Mahler: Symphony No. 4 in G Major (Live)

Album review

At the end of the 1950s, the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) was emerging from one of the most tormented periods in its existence. It had faced a difficult rivalry with two new orchestras founded after the last war: Royal Philharmonic created and led by Beecham on the one hand, and the Philharmonia Orchestra, which Walter Legge had conceived of as a studio orchestra for prestigious recordings by the EMI label. Having become an orchestra routinely led by second-rate conductors, between 1950 and 1954 it had taken all the talent and patience of Viennese conductor Josef Krips to bring the LSO back to its roots. Returning as a guest for this concert record on 17 January 1957 at the Royal Festival Hall, Krips chose Mahler's Fourth Symphony at a time when the composer wasn't regularly featured on concert programmes.

The soloist on the final lied, Wir geniessen die Himmlischen Freuden, from Knaben Wunderhorn, Belgian singer Suzanne Danco, was at the height of a brilliant career which was soon to be cut rather short by vocal chord problems. In the same concert, she also took part in the first English performance of Voices of Night, a cantata for soprano, baritone, choir and orchestra by Franz Reizenstein, with baritone Thomas Hemsley. With a fresh, clear voice and perfect diction, Danco was an ideal performer to carry the melody of these lieder.

Her collaboration with Josef Krips had started earlier, with the famous touchstone recording of Don Giovanni by Mozart, produced by Decca in 1955 for stereophonic sound, then in its infancy, with the best soloists from the Vienna Opera:  Cesare Siepi, Fernando Corena, Lisa Della Casa, Anton Dermota, Hilde Güdden. Suzanne Danco, who was not a part of the troupe, plays a passionate Donna Anna with impeccable vocal style. It's a role that she only ever sang for recordings, always preferring Donna Elvira for the stage, in particular the stage at Aix-en-Provence, where she had been a queen from the start. The cantatrice would sing Mahler's Fourth Symphony several times without ever making an official recording, the last time in Geneva at a concert conducted by Paul Kletzki in 1970 Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. But by then, Danco's beautiful voice was no more. And so this album is a unique document of this oeuvre.

The listener will enjoy the supple and fervent conducting by Josef Krips on this concert version. His Viennese sense of rubato, his moderate tempi and his elegance do perfect justice to this happy symphony of classical proportions. Insouciant and joyful, it conjures up the magical world of childhood and the slow ascent of the human soul towards heaven. © François Hudry/Qobuz