Your OP reminds me of a question that I asked a composer friend (& teacher of composition) back in the mid-1980s, when I first began to collect classical music LPs. I asked him, "Can I do better than Eugen Jochum in Brahms & Beethoven?" He thought for a moment, & replied, "No."
Interestingly, he had known Jochum at Tanglewood in the 1960s, and told me that Jochum was "the nicest man I ever met who was a conductor." I've also heard this good opinion about Jochum reiterated by several musicians over the years, who had likewise worked with him at Tanglewood.
My friend additionally pointed out that when the conductor Karl Böhm had passed away in the midst of recording the Beethoven Piano Concertos 1-5 with pianist Maurizio Pollini, that Pollini had put a good deal of thought into his search to find Böhm's replacement to finish the cycle, before he ultimately chose Jochum. Personally, I would rate Jochum's recording with Pollini of the Piano Concerto No. 1 very highly:
. In fact, I might even prefer it to Michelangeli/Giulini, who are likewise dazzling in this work. By the way, Jochum also made one of the finest recordings of Beethoven's Violin Concerto that I know, with violinist Wolfgang Schneiderhan:
.
In addition, I should point out that the great Chilean pianist, Claudio Arrau, once said that Jochum was the only conductor he'd ever worked with over the course of his long career that had truly understood Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4. Considering that Beethoven's 4th was one of Arrau's specialties, & that he performed it many, many times, with scores of different conductors, his comment rules out or dismisses a lot of 20th century conductors that are highly regarded for their Beethoven conducting, including Otto Klemperer (& likely Furtwangler, too). I should add that Arrau had a reputation for taking greater pains with scores than most pianists, so for him to make such a comment carries a considerable amount of weight.
There does exist a live recording of Arrau & Jochum performing the 4th PC, but I've never heard or seen it. So, I'm doubtful that it was ever commercially released. But I'm not sure about that. (If anyone knows better, I'd be most grateful for any information that you can provide.) Fortunately, there are two other Jochum recordings of the 4th that are more easily obtainable, with pianists Edwin Fischer & Julius Katchen,
--Fischer/Jochum:
--Katchen/Jochum (it's fascinating how much more imaginative Katchen's interpretation becomes here, under Jochum, than on his other recording of the 4th, with conductor Piero Gamba. Which isn't a bad recording, either, but apparently, Arrau knew what he was talking about,
By the way, another live recording of Beethoven's 3rd PC has recently been released by Doremi, with pianist Emil Gilels and Jochum conducting the Concertgebouw (which is a dream combination!):
https://www.amazon.com/Emil-Gilels-...LX1S3/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=beethoven+jochum+gilels&qid=1638314686&s=music&sr=1-4. IMO, Jochum's conducting here is more imaginative & certainly less stiff than George Szell's conducting with Gilels of the same concerto in Cleveland, & not surprisingly, Gilels responds accordingly, with some fantastic playing! (unlike with Szell, where he sounds more constricted):
--Gilels/Jochum:
--Gilels/Szell:
I should also mention that when Jochum accepted the conducting post in Amsterdam with the Concertgebouw in the 1960s, he did so with an agreement put into his contract that he would teach Bernard Haitink and get him ready to lead the orchestra after his tenure. So, in effect, the young Haitink became Jochum's protégé.
Given their teacher-pupil relationship, interestingly, I've heard both conductors get spoken of as being "boring". I've even heard Jochum get dismissed as having been no more than a "Kappellmeister", which oddly enough, unlike in past ages, has become a derogatory term today.
Granted, with Haitink, while you do consistently get a solid, thoughtful performance that is scrupulously attentive to the score, I admit, you don't always get the most exciting performance. (Except for when Haitink was exciting--which I've noticed his detractors seldom seem to know about--such as on his live 1980 Beethoven 9th for Philips:
, or his studio recording of Beethoven's 5th, which, IMO, is one of the finest 5ths of the digital era:
, or his live incomplete Mahler cycle on Philips, which was made from a series of 'Christmas Matinee' concerts given at the Concertgebouw:
, or his series of Bruckner 8ths, which apparently was a Haitink speciality:
. On these recordings, Haitink is very exciting, IMO.)
On the other hand, with Jochum, I can't agree that he was a 'boring' conductor, or nothing more than a 'Kappellmeister'. Rather, over the decades, I've found that the depth of insight (& humanity, if you will) in Jochum's conducting tends to become more evident as you listen to his recordings more & more--especially his Brahms, Schubert, Orff, Beethoven, Bruckner, and his lesser known Wagner Tristan und Isolde, Lohengrin, & Parsifal,
--Lohengrin (here are two different releases of the same performance):
--Tristan und Isolde:
--Parsifal:
--Beethoven, Missa Solemnis, Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam:
--Beethoven, Symphonies 6-9, London Symphony Orchestra:
So, it doesn't surprise me that some people don't hear those perceptions on their first or second listen. For me, Jochum has the same depth of musical insight that Furtwangler offers, but he's more classically restrained or not so wildly expressionistic, which I can prefer. At the very least, few, I expect, will disagree that they were both great Bruckner conductors, and here Jochum learned from Furtwangler, whom he greatly admired (EDIT: though I do agree that Jochum wasn't always at his best in the 7th). But, to those that find Jochum's Bruckner 9th with the extraordinary & incredibly 'in tune' Staatskapelle Dresden boring, all I can say is that you must not find Bruckner's 9th very interesting; because, from my experience, Jochum's Dresden performance is about as far from boring as it gets (& yes, Giulini's 9th in Vienna is my other favorite recording of this symphony, along with Furtwangler's on DG):
. Moreover, I once had the good fortune of hearing Jochum conduct Bruckner's 9th live with the Philadelphia Orchestra back in the mid-1980s, and it was one of the most memorable concerts I've attended in my life (& not dissimilar to the following wonderful live 1983 Jochum performance in Munich, but with an even better orchestra in Philadelphia:
).
