Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Reiner - Rossini: Overtures (2010)

The Hungarian conductor Fritz Reiner was one of the great dictators of the baton at a time where conductors were also active in politics. These kingpins reigned as absolute masters of orchestras, literally terrorising the musicians, whose work was constantly under threat. While there was no lack of qualitative result, this was not the only way to find excellence, as other conductors have proven, establishing themselves through kindness, like Bruno Walter, or through black humour, like Sir Thomas Beecham.

But for Fritz Reiner, music was a real priesthood that his musicians had to share in strict obedience, under the sober, cold and demanding direction of a conductor who ruled by terror, spite and blackmail for permanent employment. Almost all of the positions were renewed during his term at the head of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra between 1953 and 1963, the year of Reiner’s death, one week to the day before President Kennedy’s assassination.

We can only admire the dazzling instrumental virtuosity of this famous 1959 album dedicated to Rossini Overtures, to which the Don Giovanni overture was incongruously added, which was not included in the original LP published by RCA. An admiration however that excludes the slightest smile and the slightest kindness, so much so that the style is stretched to the extreme towards exemplary efficiency and precision.