Another conductor: Günter Wand

[Lance]

Here's a conductor I never gave much thought about until recently. In reading the notes to his RCA recording of Brahms' Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 68 [60428]. Within the booklets notes, reference is made to an interview with John Von Rhein that appeared in the March/April issue of Fanfare magazine. I don't recall that article these many years later for Wand was not on the tip of my tongue. Part of the reason (from that articles) gives us an explanation as to his lack of notice until after his passing in 2002 at the age of 90. I quote: "At the beginning of this century [20th], the job of conductor was a highly regarded rank, on par with a university professor. The media have changed all that. Now conductors behave the way they think the audience wants to see them. They are part clowns, part publicity-seekers. First comes Star, then Superstar, then Megastar—like your Michael Jackson. Well, I'm not a star! I don't care how my achievements look to the outside world. Whether I am recognized or not, it makes no difference to me. I know what I have worked for and I've never been interested in a career."

Well, he may not have been interested in having a career, however, he had one. And it is being more and more recognized, especially in his recordings for Hanssler, and for a long time, RCA Red Seal issued his recordings, mostly of German orchestras. When he came to America, he assumed he could have as much time for rehearsals as he wanted. That was not the case. That Brahms Symphony I referred to above was recorded (live!) but put together from three sessions in Chicago: January 19, 20, and 21, 1989. Now, almost two decades after Wand's passing, we have about 75 recordings of his work. The "big" labels offer the least amount of his work on discs: RCA (20 mostly from Germany), Decca (1, in collaboration with Backhaus), EMI (1 iin collaboration with Zacharias), and Sony Classical (3 reissues, German orchestras originally appearing on RCA and very budget-priced). The richest collection comes from Hanssler/Profil with 20 radio recordings on CD. There was also a mega-boxed set called the Günter Wand Edition from Hanssler Profil.

While Wand is highly regarded for his recordings of Schubert, Beethoven, Bruckner and others, his repertoire was wide and included 20th century music as well. He also collaborated with many highly regarded artists such as Dennis Brain, Martina Arroyo, Jorge Bolet, Rudolf Firkusny.

So, how do my fellow collectors feel about Günter Wand these days?

[david johnson]

He is represented in my collection. The Bruckner is a good listen.

[John F]

I heard one concert he conducted, with his orchestra (the North German Radio in Hamburg) - Mozart 40, Brahms 4. Solid, well played, nothing wrong, nothing special. These are the virtues of a good Kapellmeister, which in his day was a useful and not dishonorable thing to be; his comments as quoted suggest he was comfortable with that.

Most of what I've read about Wand has been about his Bruckner. I heard little of that and none that I can remember. With Bruckner's symphonies now more common in the concert hall, which of course is where they should be heard, and with many great Bruckner performances on record, I haven't felt the need to look into Günter Wand's recordings. His contemporary Klaus Tennstedt was on a higher level, I think, from a Bruckner 8 I heard from him by the New York Philharmonic.

[maestrob]

Gunter Wand......

Wand was indeed a Kappellmeister, but I think he was West Germany's equivalent to Klaus Tennstedt. Tennstedt had a better orchestra (London Philharmonic) while Wand had much to do with the NDR and Cologne. In later years, Wand was invited to Berlin and recorded Bruckner IV, V, VII, VIIIi & IX there for RCA, IIRC. Those recordings show a man totally comfortable in the idiom, very much with his own ideas; the performances are quite effective. Not great, but effective. I also have the LP-sized megabox, which was briefly available, which includes his earlier Bruckner cycle, as well as Schubert, Brahms & Beethoven, all well done, but not spectacular.

Tennstedt had a more distinct sound in London, a sound more like a soft pillow, rarely rising above ff, with no hard edges. He was extremely effective with his emphasis on pianissimo strings, which made his orchestra sound so German, without diminishing the effectiveness of the music.

