Classical CD Reissues
Music Reviews

Ataulfo Argenta = LISZT: A Faust Symphony/RAVEL: Alborada del gracioso/SCUBERT: Symphony No. 9 in C Major, D. 944 “Great”/FALLA: El amor brujo

Ana Maria Iriarte, mezzo-soprano (Falla)/Ataulfo Argenta conducts Paris Conservatory Orchestra/Orchestre des Cento Soli (Ravel, Schubert)

IMG Artists 7243 5 75098 2 4 68:58; 74:53 (Distrib. EMI):

Volume three of “Great Conductors of the 20th Century” celebrates perhaps the least known of international conductors, the late Ataulfo Argenta (1913-1958), the Spanish talent whose reputation on record rests on collaborations with Alfredo Campoli and Julius Katchen, along with a series of CBS zarzuela inscriptions. A prize winner at the Madrid Conservatory in piano, Argenta went to Kassel and studied conducting with Carl Schuricht. We can hear the latter’s influence in the 1957 Schubert 9th, which begins ponderously Teutonic and then lifts off into a more Mediterranean sensibility. The 1955 Liszt is songful, if a bit lightweight against the Beecham and Horenstein versions; Argenta uses the original edition that omits the chorus mysticus with tenor from Faust, Part II.

The Ravel (1956) and Falla pieces reveal the sensitive colorist in Argenta, a clear capacity for nuance that might suggest Silvestri or Markevitch as kindred spirits. Since Pathe Marconi owned the license to the Lamoureux Orchestra, Decca had to lease the rights in the 1950’s by the use of a pseudonym, the “Orchestra of a Hundred Soloists.” The Schubert enjoys a lyrical and unmannered approach, perhaps a bit too metronomic in the Andante con moto but exalted in the woodwind trio from the Scherzo. The earliest recording is the 1951 Falla, a deliberate and lean account, not so sensual as Stokowski’s two recordings, but alternately loving and liquidly volatile. Argenta died under troubling circumstances from carbon monoxide poisoning, just poised on international success as heir-apparent to Ansermet’s Orchestre de la Suisse Romande.

--Gary Lemco

 

 

SCHUBERT: Symphony No. 9 in C Major, D. 944 "Great"/CHERUBINI: Anacreon Overture/CORNELIUS: The Barber of Baghdad Overture

Sir Adrian Boult conducts BBC Symphony Orchestra and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (Cherubini)

BBC Legends BBCL 4072-2 72:05 (Distrib. Koch):

Culled from three separate concerts 1954-1969, this disc captures Sir Adrian Boult (1889-1983), whom I often liken to the 'British Toscanini' in more sanguine moments, especially in the 1969 Schubert 9th, which Boult takes in one of his more expansive styles, gently rounding the opening phrases and urging a sense of surprise in the ensuing Allegro. The energy of the performance is enlivened and refreshing, considering the conductor is eighty years old! The last two movements, in particular, enjoy an urgency and a fluid, basic tempo that does not waver. Cherubini's Anacreon remains a curiosity, despite the fact that Mengelberg, Toscanini and Furtwaengler each performed and recorded this piece, which opened the Royal Philharmonic Society back in 1813. This full-blooded reading comes from 1963. Even more rare is the music of Peter Cornelius, more often performed as German light opera and operetta. This 1954 performance with the BBC is a kind of 'reconciliation' piece, with Boult's having been dismissed from the helm of the BBC in 1950. The music tries hard to be Rossini without ever quite making it, but it does exude a pleasant energy. For Boult collectors, the disc provides alternately exciting and unusual fare in good sound.

--Gary Lemco

 

 

MOZART: Piano Concerto No. 20 in D Minor, K. 466/BRAHMS: Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68

Bruno Walter piano and conductor
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Opus Kura OPK 2022 68:57 (Distrib. Albany):

The Japanese label Opus Kura restores two 1937 vintage performances from Bruno Walter (1876-1962), inscribed just prior to the Anschluss, when he would have to vacate Austria and flee to Paris, then London, and finally make his residence in the USA. The Mozart concerto with Walter's leading from the keyboard shows off his pearly play, his pert sense of ensemble and his natural flair for Vienna-Mozart style. Walter plays the first movement cadenza by Carl Reinecke, a romantic's treatment of the more militant aspects of the piece's minor coloring. Remastering has brightened the piano tone and the inner string line, which in the EMI pressings has been absent.

The Brahms First is a liquid, driven performance, quite bright in color, though I am not terribly keen on the dry acoustic of the Musikverein Saal of the period. Walter manages a Mengelberg-like ritard at the end of the first movement which is worth a listen. The relative flow of the remainder of the symphony has something of Toscanini's influence, perhaps the residue of memories of Fritz Steinbach, the early Brahms acolyte. The performance had a brief life on LP on the Turnabout label. It glows here with a loving presence; and I feel more of a distinct personality in this music than I do with Walter's homogenized readings later in Los Angeles.

