Of late I’ve been bathing, luxuriating, and reveling in the shimmering luminance that is the Staatskapelle Dresden playing the Schubert symphonies. No other orchestra produces such a seamless yet lithe sound, no other orchestra possesses such golden brass or winsome winds, no other orchestra gives out such an aura of maturity in its playing, not even the Vienna Phil at its best. In my personal orchestral pantheon Dresden ranks right up there with Vienna and Amsterdam, and in certain repertory—Schubert, Bruckner, Wagner, Richard Strauss—they are my unsurpassable champions, an ensemble of verray parfit and gentil knyghts indeed.
They don’t do it all by themselves. There’s a guy up in front. In one complete-Schubert set, he’s Colin Davis. In another one, he’s Herbert Blomstedt. Each guy displays his own idiosyncracies, each has his own ideas about tempi and balance, each brings a distinct personality to the proceedings. Both conductors are superb, mature musicians who are worthy of the magnificent ensemble they lead.
But the orchestra is the star of the show. Neither Davis nor Blomstedt appears to object. I should think that egomaniacal celebrity conductors would prefer to avoid the Dresden Staatskapelle. Soupy Sales could be on the podium, but the Dresden would ravish. Stuck in the nastiest, harshest, most dessicated cracker box of a concert hall, an acoustic Black Hole of Calcutta, the Dresden would ravish. Plop icky blip-bloopy serialist drivel on the music stands, and the Dresden would make it ravishing, albeit no more comprehensible.
Hell, the Staatskapelle Dresden could create sonic enchantment with an unadorned C Major scale.
Beautiful people tend to be treated a lot more nicely than ugly folks. That’s probably unfair, although P. J. O’Rourke figures it’s tit-for-tat, a way of thanking pretties for making masturbation so much more pleasant for the rest of us. In orchestral terms, beautiful orchestras just might be inclined to bring out the sweetie-pie softie nice guy that is rumored to lurk deep within the heart of even the most flinty conductor.
If that is so, then the Staatskapelle Dresden is the Dalai Lama of the orchestral world, bearer of compassion and lovingkindliness to all who stand before it. Consider the Dresden of 1970—isolated by the Iron Curtain, quietly going about its business in the midst of a partitioned, impoverished East Germany. Then listen to what happened to Herbert von Karajan when he arrived to conduct a full-length stereo recording of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. That iconic EMI Meistersinger sounds as though it was created in sustained state of ecstasy. The Prelude, so often granitic and imposing, glows with inner warmth, incomparably paced and allowed to sing out unhindered.
Whether the Dresdeners actually have such an inspiring impact on their conductors, or I’m just extrapolating from my listening, I really can’t say. For all I know the Staatskapelle Dresden houses more jaded, caustic cynics than a Las Vegas pit band. But somehow I doubt it.
Via ArkivMusic’s handy databases, I note that Dresden conductors tend towards the lesser-known, although biggies on the order of a Karajan or Szell pop up here and there. The conductor sporting the largest available discography is the admirable and underrated Herbert Blomstedt, joined by such fine musicians as Bernard Haitink, Colin Davis, Marek Janowski, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Karl Böhm, Rudolf Kempe, and James Levine. Wolfgang Sawallisch directed the Dresdeners in a number of glorious recordings, none more so than the complete Schumann symphonies on EMI. Eugen Jochum gifted us with unforgettably fine Bruckner symphonies in Dresden, while Carlos Kleiber left behind one of the finest of all Tristans.
A few one-shot conductors look, at least on paper, like mismatches: Seiji Ozawa, Daniel Barenboim, Leonard Bernstein, Esa-Pekka Salonen, André Previn. I haven’t heard the recordings in question so for all I know the pairing might work beautifully, but somehow they just don’t impress me as Dresden guys. In the case of Bernstein and Previn, too much star power. Salonen, too modern-music oriented. Both Ozawa and Barenboim seem too clinical, like dour food nannies faced with a display of luscious pastries—say, staffers from the Center for Science in the Public Interest at San Francisco’s Tartine bakery.
Dresden is the orchestra for Beethoven, Schubert, and Schumann, for Brahms, Bruckner, and Mozart. You want Copland, Corigliano, Ives, Webern, Gershwin, Piston, Sessions, Holst—seek elsewhere. You want Arturo Toscanini or Leopold Stokowski—seek elsewhere.
I note with real satisfaction that the Dresden ideal of polished beauty seems to have provided the gestalt for the Budapest Festival Orchestra, a remarkable young ensemble that has risen quickly to the front ranks amongst the world’s orchestras. That Dresden gold is potent stuff.
The Staatskapelle Dresden: an orchestra to cherish