Deutsche Grammophon publishes in a 17-CD box set all of conductor William Steinberg’s recordings released on the Command label, a legacy that until very recently was feared doomed to oblivion or disappearance. This publication allows us to shine the spotlight on a musician who was much more than a second knife.
Born in 1899 in Cologne, Germany, and died in 1978 in New York, William Steinberg almost became, with one small decision, one of the most exhilarating beacons for the generation of music lovers who had the chance to grow up in the 1960s, with the rise of the stereophonic LP, and was mainly educated in the United States by the records of Ormandy and Bernstein and in Europe, by those of Herbert von Karajan.
This decision was that of the Boston Symphony Orchestra to compensate for the departure of Charles Munch in 1962 by replacing the French conductor not with William Steinberg, but with Erich Leinsdorf, a rigorous and competent conductor, but cold and without any of the flame and enthusiasm. this spark that illuminates Steinberg’s art. Boston corrected its very big mistake in 1969 and, separating itself from Leinsdorf, finally appointed Steinberg. But it was too late. Steinberg was already ill and left the post in 1972.
But even today, what version ofThus spoke Zarathustra is among the two or three that stand out? What recording of Planets by Holst is “the” version? In either case: Steinberg-Boston-DG! For Deutsche Grammophon, William Steinberg was able to record another disc: the symphony Mathis the painter And Music for strings and brass by Hindemith, a reference too. Imagine that this tandem could have been documented between 1962 and 1972 in full recording binge, while the Boston Symphony had a solid contract with RCA, by a healthy William Steinberg!
From Berlin to Pittsburgh
If we go back to an earlier period, that between 1952 and 1959, documented by EMI-Capitol and collected in a box set published in 2011 by EMI, we find just as many treasures. Search for a concerto “Emperor” reference of those years, it is having the lucidity to place Firkusny-Steinberg even before the famous Serkin-Bernstein. As for the violin concertos recorded with Nathan Milstein, they all have reference status.
Although he was not able to mark the history of music in the decade 1960-1970 in Boston, the name of William Steinberg is forever associated with the Pittsburgh Orchestra, which he conducted from 1952 to 1976.
William Steinberg was the director of the Frankfurt Opera in the early 1930s when he was relieved of his duties by the Nazis, literally “manu militari”. He left Germany to co-chair, with violinist Bronislaw Huberman, the birth of the Palestine Orchestra, which is today the Israel Philharmonic.
For the record, the Violin Concerto by Tchaikovsky with Huberman and the Berlin Opera Orchestra was, in 1928, Steinberg’s first recording and, as we reported following the revelations in the German magazine Der Spiegel in 2007, it was this version that the Russian army found in Hitler’s discotheque and that the Führer therefore listened to in his privacy, rather than the “authorized” version, from 1937 by Georg Kulenkampff and Artur Rother, at Telefunken.
William Steinberg emigrated to the United States in 1938. He was first active in New York. RCA entrusts him with supporting the Piano concerto by Schumann and its star Arthur Rubinstein. He became conductor of the Buffalo Orchestra (1945-1952), where he made the first recording of the 7e Symphony by Shostakovich. He left Buffalo in 1952 for the orchestra of his life, Pittsburgh, a city he would not abandon, even during his brief tenure in Boston.
A sound recordist’s dream
The “Command recordings” are positioned in what could be called the “non-Boston” period, that is to say 1961-1968. This is the beginning of stereo following the Capitol period, documented in the 2011 EMI box set.
Command was a new label born at the time of the advent of the stereo LP, in 1959, and tried to make a name for itself in the “Mercury Living Presence” and “RCA Living Stereo” wave with the hook “Original COMMAND master recorded on 35 mm magnetic film” (a wider strip than traditional magnetic tape).
In fact, Command was the “baby” of a sound engineer, Enoch Light, just as Mercury had been created by sound engineer Bob Fine. Light, a friend of Fine, had entrusted the latter with the helm of the majority of his classic recordings. The recording philosophy was not that of Fine at Mercury, but a multi-microphone take, since 35 mm tape favored multi-track recording.
Light abandoned Command for another project in 1966 and Command died a natural death in 1970. Only vinyl records from the 1960s remained in circulation. The Command catalog, sold to media conglomerate ABC, was put into its ABC Records division, which even sold to MCA Records in 1979. MCA Records was part of a galaxy under the umbrella of Universal Studios. One thing led to another and in 1998, MCA, renamed Universal Music Group, and Polygram (the European branch with Philips Decca and DG) found themselves in the same fold. This is what allows Command recordings to be included in the DG catalog in a quarter of a century at a time when the latter is scraping its bottom.
We are struck by the fact that there is no big screed on remastering here. The sources are unknown and there is reason to fear that some original recordings may be lost. Indeed, within ABC Records (Louis Armstrong, Count Basie and all the giants of jazz), not only did these few classic tapes carry no weight, but it is also well known that at ABC, mother tapes were been pruned to make room.
One box hides another
This is to say that we are often far from the impact of Planets and Zarathustra of DG and that we expected, for example, much more than one 4e Symphony by Tchaikovsky by Steinberg recorded by Bob Fine in 1963.
On the other hand, listened to after the carefully thought-out recording of Klaus Mäkelä, Petrouchka is very pleasing and illustrates Steinberg’s straight, enthusiastic, biting style. “Toscanini and Klemperer were my great masters. They served the orchestra and the music and nothing else. “For a bad tempo at a rehearsal, Klemperer wouldn’t speak to me for weeks,” Steinberg told Los Angeles Times in 1976, remembering his period as a violinist. The eloquence and fundamental honesty of Steinberg’s interpretations match those of conductors such as Dorati (less abrasiveness and demonstrativeness) or Szell.
But (possibly due to the variability of the remaining sources), we cannot define a sound philosophy: Beethoven is massive and brilliant, Tchaikovsky a little dull, Petrouchka impeccable, just like the exhilarating 2e Symphony by Rachmaninov (unfortunately cut) and the lapidary 1D Symphony by Shostakovich. A magnificent Copland (Billy the Kid And Appalachian Spring) and Gershwins to match delight us. But Wagner, very inspired, falls a little into the rut of this sonic “fleece” compared, for example, to the same extracts recorded by George Szell in Cleveland for Columbia.
Deutsche Grammophon has, moreover, played a very nasty trick on amateurs by publishing, in the last two years, a box set of Beethoven’s symphonies and a box set of Brahms’ symphonies, which means that the conductor’s admirers, in search of these great rarities, including one intractable Seventh by Bruckner who advances like a bulldozer, will have to buy Beethoven and Brahms to access the 9 unpublished CDs. Only change: all the recordings (even Beethoven and Brahms) find their original covers here.
It is now RCA which will complete a form of loop. In April, we are expecting a small box of 4 CDs containing late recordings in Boston, shared between DG and RCA, including two major works, the 9e Symphony by Schubert and the 6e by Bruckner, two engravings that the chef cherished. There will even be a surprise: the presence of new releases, including The Sorcerer’s Apprentice from Dukas, Till the mischievous of Strauss and the Dance of Death by Saint-Saëns.