Eloquence Classics

Born and bred in the city, Karl Münchinger founded the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra in the summer of 1945 and it was with this ensemble that he made recordings of Bach and other Baroque and early Classical repertoire (for Decca) that would be staples of the catalogue for decades to come. He was among the first modern performers to popularise Pachelbel’s Canon and Gigue, on a Baroque compilation that became an introduction to the world of classical music for many thousands of listeners.

His work, however, was not solely confined to his home city. His refined ear and old-school musicianship were welcome around Europe, including Vienna where he recorded six of Schubert’s symphonies between 1959 and 1965, excluding the First and the Ninth: the latter omission remedied by Decca in 1969 when the ‘Great’ C major was set down with the Klassische Philharmonie of Stuttgart which Münchinger had grown as an offshoot of the chamber orchestra.

The Vienna recordings were warmly welcomed at the time, for values of charm, grace and discipline which may be thought eternal in this music whatever the passing fashions of orchestral sonority. Reviewing the Fourth and Fifth in September 1970, High Fidelity reported the ‘impeccable playing’ of the Vienna Philharmonic, ‘and the recording itself is faultless’. In general the critical reaction mirrored that of Gramophone’s reviewer in May 1968: ‘Münchinger’s Schubert performances are lively (yet never too fast) and affectionate. Both playing and recording are very good.’

These performances, never before issued together, are newly remastered and come with a prologue, in the form of German Dances, recorded in Stuttgart in 1955. There is also an epilogue to round out the conductor’s Schubert legacy: the complete incidental music to ‘Rosamunde’, set down in Vienna in 1970: a gramophone classic that has hardly left the catalogue since and was reissued by Decca fifteen years ago in its ‘Legends’ series.