Eugen Jochum

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

A fine cycle, I agree Calum made with the VPO

Calum made a Beethoven Symphony cycle with the VPO??!! That I'd pay good money to hear! (It'd be an improvement on Thielemann! )


Frivolous Mode switched off, I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiments of the OP: Jochum was a superb conductor of the "mainstream" German repertoire, and I regard his Bruckner recordings as highly as I do Kubelik's Mahler. (This to mention a comparable figure whose star is currently - and quite rightly - in the ascendant.) And Jochum's Enigma Variations are finer than most and leave me wishing he'd recorded the Symphonies, too.

Best Wishes.

[amateur51]

Calum made a Beethoven Symphony cycle with the VPO??!! That I'd pay good money to hear! (It'd be an improvement on Thielemann! )

- sorry!

[mathias broucek]

[And Jochum's Enigma Variations are finer than most and leave me wishing he'd recorded the Symphonies, too.
[/QUOTE]

Wouldn't that have been something! On an obliquely related point, his old orchestra (Bav RSO) did an RVW 6 with Barbirolli in 1970ish which is surprisingly good.

[Bryn]

The Schmidt-Isserstedt box would be a prime candidate for Brilliant Classics to pick up and run with I think! Recorded in the fabled acoustic of the much-lamented Sofiensaal, too.

Useless nugget: his son is/was Decca producer Erik Smith (evidently bored by a surname whose only advantage was that it was wonderful on a triple word score in Scrabble!).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Schmidt-Isserstedt (Switch of Javascript to view it today).

[Dave2002]

The Schmidt-Isserstedt box would be a prime candidate for Brilliant Classics to pick up and run with I think! Recorded in the fabled acoustic of the much-lamented Sofiensaal, too.

Useless nugget: his son is/was Decca producer Erik Smith (evidently bored by a surname whose only advantage was that it was wonderful on a triple word score in Scrabble!).

I thought you weren't allowed to use proper names in Scrabble!

Perhaps the most stunning performance of Brahms Symphony 1 was by Jochum in the RFH sometime in the 1970s. One of the best concerts I ever went to. Maybe some wouldn't like his technique. He had the horns and brass playing so loud that they broke notes, or were on the verge of doing so, but it had terrific impact.

Don't hear many concerts like that these days - a whole orchestra going for broke.

[visualnickmos]

Highland.... (msg 13)

Thank you for that - I kinda thought that may be the word on the street! I do admire Solti very much; his LvB, Brahms, R Strauss and his opera recordings, etc. I'm even growing to enjoy his Elgar! But as for dear old Anton - bless him, I think I'll stick with my EMI Jochum.

Et oui - il fait très beau ici, sauf dans les soirs et les matins, quand les temperatures baissent beaucoup!

Tonight my "concert" is going to be Shostakovich syms 4 and/or 10, Philadelphia/Ormandy followed by Elgar VC, Perlmann/Barenboim/CSO.

Bonne soirée,
Nick

[Richard Tarleton]

Useless nugget: his son is/was Decca producer Erik Smith (evidently bored by a surname whose only advantage was that it was wonderful on a triple word score in Scrabble!).

d. 2001 - after cutting his producing teeth with Culshaw at Decca he went on to a distinguished career at Philips - he was separated from his father at age 5 when he and his Jewish mother left Germany in 1936, not meeting him again till after the war when he was 15 and living in England. But Erik and Hans became great friends.

Culshaw mentions in "Putting the Record Straight" that he signed Schmidt-Isserstedt for Capitol in 1955 as a sort of alternative to Klemperer.

Back to thread, I got to know Die Meistersinger through Jochum's recording (with Domingo/Fischer-Dieskau), and I have a lovely old Frieschutz on DG with Irmgard Seefried et al.

[DoctorT]

I love his recording of the B minor Mass. I owned it on LP and listened to the opening chorus repeatedly. Enjoyed getting to know it again on CD a year or two ago.

[BBMmk2]

I love his recording of the B minor Mass. I owned it on LP and listened to the opening chorus repeatedly. Enjoyed getting to know it again on CD a year or two ago.

wasn't Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, one of the soloists?

[Petrushka]

I completely agree with you about Eugen Jochum, a conductor I saw as often as possible in concerts (all of them memorable occasions) and whose recordings include some real marvels. Among my own favourites I'd include the DG Brahms set from the 1950s, the Enigma and St Anthony Variations with the LSO, several of his late Bruckner performances (No. 8 with Bamberg on a Japanese DVD, No. 5 with the Concertgebouw on Tahra, and others). He was also a wonderful opera conductor - there's a Figaro (sung in German) which is sparkling in terms of the conducting (on Walhall) and martin_opera has already mentioned the terrific Cosi. There's plenty more - he was an exceptional musician and, on the evidence of a German TV documentary I once saw, a delightful human being.

It's nice to have a thread about him here. I particularly remember a Brahms 2 with the LPO (preceded by Strauss's Don Juan and the Schumann Concerto with Perahia) at the Festival Hall - just about the most exciting performance I've ever heard of that great piece. And he came to the Albert Hall with the Vienna Philharmonic in the early 1980s for a tremendous concert with the 'Jupiter' and 'Eroica' on the same programme... Happy memories!

Makropolous, I was also at that Albert Hall concert with Jochum and the VPO on March 11 1982. As you say, a tremendous concert and I was lucky enough to sneak backstage afterwards to meet him. I was also at the RFH concert a few days earlier when Jochum and the VPO played Mozart 33 and Bruckner 7.