In short, Wand was a good conductor, but not a great one. A true servant to the music. That said don't be put off: his recordings are due great respect. His is an era that's passing swiftly, and his skills are being lost to the current generation. Russians and Americans (think Barenboim with the Staadskapelle Berlin) and Russians (think Kirill Karabits and the Petrenko brothers) are taking over the scene. I miss already the Italian opera conductor that knew the repertoire inside out (Serafin, Votto, Molinari-Pradelli) but never rose to fame. Same with Tennstedt and Wand: where are the standard-bearers for the German repertoire today?

Corrections thanks to JohnF & mikealdren.

[John F]

Just one thing: Hamburg was and is in West Germany. It's Tennstedt whose career began in East Germany, where he was GMD of the Dresden State Opera. Emigrating to the West, he preceded Günter Wand as music director of the NDR Symphony Orchestra in Hamburg.

[maestrob]

Just one thing: Hamburg was and is in West Germany. It's Tennstedt whose career began in East Germany, where he was GMD of the Dresden State Opera. Emigrating to the West, he preceded Günter Wand as music director of the NDR Symphony Orchestra in Hamburg.

Yikes! Of course. Thanks, John.

[mikealdren]

and Tennstedt conducted the London Philharmonic Orchestra not the LSO, not the same and until he came along, not really as good.

[Heck148]

and Tennstedt conducted the London Philharmonic Orchestra not the LSO, not the same and until he came along, not really as good.

Correct, LPO not at the level of LSO...IMO, Boult and Solti were the only conductors to get really first-rate results from the LPO.

[maestrob]

and Tennstedt conducted the London Philharmonic Orchestra not the LSO, not the same and until he came along, not really as good.

Thanks Mike, for catching that. I was typing too fast......

The point I was making was that Tennstedt had his own distinct sound, whether he was recording with the LPO, Berlin, or Chicago. He relished that pillowy soft-edged sound that stretched his orchestra to the limit in softer dynamics, yet never sounded overly aggressive in louder passages. He did raise the standard for the LPO, yet I agree with Heck that Solti produced some fine recordings with them, most notably his Mahler symphonies.

[John F]

Correct, LPO not at the level of LSO...IMO, Boult and Solti were the only conductors to get really first-rate results from the LPO.

And first and foremost Sir Thomas Beecham, who created the LPO in the 1930s and made many outstanding recordings with them during that decade. When Beecham quit England for America during WWII, leaving his orchestra in the lurch, they became self-governing, and since this wasn't acceptable to Beecham their decline began with many of the best players leaving.

[THEHORN]

Once again, I disagree with you on everything . Wand was an outstanding conductor ; he was never a flashy interpreter, but neither was he in any way a "kapellmeister" in the negative or derogatory sense of the word . I recently borrowed the set of the Beethoven symphonies with the NDR symphony , which ha long been a much bette orchestra than you give it credit for being , and I found these performances refreshing ; energetic but never hectic and hard driven, flexible yet never eccentric , and utterly spontaneous and natural sounding .
And he was also one of the greatest Bruckner conductors of the 20th century ,too .
There are quite a few excellent non-superstar Italian opera conductors who are at least as good as Serafin, Molinari-Pradelli, Erede etc al, such as Marco Armiliato, Riccardo Frizza, and others .
There are lots of great conductors today , venerable masters such as Haitink, Dohnanyi, Blomstedt , and Muti, Barenboim ,Levine, even though his career may unfortunately be over ,
Eschenbach , Ashkenazy, Bychkov, Gergiev, Neeme and Paavo Jarvi, Jansns, Nagano, Chailly , Salonen , Rattle, Temirkanov, Osmo Vanska Thielemann , to name only some .
Alan Gilbert, Gustavo Dudamel , Nezet-Seguin, Andris Nelsons, Noseda , Pappano, Andrew Litton, Joann Falletta , Marin Alsop, et al , too .
There are more world class orchestras everywhere than ever before . In America , the term "big five" New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland , Chicago , is now obsolete . These are still great , but there are plenty of other American orchestras which are no longer inferior to them in any way .
Plus all the outstanding orchestras in Eloper and elsewhere e. And they do not sound alike ! None of them is a carbon copy of each other .
I'm not a classical music "declinist " .

[THEHORN]

OOPs ! I should have said "Once again I disagree with you John ."

