In April 1972, the mezzo-soprano Christa Ludwig, accompanied by Leonard Bernstein, gave a recital with lieder by Johannes Brahms in Vienna’s Musikvereinssaal. They performed the same program in New York’s Town Hall, and, while on a concert tour of Israel, recorded it for television at the Tel Aviv Museum in May 1972. Christa Ludwig, a highly expressive and intelligent artist, has been hailed as the best Mozart and Strauss mezzo of her generation. In addition, she has always shown a great predilection for the lied, and is known for her soulful interpretations of lieder by Brahms, Mahler and Schubert.
Mahler, Rehearsal “Das Lied von der Erde”
Brahms, Symphony No.1 in C minor, op.68
This concert with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra was recorded at the Large Concert Hall in Jerusalem in 1973.
Brahms, Symphony No.4 in E minor, op.98
Composed during the summer months of 1884 and 1885 in Mürzzuschlag, southwest of Vienna, the Fourth Symphony tended to disconcert the public at first and had to prove itself in the concert circuit before gaining recognition as a masterwork of epoch-making stature. What Brahms’s contemporaries regarded as difficult and bewildering were above all the extreme constructive density of the score, the unusual layout, especially of the third and fourth movements, a number of archaic elements pointing back to the formulae and techniques of “early music” (the passacaglia in the fourth movement) and the austere, elegiac mood that permeates the entire work. The premiere of the Fourth Symphony was given by the Meiningen Court Orchestra in Meiningen under Brahms’s direction on 25 October 1885. Leonard Bernstein’s interpretation with the Boston Symphony Orchestra was recorded at Tanglewood. For Bernstein, Brahms was “a true Romantic, containing his passions in classical garb”, but also a “North-German classicist swept away to Vienna, and fired by Danubian, Carpathian and gypsy passions”. Bearing this dualism in mind, Bernstein underscored both the classicism and romanticism, the dramatic intensity and the sober restraint of Brahms’s music.
Beethoven, Sonata in A major, op. 101 (Carinthian Summer 1971)
The great Russian pianist Emil Gilels was universally acclaimed for his breathtaking performances of the most demanding concertos and most challenging piano pieces of piano literature. But he was also a master of the miniature form, and his interpretations of the “Songs Without Words” and other little pieces by Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, Grieg and others were nothing short of mesmerizing. A specialist of the German repertoire, Gilels gave an all German-Austrian program at the 1971 Carinthian Summer Festival in Austria, where Beethoven’s A-major Sonata was recorded.
Schumann, Nocturne, op.23 (Carinthian Summer 1971)
The great Russian pianist Emil Gilels was universally acclaimed for his breathtaking performances of the most demanding concertos and most challenging piano pieces of piano literature. But he was also a master of the miniature form, and his interpretations of the “Songs Without Words” and other little pieces by Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, Grieg and others were nothing short of mesmerizing. A specialist of the German repertoire, Gilels gave an all German-Austrian program at the 1971 Carinthian Summer Festival in Austria, where Schumann’s Nachtstück was recorded.