GHCD 2321 Secure E-shop Broadcast & Review	SERGE KOUSSEVITSKY (1874 - 1951) SERGE KOUSSEVITSKY AND THE BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Live recordings 1943-1948 Richard Strauss: Don Juan Opus 20 Bela Bartok: Concerto for Orchestra – December 30th 1944 Igor Stravinsky: Ode – Elegiac chant WORLD PREMIERE PERFORMANCE  October 8th 1943 Weber: ‘Oberon’ Overture   Richart Strauss - Symphonic Poem - Doen Juan Carl Maria von Weber - Overture - Oberon

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Serge Alexandrovich Koussevitsky was born in July 1874 at Vishny-Volochok in Russia.  Coming from a relatively poor but intensely musical family, he took up the double-bass when little more than a boy, but his progress was so remarkable that he became a double-bass virtuoso in his teens, and at 20 he led the basses of the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra, meeting many notable musicians.  Above all, however, he wanted to conduct and two years after marrying the daughter of a wealthy Russian tea merchant in 1905, he made his conducting debut with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, and in 1908-09 he founded a publishing house and a symphony orchestra in Moscow.

But the impact made by the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia was far-reaching, for no Russian citizen remained unaffected by it. The combination of Revolution at home, a new and untried government, a disillusioned and exhausted Russian army on the Western front, shortages and the virtual breakdown of almost every aspect of the established order – all of these things led to a mass exodus of many intellectuals, writers, artists and musicians.     

In such an uncertain environment, Koussevitsky felt obliged to leave Russia permanently in 1920.  He and his family initially settled in Paris before he accepted the post of conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, where he remained for 25 seasons (1924-49), championing young composers alongside the classical repertoire.  When he took over the Boston Symphony it was already in good shape (Pierre Monteux was his immediate predecessor) but Koussevitsky fashioned it into a world-class orchestra, and made many outstanding recordings for RCA. Amongst his conducting pupils was Leonard Bernstein.  Koussevitsky died in Boston, aged 75.

Koussevitsky was ten years Richard Strauss’s junior, so throughout his life he regarded Strauss as a contemporary (as indeed he was, for Strauss died in 1949, less than two years before Koussevitsky).  Koussevitsky assiduously promoted Strauss’s works – the list of performances he gave of Strauss’s music in his quarter-century as music director in Boston is considerable, exemplified by the fact that he conducted Don Juan on no fewer than twenty-two occasions during that time. Prior to Koussevitsky’s arrival in Boston, the orchestra there had made a reputation as a champion of Richard Strauss’s music – and the first performance in the USA of Don Juan was given by the Boston Symphony in 1891 conducted by Arthur Nikisch. 

 The performance on this disc demonstrates Koussevitsky’s ability to galvanise his great orchestra, as well as persuade them to play with much refinement.  They play Don Juan for all it is worth, almost literally, and yet – as with so many of Koussevitsky’s live performances, the essential musicality of the playing as a totality shines through.

When the Hungarian composer and pianist (and ethnomusicologist) Bela Bartok arrived in the United States in the latter part of 1940, escaping the march of Nazism across Europe, he was financially insecure (as were many composers who had also similarly fled to the USA), but was helped by the generosity of several individuals and learned institutions.  Serge Koussevitsky commissioned from him what proved to be his last fully completed work, the Concerto for Orchestra, which has proved to be arguably his most popular composition. 

The world premiere of the Concerto for Orchestra took place in Boston on December 1^st, 1944 by the Boston Symphony under Koussevitsky.  Five days earlier, Yehudi Menuhin had given the world premiere of a work he had also commissioned from Bartok, the Sonata for Solo Violin in New York, but the composer was by now visibly weak from the leukaemia which was to kill him on September 26^th 1945. 

None the less, the Concerto for Orchestra proved to be enormously successful.  It is at times claimed that some difficult orchestral works that have entered the repertoire had less than adequate performances at their premieres, but this is often an incorrect assumption: here is the second performance of this masterwork, made in that same December, which gives the lie to the claim.   The orchestral playing has that almost indefinable character which often attends first performances of works that are later deemed to be masterpieces – it is almost as though the musicians know that they are playing a great score for the first time and are inspired to give their all to demonstrate to listeners the unique qualities of the music.  So it is here; some might consider it extraordinary that RCA did not record this work soon after the premiere, but one should remember that it was still wartime, and recordings were not made so often as in post-war years.  In addition, Bartok’s music was then hardly the household name it became after his death, and international distribution – because of the war – was impossible.  

So to hear this and other superb works as created by the man who commissioned it, we refer to his surviving live broadcast recordings. There is an almost tangible feeling of excitement about this performance of the Concerto for Orchestra that shines through whatever sonic imperfections that were inevitable in war-time broadcasts – a sense of excitement and newness that, once experienced, can never be forgotten. Such was Koussevitsky’s faith in the work he had commissioned that he programmed it a second time (making four performances in all) in the Boston Orchestra’s 1944-45 season.

In 1942, Koussevitsky’s wife Natalie died, and he established the Koussevitsky Foundation in her memory.  It was through this body that he commissioned a large number of important works from composers of all nations, including Igor Stravinsky’s symphonic Ode, an ‘Elegiac Chant’ in three parts, dedicated (as were all Koussevitsky foundation commissions) to the memory of Natalie Koussevitsky.  The performance on this disc is of the actual world premiere, which took place in Boston on Friday, October 8^th 1943.  This is one of the less well-known of Stravinsky’s later orchestral works, but its relative neglect is unjust.  It is a fine score, but one which was severely criticised when it first appeared for its comparative lack of inner rhythmic momentum, which was of course one of the composer’s major characteristics in his earlier music.  The solemnity which runs through this music is essentially Russian, emanating from Orthodox practice, and is a quality which Koussevitsky instinctively understood. 

Finally, one of the conductor’s favourite overtures in concert programmes: Weber’s Oberon which had been introduced to America as early as 1842 by the New York Philharmonic, and of which Koussevitsky was to give ten performances in his quarter century in Boston. This delightful reminder of the great conductor’s qualities in early Romantic music adds a further dimension to our collection of his outstanding broadcasts, with superb orchestral playing of fantasy and imagination.                                               Robert Matthew-Walker

Page revised Tuesday March 06 2007