The Westminster LegacyDGIn the golden age of orchestral recording – the 1950s cusp between mono and stereo – American labels piled into London and Vienna after an aggressive union priced their own musicians out of work. At Abbey Road, players worked thirty days on the trot, three sessions a day, to feed a burgeoning market for classical music. In Vienna, the Philharmonic (exclusively contracted to Decca) performed under six different names for other labels.Westminster was one of the busiest of these producers and its archives have been virtually unavailable for the past quarter-century, since the digital dawn. This overdue compilation of 40 CDs is filled with uncollected glories, some half-remembered, others unknown. A Vienna Mozart Requiem conducted by the cerebral Hermann Scherchen, with Sena Jurinac as soloist; Clara Haskil playing the Mozart D minor concerto and the very young Daniel Barenboim the E-flat major: treasures beyond the stuff of dreams.Pierre Monteux leading Beethoven’s ninth in London with Elisabeth Soderstrom and Jon Vickers; Adrian Boult conducting The Planets in Vienna; Hans Knappertsbusch interpreting Bruckner; debut discs by the Amadeus Quartet and Julian Bream; the two best Czech quartets coming together in Mendelssohn’s Octet. This is fantasy casting of an almost unimaginable pedigree and few today are aware that these recordings even exist.There are, inevitably, a few period duds in the box, but even these mishits – Scherchen Conducts Music for Multiple Orchestras – proclaim an idealism that we’d write off as quixotic if we didn’t, finally, blessedly, have proof of their existence. Where on earth to begin?___Norman Lebrecht is a regular presenter on BBC Radio 3 and a contributor to the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and other publications. He has written 12 books about music, the most recent being Why Mahler? He hosts the blog Slipped Disc.