[RebLem]

Correct, LPO not at the level of LSO...IMO, Boult and Solti were the only conductors to get really first-rate results from the LPO.

And first and foremost Sir Thomas Beecham, who created the LPO in the 1930s and made many outstanding recordings with them during that decade. When Beecham quit England for America during WWII, leaving his orchestra in the lurch, they became self-governing, and since this wasn't acceptable to Beecham their decline began with many of the best players leaving.

Zdenek Macal recorded the Dvorak New World Symphony with the LPO, and I consider it the greatest performance of that work ever made.

[Lance]

Zdenek Macal recorded the Dvorak New World Symphony with the LPO, and I consider it the greatest performance of that work ever made.

Even better than:
Giulini
Bernstein
Kondrashin
Dorati
Colin Davis
Kubelik
Rodzinski
Toscanini
Fricsay
Keilberth
Sabata
Talich (top drawer for me)
Stokowski
Kubelik (Chicago SO)
Horenstein
Mravinsky
Szell (another great winner)
I. Kertesz

BUT, you have piqued my curiosity! I just don't think I need another Dvorak New World or another set of Beethoven's 9!

[barney]

Plus all the outstanding orchestras in Eloper and elsewhere e. And they do not sound alike ! None of them is a carbon copy of each other .
I'm not a classical music "declinist " .

I'd love to hear the outstanding orchestras in Eloper. Where can I find recordings?

[jserraglio]

Wand is a first-rate conductor. Examples of his Bartok, Schoenberg, Prokofiev, Debussy, Martin, Stravinsky and Webern, as well as Beethoven, Schumann Brahms, Bruckner and Mozart, are in my collection. I've lost count of the number of times I've run across listeners who have called his performances excellent. Pigeonholing him as Kapellmeister, even non-pejoratively, does not do him justice.

[John F]

Pigeonholing him as Kapellmeister, even non-pejoratively, does not do him justice.

You're entitled to your opinion, THEHORN to his, and I to mine. Perhaps we have different standards. I know my standards are way different from THEHORN's.

[jserraglio]

Excerpt from a fascinating 2002 interview (the year of his death) in which Wand discusses his relationship with modernism and contemporary music.

BD: We’ve talked about a number of composers. Are there some composers still writing today who have this spark?

GW: Yes. There are some composers who are really my friends. Bernd Alois Zimmermann was long my friend. I did four or five premieres. I conducted the first performance of his Symphony. It’s shocking always, even now. It is written more than thirty five years ago, but it’s still shocking. I also think highly of Messiaen, Bartók, Stravinsky and Schoenberg. The Five Pieces for Orchestra, Opus sixteen is fantastic music. It’s written in the time of Emperor William II in 1910! It was given for the first time in the Proms in London in 1912, before the First World War.

The 1912 and 1913 Prom seasons are singled out by historian David Cox as among the finest of this part of Henry Wood's career. Among those conducting their own works or hearing Wood conduct them were Strauss, Debussy, Reger, Scriabin, Rachmaninoff and Schoenberg. Rehearsing Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra, Wood urged his players, "Stick to it, gentlemen! This is nothing to what you'll have to play in 25 years' time". The critic Ernest Newman wrote, "It is not often that an English audience hisses the music it does not like, but a good third of the people at Queen's Hall last Tuesday permitted themselves that luxury after the performance of the five orchestral pieces of Schoenberg. Another third of the audience was only not hissing because it was laughing, and the remaining third seemed too puzzled either to laugh or to hiss; so that on the whole it does not look as if Schoenberg has so far made many friends in London." The composer was delighted with the performance and congratulated Wood and the orchestra warmly, "I must say it was the first time since Gustav Mahler that I heard such music played again as a musician of culture demands." Wood programmed the work again in 1914, when it was much more warmly received.

The third movement is called Chord-Colors. You think it’s Ligeti because it’s all for the future. It is so valuable! It is genius! I had a brief exchange of letters with Ligeti. Listen to Atmosphères or Lontano of Ligeti — you have the same music like from 1910. There, Schoenberg is atonal, not dodecaphonic, not twelve-tone. The atonal Schoenberg before becoming a dodecaphonist is the best!

