Rediscovering Fritz Reiner

 I've just finished Kenneth Morgan’s excellent biography of Fritz Reiner, the conductor’s conductor, and a great teacher whose pupils included Leonard Bernstein.  Already lauded in Europe when he arrived in America in the 1920s, his ambition, never realized, was to lead an orchestra equal to his talents - the New York Phil or Philadelphia after Stokowski, but instead he had to rebuild his own orchestras in Cincinnati and Pittsburgh into first-class ensembles, before making a final match-made-in-heaven with the Chicago Symphony, where he made a series of recordings that, even after over sixty years, remain unsurpassed both in performance and quality of sound.  

The cliche is that he had a “vest pocket beat”, nearly invisible, barely moving. But if you watch the video of Reiner conducting the CSO in Beethoven’s 7th, it’s revelatory. 

Yes, he doesn’t swing out in wide gestures - he hated that - but every beat, every cue, every dynamic is there, in a momentarily elevated baton, a raised eyebrow, a slight jerk of the head, a small bounce on his heels, a puffing out of his checks - absolutely clear, absolutely nothing missed, and it all translates in the playing.  If you watch until the end you can even catch a slight smile and Reiner allowing himself a subtle expression of joy.

He had a not entirely undeserved reputation as something of a sadist, testing musicians to see if they could meet his exacting standards, and summarily dismissing those that didn’t. He did not wear his emotions on his sleeve, but they were there.  Morgan relates a great story that after a CSO performance in Boston ….

Reiner appeared in the dressing room after the concert with tears streaming down his face.  He greeted each of the players, which was unheard of, “All my life I’ve waited for this moment, a perfect concert,” he commented, “the only one I’ve ever experienced.”

Reiner’s recorded legacy is richly rewarding.  His Pittsburgh recordings still hold up.  

There’s even an issue of his legendary Met Salome with Ljuba Welitsch, and a Falstaff a little dry for my taste.  He never got to record many of the works he wanted, but there’s Beethoven, Mahler, concertos with Gilels, Heifetz and Rubinstein, the stunning Zarathustra, Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, Lt. Kije with Adolph Herseth, a blazing Totentanz with Byron Janis, a smoldering El Amor Brujo with Leontyne Price, so much more.  The truly amazing RCA CD box set of all his CSO performances seems to be no longer available in streaming or in print, going for $675 or more on resale.  

Most would consider it an offbeat choice, but there’s one in particular that keeps drawing me back.  There is no one “best performance” of any work, there’s no shortage of other recorded versions, but for me the Reiner/CSO Isle of the Dead is the ONLY “real” performance, not only in its virtuosity, but in its overwhelming power.  It grabs you from the first bars, and never lets go.  It’s more than just a great performance; it’s an experience that can shake you to the very core 

Fritz Reiner burned a lot of bridges along his long career, made a lot of enemies, hurt more than a few people.  Yet his unexcelled artistry still endures in the recordings, and Morgan’s fine biography gives us a more complete, more nuanced understanding of the man.

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