I've long enjoyed Beethoven's music to the drama/play Egmont ever since I first heard a radio broadcast from Minnesota led by Neville Marriner, some, gosh, thirty years ago. We all know the wonderful, highly charged overture but the other numbers of the incidental score contain small gems and ideas that Beethoven would incorporate into such mega scores as the 9th symphony years years into the future. Beethoven was quite adept at "rehearsing" new thoughts before employing them full blown into the scores that would enshrine his name forever.
This Egmont, and the accompanying original version of Schumann' 4th symphony are led by Dutch conductor Eduoard van Remoortel. Previously, I had posted the conductor's take on Prokofiev with the St Louis SO where Remoortel served as a short term successor to Vladimir Golschmann's long, and I'd say, brilliant tenure of a quarter century. Remoortel was a highly regarded young maestro but he lacked tact and patience so by the time he left St Louis, he had pretty much done irreparable damage to a career that should have moved in the direction of his countryman Bernard Haitink's. Remoortel would spend his remaining years in Europe conducting mostly radio orchestras and releasing lps on smaller, less prestigious labels like Vox. Kind of sad given that the man had strong, authoritative conceptions that, when put into practice under favorable conditions, yielded very positive results, like the Schumann and Beethoven that we have here.
Both these recordings date from the 1960's though the Schumann is in mono. The orchestra is the SWR Orchestra Baden-Baden. At the time, the orchestra was a decidedly secord tier band; only during the long tenure of Michael Gielen would it begin to approach a world class designation. FLACs. Enjoy!
