Colin Davis was Guest Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra when these recordings were made between 1975 and 1982. Both were in their prime: Davis in his late 40s and early 50s, and the orchestra at a point where the raw energy it had acquired under Charles Munch (and retained to some extent under Erich Leinsdorf) was being leavened into a smoother, more polished profile by its newly installed Chief Conductor Seiji Ozawa.

Sir Colin Davis. Portrait supplied

It was also a period when the big European companies started to record American orchestras. The recordings made of the Boston orchestra by Philips and DG (notably with Ozawa, Tilson Thomas, and Davis) captured a particular sound: silken strings, characterful woodwinds, and burnished brass. It was the ‘European’ orchestra of America during this period, as polished as the Concertgebouw, and the lushness of its sonority has not faded with time.

This set contains Davis’s first complete recording of Sibelius’s seven symphonies, and because of the quintessential Boston sound, his strongest. Listen to the warmth and power of the brass in No. 5, and the ideal timing of the coda of that magnificent finale.

No. 2 is equally compelling, but the set is notable for the quality of the lesser played symphonies: Nos. 3, 6 and 7. Davis’s pacing and balance are ideal.

A disc of Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony and Midsummer Night’s Dream excerpts, recorded in 1975, also displays these attributes: the woodwinds at the top of the symphony are tight and accurate in ensemble, the strings are gossamer in the Dream’s scherzo, and so on. Definitely magic afoot!

Colin Davis: The Boston Legacy

Davis accompanies the pianist Claudio Arrau in the Grieg, Schumann, and Tchaikovsky No. 1 piano concertos. These performances are stately and, at times, stolid: Arrau was 77 by then, a grand old man of music. More to my taste is Salvatore Accardo’s purity of line in the Sibelius Violin Concerto and Six Humoresques (which snuck into this set despite a switch to the LSO).

Other goodies are Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, and a Debussy disc containing La Mer and the Nocturnes. Fêtes, the second Nocturne, was more ebullient in Boston under Munch, but the third, Sirènes, is by far the most evocative performance of this music on disc.

This was an early digital release, and critics were more concerned with the impact of digital recording than the actual performance. Revisited today, Davis’s La Mer is sweeping and romantic in its scope. Appropriately, a stylised painting of the ocean rather than a photograph adorns the CD cover. Altogether, this is a set to cherish. At the very least, download or stream the Sibelius symphonies: they are special.

Forgotten Spanish masters who deserve to be remembered

The young conductor Ataúlfo Argenta studied and conducted in Nazi Germany, until in 1943 he and his wife were forced to flee to Spain. Mentored by Carl Schuricht and, after the war, Ernest Ansermet (who was grooming Argenta to take over the Suisse Romande Orchestra), he was a conductor of great charisma, musicality, and promise.

Unhappily, in March 1958 he was indulging in an early morning dalliance with a female piano student in the garage of his home. He turned on the car’s engine to keep them warm. The student survived, but Argenta was asphyxiated, dead at 44. During his short career, he made many recordings for Decca (mostly of Spanish music), which are collected here. He was Chief Conductor of the Spanish National Orchestra, replaced after his death by Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos.

Decca also made records with an older Spanish conductor, Enrique Jordá (1911–1996), whose life and musical activities were centred in Paris. Jordá was a less magnetic figure but quite accomplished. His performances date back to the 1940s, but one of the pluses of this set is that the older recordings have been remastered by Mark Obert-Thorn, renowned for his ability to make such things listenable.

The repertoire is of primary interest. Argenta conducts great readings of rarities such as Falla’s Master Peter’s Puppet Show and Harpsichord Concerto (with Robert Veyron-Lacroix), Granados’s opera Goyescas (with soprano Consuelo Rubio), Ernesto Halffter’s terrific Sinfonietta in D, plus Debussy’s Images, Liszt’s Faust Symphony and his two Piano Concertos with Julius Katchen, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4, and one of the most exciting performances I know of the Symphonie Fantastique by Berlioz.

Ataúlfo Argenta, Enrique Jordá: The Decca Masters

Jordá is less gripping, but he was always comfortable in the studio. His highlights include Falla’s El amor brujo, the two suites from The Three-cornered Hat, Rodrigo’s Fantasía pour une gentilhomme and Manuel Ponce’s Concierto del sur (both with the great Andrés Segovia). He also conducts Clifford Curzon in Brahms’s First Piano Concerto, although the pianist made a better (and better sounding) recording with George Szell a decade later.

Speaking of Curzon, he plays two of the three versions here of Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain, both with Jordá, from 1946 and 1951. The third recording is under Argenta, with pianist Gonzalo Soriano – a protégée of Falla himself. When Soriano died suddenly of a stroke aged 59, his partner John Ross joined an order of Benedictine monks in retreat for 20 years, before returning to his birthplace of Hawaii.

While all this ancient history is intriguing, the fact is these musicians were close in time and proximity to the composers whose music they performed, and the traditions that formed them. For that reason (among others), this set is well worth investigating.

Colin Davis, The Boston Legacy
Music by Sibelius, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Debussy et al.
Boston Symphony Orchestra/Colin Davis
Decca Eloquence 4847627 (13CD)
*****

Ataúlfo Argenta, Enrique Jordá: The Decca Masters
Music by Falla, Granados, Albéniz, Tchaikovsky et al.
Paris Conservatoire Orchestra, Suisse Romande Orchestra, Spanish National Orchestra/Ataúlfo Argenta, Enrique Jordá
Decca Eloquence 4847819 (20CD)
****