--Gary Lemco

MOZART: Concerto No. 10 in E-flat Major for 2 Pianos, K. 365; Piano Concerto No. 27 in B-flat Major, K. 595; Sonata in D Major for 2 Pianos, K. 448

Clifford Curzon, piano/Daniel Barenboim, piano and conducting English Chamber Orchestra/Benjamin Britten, piano (K. 448)

BBC Legends BBCL 4037-3 78:13 (Distrib. Koch):

A plethora of lofty sentiments graces this reissue, another celebration of Clifford Curzon (1907-1982), Mozart pianist par excellence who never commercially recorded the E-flat "Double" Concerto; so this performance from Albert Hall September 11, 1979 is most welcome. Curzon was seventy-two when he collaborated with rising star Barenboim for the two concertos, where Barenboim would accompany as well as lead the orchestra in the staple of Curzon's repertory, the No. 27 in B-flat. Having made no records for the past seven years, Curzon had narrowed his concerto cycle to perhaps six or seven works, and the B-flat retains all the insight of a lifetime.

Given the 'exposed' nature of Mozart's part writing, Curzon manages to imbue the liquid figures and running filigree with a variety of colors. He takes the second piano in the E-flat Concerto; for the June 23, 1960 Aldeburgh Festival performance of the Sonata, one cannot tell who is playing which part. The D Major was perpetually popular with composer-pianist Britten, who paired up with Curzon or Sviatoslav Richter, whoever happened to be available. Bubbling spirits abound, the playing's being both resilient and eminently vocal. Collectors will want to compare these late Curzon readings with those of his chief mentor, Artur Schnabel, to appreciate the inflections of influence. A sturdy, worthy addition to the Curzon discography.

--Gary Lemco

 

 

DUTILLEUX: Cello Concerto “Tout un monde lointain”/LUTOSLAWSKI: Cello Concerto

Mstislav Rostropovich, cello/Serge Baudo conducts Orchestre de Paris (Dutilleux); Witold Lutoslawski conducts Orchestre de Paris

EMI 7243 5 67868 2 52:38:

Recorded November-December 1974, this addition to the “Great Recordings of the Century” series spotlights the visionary prowess of cellist Rostropovich, who picked up the banner for Dutilleux’s commission for the Lamoureux Orchestra after Igor Markevitch, the original inspirator, was no longer with the ensemble. Lutoslawski himself sent Rostropovich his 1970 concerto, in the full expectation that his “duel” between cello and orchestra had found its finest exponent.

Two quite different aesthetics dominate these two pieces: often eerie and atmospheric, Dutilleux’s concert takes each of its five movements from a line in Baudelaire. The cello plays a discernible melodic line, while the surrounding orchestral tissue sounds more like a series of intensities or masses of tissue. The second of the two slow movements become quite luminous, and the work ends in an epiphany, a combination of Debussy and Messaien. The Lutoslaski opens with an extended cadenza suddenly punctuated by trumpet riffs. The brass remains adverserial throughout, but the harmonic motion eventually moves up from D to A. Rostropovich plays fully, fervently in both works, and each of his conductors keeps a tight rein on the Orchestre de Paris. EMI sonics are top flight, and these colorful collaborations will display any audiophile’s sound system.

 

 

BEETHOVEN: Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61/MOZART: Violin Concerto No. 3 in G Major, K. 216/RAVEL: Tzigane

Zino Francescatti, violin/Andre Cluytens conducts Paris Conservatory Orchestra
Artur Balsam, piano (Ravel)

DOREMI DHR-7812 74:45 (Distrib. Allegro):

I have frequently commented on my affection for the violin artistry of Zino Francescatti (1902-1991), whose suave flair and warm tone made excellent whatever music he favored, particularly that of Paganini, Saint-Saens, Vieuxtemps and the French repertory. But Bach and Beethoven remained Francescatti's "encyclopedia of the soul," and this DOREMI (Zino Francescatti, Vol. 2) restoration of the concert at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees, Paris from November 13, 1946 makes more than a fine case for Francescatti's innate nobility of line and graceful elegance in standard Germanic repertory. Moreover, for those collectors of conductor Andre Cluytens, this Beethoven Concerto complements Cluytens' commercial venture with Oistrakh made for EMI some twelve years later and provides a sober tonic for the more flabby collaborations with aging Bruno Walter in the Mozart they did for CBS.

The Beethoven is a thoughtful, studied, lyric reading, Apollonian, and held in tense obedience throughout. The recorded sound is both dry and somewhat thin, so the colors are washed out but without sacrificing the musicality of the whole. The G Major second movement variations of the Beethoven is a musical plateau all its own. Francescatti applies a wide, fast vibrato, and he makes the Kreisler first movement cadenza polyphonically fascinating. The judicious, sec taste of the two French musicians works equally well in the Mozart G Major, which conveys youthful serenity and sheer delight in its own brio. The Ravel recording is a commercial transfer made from the April 13, 1947 Columbia shellacs. It is a colossal etude, rife with Francescatti's natural affinitty for gypsy energies. Except for the cramped sound of the live concert, this is an exceptional restoration.