Anyone looking for Jochum recordings can find some excellent stuff on the Tahra label. I have three superb Bruckner live performances given with the Concertgebouw, no's 4, 5 and 8 from Tahra and the 4th in particular is the best I've ever heard. I have the DG Beethoven, the EMI Bruckner, Brahms PC's with Gilels, Mahler's Das Lied, a Haydn 94 & 101, Beethoven VC with Schneiderhan and the Concertgebouw and LSO LvB Choral's.

[DoctorT]

BBM, on the recording I possess, the soloists are Helen Donath, Brigitte Fassbaender, Claes H Ahnsjo, Roland Hermann and Robert Holl. Did he record it more than once?

[Chris Newman]

I was lucky enough to hear Eugen Jochum's only Prom: a wonderful Missa Solemnis with the BBC Singers, Chorus and RCO in 1970. The soloists were Elizabeth Harwood (soprano),
Marga Höffgen (contralto) Ernst Haefliger (tenor) and Karl Ridderbusch (bass). The only other time I heard him was an all Haydn Symphony Concert at the Festival Hall a few years later. Like Sir Colin Davis and Sir Thomas Beecham he was a natural for Haydn. I love his Brahms and Wagner and adore his Bruckner. He and Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt were very highly regarded in the 60s and 70s and they should both be people in common parlance amongst music lovers. The impression we got was that like Sir Bernard Haitink (they were both conductors of the RCO at that time) he was a strong but gentle person completely unlike say Solti, Maazel or Josef Krips.

[gurnemanz]

I was lucky enough to hear Eugen Jochum's only Prom: a wonderful Missa Solemnis with the BBC Singers, Chorus and RCO in 1970. The soloists were Elizabeth Harwood (soprano),
Marga Höffgen (contralto) Ernst Haefliger (tenor) and Karl Ridderbusch (bass). The only other time I heard him was an all Haydn Symphony Concert at the Festival Hall a few years later. Like Sir Colin Davis and Sir Thomas Beecham he was a natural for Haydn. I love his Brahms and Wagner and adore his Bruckner. He and Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt were very highly regarded in the 60s and 70s and they should both be people in common parlance amongst music lovers. The impression we got was that like Sir Bernard Haitink (they were both conductors of the RCO at that time) he was a strong but gentle person completely unlike say Solti, Maazel or Josef Krips.

I was also at that concert which was very memorable for me it as the first time I had heard that mighty work live. (I went a year later to same work under Colin Davis unusually and very excitingly in Westminster Cathedral). I didn't know it was his only Prom. I also saw him at the Fairfield Hall, Croydon in about 1977.

I have a couple of opera recordings with Jochum - both very worthwhile. Bavarian Opera in Mozart's Entführung with Fritz Wunderlich as Belmont and the classic 1954 Bayreuth Lohengrin with Wolfgang Windgassen, Birgit Nilsson and Astrid Varnay + a youthful Fischer-Dieskau as a Herald.

[jayne lee wilson]

Oh it's a shame I'm so short of time here!

Anyway, I was there too Petrushka, for the Mozart 33 and Bruckner 7 - did you go to Robert Simpson's talk in the Green Room? I hung around sheepishly and managed to talk to the English Symphonist. Bryan Magee came to say hello to "Bob" - he smiled at me kindly and then withdrew, giving me the chance to meet a hero - I always remembered his generosity to a gaudily-dressed youngster.

But but but! Get yourselves over to HDTT where you'll find lovely 24/96 transfers from Open Reel of the RACO Mozart 35 and 41 - the site can be uneven but these are two of the best.

The problem with Jochum's Bruckner, inspired and dedicated though it often is, is his tempo relations. As Richard Osborne put it somewhere, it tends to be a bit "stop-go"! The Dresden 6th falls foul of this especially, rather rushing its fences in the finale. Obvious gear-changes (moving from horses to cars...) always sound wrong to me in Bruckner, even if all else is right.
I got hold of the Toshiba-EMI of the Dresden 8th, but all it's revealingness revealed was the obvious compression of dynamics at climactic moments... he's probably at his Brucknerian best in Amsterdam.

Paradoxically his Bavarian RSO readings of the masses are true classics, unsurpassable in their depth and dedication, and noticeably steadier in tempi too. All to the greater glory of Bruckner's God - and Bruckner's music.

I do like his LPO Brahms cycle very much, again as I remark too often it came up splendidly on Toshiba (13481/2/3).

Makropolous, I was also at that Albert Hall concert with Jochum and the VPO on March 11 1982. As you say, a tremendous concert and I was lucky enough to sneak backstage afterwards to meet him. I was also at the RFH concert a few days earlier when Jochum and the VPO played Mozart 33 and Bruckner 7.

Anyone looking for Jochum recordings can find some excellent stuff on the Tahra label. I have three superb Bruckner live performances given with the Concertgebouw, no's 4, 5 and 8 from Tahra and the 4th in particular is the best I've ever heard. I have the DG Beethoven, the EMI Bruckner, Brahms PC's with Gilels, Mahler's Das Lied, a Haydn 94 & 101, Beethoven VC with Schneiderhan and the Concertgebouw and LSO LvB Choral's.

[BBMmk2]

BBM, on the recording I possess, the soloists are Helen Donath, Brigitte Fassbaender, Claes H Ahnsjo, Roland Hermann and Robert Holl. Did he record it more than once?

I am pretty sure I had one with DFD and EJ, with a rather thunderous timp on vynl years ago? On EMI?