly appreciated, for Kletzki was soon to become a regular and much admired recording artist for him.                                                  Robert Matthew-Walker © 2006

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