The chosen recordings: an overview

Selected early recordings of the Brahms symphonies are examined in this chapter with the aim of isolating those characteristics in them that may be attributable, in whole or in part, to the influence of those conductors who received some form of approbation by the composer for their stylistic approach. In one case only, that of Felix Weingartner, there is no intermediary: his approach to the Second Symphony received the composer's direct approval in 1895. If one accepts, as Chapter 2 suggests may plausibly be the case, that Weingartner's recorded approach preserved at least a sufficiency of the characteristics that Brahms himself heard, the analyst's task is relatively straightforward: it is enough to draw attention to how Weingartner performs one or another passage by comparison with his coevals and invite the inference that such handling is at least one solution that might well have had Brahms's approbation. Chapter 2 does, however, signpost possible difficulties in any such straightforward acceptance.

In the other examples covered by this chapter, attribution of a particular influence by one conductor having the composer's approval upon another conductor is far less straightforward. We are dealing here with the performance characteristics of non-recording conductors (at least in the works of Brahms) who had the composer's blessing for their approach and who exercised an audible influence upon others who did record. Such identification and attribution poses formidable difficulties. All the conductors with whom this study is concerned had their own highly developed performance characteristics, and to home in on this or that passage as suggesting the interpretative influence of someone else risks a misleading and simplistic manner of dealing with a subject too obviously littered with booby traps for the credulous.

Where the recording conductor seemingly rejects the possibility of any influence by another, the difficulties outlined are all but insurmountable. In the case of Stokowski, for example, we know that the conductor invoked only Hans Richter as an influence on his music-making, even though on the face of it the sturdy Hans had almost nothing in common with Stokowski's evolved style (or, as vividly demonstrated by his early and late performances of the Second Symphony, styles).