Last year, I offered Scherchen's recording of Bach's "A Musical Offering" in the Vuataz edition. I tacked on, as a filler, the Brandenburg Concerto No 5 conducted by Karl Haas. Here's some more Karl Haas leading short works of the Haydn Brothers and Boccherini.
A lot of people confuse the conductor/musicologist Karl Haas with the longtime American radio personality Karl Haas. Both, of course were German immigrants to the UK and USA respectively, and both received similiar musical training in their native German. Importantly, both left their native Germany as a result of war and the racial policies of the Nazi regime. However, the "British" Haas, having already established himself as a conductor and musical director in Germany, chose to do the same in the UK while the "American" Haas developed his abilities in mass communications to become the most listened to, and revered, classical music radio host in the United States, for well over a quarter century.
Karl Haas the conductor upon arriving on British shores, founded his London Baroque Ensemble, an orchestra that was dedicated to presenting, reviving, and disseminating works from the 17th and 18th centuries, to the wide general public. Haas led this ensemble until shortly before his death - very much a personal creation, it dissolved after his activity with it ended. He was an innovator whose influence on a whole generation of British musicians cannot be underestimated. After all, the UK is really the epicenter of period performance as we know it today.
Haas's recording here, along with others, display a fidelity to the score and an attempt to be faithful to practices that would have been common to the time in which the music was written. We have then, music that is presented as it was written, with almost a total absence of emotion and personal indulgence. In other words, very refreshing and quite astonishing for the early 50's when the tendency was to offer this music with fuller orchestra and modifications suited for the 20th century palette.
I hope to offer more Haas in the future.I especially want to acquire the full Brandenburg set and transfer that since the 5th left me with a strong opinion of the correctness of the Haas approach.
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