BD: Do you do any twelve-tone pieces at all?

GW: Ja, other Schoenberg works like the Klavierkonzert, the Piano Concerto is twelve-tone music, also Lichtspielszene, Music for a Movie Scene, as well as the Variations for Orchestra. It’s absolutely twelve-tone music, and it is so like in a straightjacket. I feel it so. The young Schoenberg, the atonal Schoenberg, is absolutely free, a genius thinking very much to the future! It’s fantastic! I made a Nonesuch record of this — Schoenberg, Stravinsky Dumbarton Oaks and Webern First Cantata. It’s very difficult to sing Webern. I made much in modern music, I think more than any other conductor. For the people and for the audience, I was a revolutionary conductor. I did it all for the concerts in Köln in the subscription concerts. Not in special concerts, in subscription concerts.

BD: Did the public take to it, or no?

GW: It was after the War, the first years after the War, and this great music couldn’t be played in Hitler time. It was forbidden, you know, Entartete Musik (degenerate music) for twelve years. After that, I came with all this very hard avant-garde music. I was almost thirty years chief conductor of the concerts in Köln. I gave them Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Matthäus-Passion, h-Moll Messe, Missa Solemnis and all, so that they take also the modern music from me.

BD: Should there always be a balance between the masterworks and the modern works?

GW: You have masterworks, surely. Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta of Bartók is absolutely a masterwork; also the Divertimento. It’s fantastic music, and you have things like the Symphony of Psalms by Stravinsky. What you have, you have, but I don’t think that very much will be kept from the last twenty years. I’m not sure. I cannot say. I did so much for modern music. I used the manuscript when I did the Turangalîla-Symphonie of Messiaen for the first time in concert in Köln. Messaien was there in the audience. He was a friend of mine. Two or three hundred people walked out during our playing. After five minutes they went out and slammed the doors. So I stopped and said, “Just a moment, please. Two weeks ago I was here for the Third Symphony of Bruckner led by Hermann Abendroth, and you were very appreciative. Please remember that when Bruckner himself conducted the first performance of this work in Vienna with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, at the end of the concert there were only twenty people left in the hall. All others had gone! They were upset and cursing and laughing, but Bruckner himself was standing there quiet. Please think on it,” I said to those people in the concert with Messaien. “Please think on it and perhaps now you will let us play this new work. After we have played, if you think it is bad then you can say so, but let us play now, please.” There was a roar from the crowd! Messaien was sitting in the audience and asked, “What did you say? What did you say?” because the people were so excited!

[maestrob]

That was quite enlightening, jserraglio, thank you. I've never been a fan of Messiaen (I have only one recording of the symphony, which I never listen to.), but Wand's championing of then new works is new information to me. I only know him as an excellent interpreter of the standard repertoire who made recordings with German orchestras.

[Lance]

I have not been a great fan of Messiaen's output except for one thing (and some of the other material may be growing on me), but it is his Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus for solo piano that I responded to very well, particularly one section. I prepared a piano once for an artist who played this in concert. The hall was filled to capacity and all the lights were turned out as he rendered the piece. How he found his way with this complex music so beautifully in total darkness remains a mystery to this day. So, if you listen to this piece, close yours eyes or be in a dark room as you listen and see if it has the same affect on you!

I have a number of recordings of this work but I think the one with JOHN OGDON may be the one to acquire. Here's my listing:

John Ogdon, Decca 430.343, 2 CDs (complete)
Michel Beroff, EMI/Warner 69161 or 76915, 2 CDs (complete)
Olivier Messiaen, EMI Rarissimes 8575, 2 CDs (excerpts only)
Peter Serkin, RCA 62316, 2 CDs (complete)
Greg McCallum, MSR Classics 1233 (excerpts only)
Evan Hirsch, MSR Classics 1433 (complete)
Hakon Austbo, Naxos 550829/30 (complete)

[THEHORN]

Damn autocorrect ! I didn't even notice this ! But my eyesight isn't fully recovered from a recent cataract removal surgery .