One German composer that my notable friend didn't think Jochum was a top choice in was J.S. Bach. When I asked him if he could recommend a recording of Bach's Mass in B minor--& bear in mind, this was back in the mid-1980s, before all the period recordings had come out, he replied that he couldn't recommend a single recording in the catalogue, because none of the conductors on record knew how to conduct Bach's choral music "with an understanding of Baroque style". I recall asking him, "But what about Eugen Jochum?" "No", he replied, "Jochum's conducting style is all wrong for Bach." I continued to press him further, until he finally relented & recommended Peter Schreier's Eurodisc recording of the Mass in B minor in Leipzig (now on Berlin Classics), but he made sure to stress or rather emphasize that Schreier was the only conductor in the catalogue that knew how to conduct this music with an understanding of Baroque style:
.
I'll tell one more personal story about Jochum (that I was told), which I find very interesting since I'm a long time Jochum fan: Towards the end of his life, when Jochum was apparently looking back over his career, he commented that out of all his recordings, he was "most proud" of his Schubert,
--'Unfinished' Symphony No. 8:
--Symphony No. 9 'The Great':
--Symphony No. 9, live, 1986:
--Symphony No. 5:
--Symphony No. 4 'Tragic':
Finally, by all accounts (that I've heard), not only was Jochum an exceptionally kind conductor (in an era of screaming tyrants), but he was also a highly intelligent man. Indeed, on the back cover of the old Concertgebouw Beethoven cycle LPs there was a brilliant but brief essay printed that Jochum had written on Beethoven--the man; which, to my mind, gets closer to the heart of who Beethoven was than most biographers have managed in many more pages. I'll reprint it here--from one of my old Philips LPs--for those that weren't around during the LP era, or have never read it (since, inexplicably, none of the CD box reissues have reprinted the essay; though I do recall that one British music critic complained about this oversight):
"What the New Testament is for Christians, Beethoven could be--and even is to a larger extent--for those who strive after the humanitarian ethos. Is it perhaps that the human being is the subject of all he has to say?
The human being who in Bach lived, believed, suffered, and died sheltered but also confined within the strictly defined bounds of Protestant Christian existence, humble, bound to a God in an objective order. The human being who in Mozart already enjoyed full freedom in the seraphic beauty of a perfect harmony, almost innocent, in spite of every refinement touching only in 'Don Giovanni' the dark substratum of the world, hubris and destruction, but in the confrontation of forces returning to the law.
But what is the human being in Beethoven? He is the entity entirely filled with consciousness of himself, the hazards of his existence, his suffering, his nobility, and his greatness. This man Beethoven, who was he?
Certainly no hero in the sense of the martial victor, no Achilles, radiant even in downfall, but a man pursued by the demons of his inmost being, seaching for freedom, greatness, and above all love. And all wrung under the most adverse circumstances from humiliation and misery, and in the unimaginable lonliness to which deafness condemned him, without ever the sound of a loving voice to break this barrier.*
As 'God gave him the power to say what he suffered,' he could only put all that white hot emotion, mute suffering, humiliation, and intimations of an ineffable sublimity into musical form. And so he transmuted in the forge of his suffering the human means of expression into musical form, relentlessly wrought into the most exact design. And then the miracle happens, that in this most pure, virile music all that stirs the heart of a human being is turned to speech; suffering, grief, lonliness, but also, and above all, the indescribable sweetness of consolation, happiness, dance, ecstasy carried to the bounds of mystical transport; from the Virgilian secular piety of the 'Pastoral' symphony and the 'Concalescent's hymn of thanks to the Godhead,' of the String Quartet Op. 132, to the visionary perception of a Father beyond the stars and the devotion of the 'Missa Solemnis.' The entire span of the human heart and spirit is in that work, perceptible, communicable. There is appeal and reassurance, the courage to shoulder one's own destiny in the faith in the indestructible, invincible dignity which makes human beings what they are.
That is Beethoven for me.
[*That he enjoyed a social position among the Viennese nobility which was exceptional for a musician of the day alters nothing. To him this position was a mere veneer, more or less arrogated, and at the same time despised. Nor was there solace in his many erotic episodes, none of which led to the marriage he so earnestly desired. They only deepen the shadows in the picture of this Goyaesque life.]"
What a remarkable man Jochum was.