--Gary Lemco

 

 

French Ballet Music = DELIBES: Le Roi s’amuse/ DEBUSSY: Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun; The Prodigal Son: Cortege and Dance-tune/SAINT-SAENS: Dance of the Priestesses of Dagon and Bacchanale from, “Samson et Dalila”/BERLIOZ: The Damnation of Faust: Dance of the Sylphs; Minuet of the Will o’ the Wisps/MASSENET: Waltz from “Cinderella”/GOUNOD: Ballet Music from “Faust”

Sir Thomas Beecham conducts Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

EMI 7243 5 67900 2 5 70:25:

Another in the “Great Recordings of the Century” series from EMI, this gem incorporates 1957-59 inscriptions by Beecham used for French collations and for incidental fillers on his “Lollipops” albums. Particularly explosive are the Saint-Saens excerpts from “Samson et Dalila” and the entire set from Gounod’s “Faust.” The RPO winds and brass vividly project both power and delicacy. I have never been convinced Delibes’ Le Roi s’amuse is anything but musical candy, but that’s what a lollipop is. The Berlioz fragments are beguiling, certainly; why EMI could not splice one of Beecham’s performances of the Hungarian March onto the excerpts baffles me. The Debussy pieces are almost too transparent, especially when we hear Monteux, Ansermet or Munch in the Faun. All this is moot when you consider the level of orchestral virtuosity on display here. Along with Beecham’s Bizet Symphony and his Scheherazade, this is another of his classic renditions, superbly remastered.

--Gary Lemco

 

 

 

A pair of DGG’s best LPs in superb new CD reissues in the Originals series...

RUSSO: Street Music; Three Pieces for Blues Band and Orchestra; GERSHWIN: An American in Paris - Corky Siegel, Siegel-Schwall Band/San Francisco Symphony Orch./Seiji Ozawa - DGG 463 665 2:

This unlikely combination of musicians produced probably the most fun I ever had in a symphony hall back in l973, as well as this “Legendary Recording from the Deutsche Grammophon Catalog,” taped the same week as the live SF concert. I was sitting in the first row on the center aisle on the right and not only did the members of Siegel’s blues “band” (really a quartet) have a great time, but the often previously somnambulant-appearing Ozawa was also having a ball too! Russo wasn’t trying to top Gershwin in these works - just to create a strongly rhythmic structure for improvisation in all four of his pieces. He wanted the players to be as loose as possible, and though that’s not easy for most symphony players, the San Franciscans got it right. Siegel, on harmonica and electric piano, is the “soloist” in all the Russo works, and the balances are just right. The Gershwin is not bad either, and better sonics than Bernstein’s. This was one of the best DGG LPs of the 70s and I still have it. The “original-image bit-processing” work by DGG’s engineers provides a new level of transparency and “air” often missing from their CDs, but those of you with quality analog front ends and the original LP don’t need me to tell you which ultimately sounds the very best. The artwork on the actual CDs of this series is designed to look like the original LP’s yellow label, complete with credits and images of grooves around the five-inch disc. Cool.

 

 

LEOS JANACEK: Missa Glagolitica (Slavonic Mass); The Diary of One Who Disappeared - Soloists/Bavarian Radio Choir/Bavarian Radio Orch./Rafael Kubelik (Mass); Kay Griffel, contralto/Ernst Haefliger, tenor/Frauenchor/Rafael Kubelik, leader & piano - DGG 463 672-2:

Janacek doesn’t receive enough attention in my book for being one of the most strongly individualistic composers of the 20th century (as well as a rotter on the personal level). And his mass has to be the most exciting such work composed in that century (and this 1965 taping vies for being its very best recording). Glagolitic is the ancient Slavonic language in which the work is sung, and musically it has a rough-edged feeling that seems to be both ancient and contemporary at the same time. He chose motifs to create his mass “without the gloom of medieval monastery cells;” his religious views were more pantheistic if anything. The way the soloists often seem to soar out of the choral parts is thrilling, as is the penultimate movement which proves to be a wild and pathbreaking virtuoso pipe organ solo. The Mass normally has an entire disc to itself; the song cycle is a welcome addition here. Its role of a peasant lad who falls for a beautiful gypsy girl is sung here by the same tenor just heard in the Mass, and Kubelik demonstrates his rarely-heard abilities as an accompanist at the piano. Again, an excellent restoration from DGG’s The Originals series, squeezing just about all from the original tapes that can possibly be communicated via the 44.1K format now in its senior years.

- John Sunier

 

 

PROKOFIEV: Violin Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 63/TCHAIKOVSKY: Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35; Souvenir d’un lieu cher, Op. 42—Meditation; Serenade melancolique, Op. 26

Leonid Kogan, violin/Basil Cameron conducts London Symphony (Prokofeiv)/Andre Vandrnoot conducts Paris Conservatory Orchestra (Tchaikovsky Concerto)/Constantin Silvestri conducts Paris Conservatory Orchestra (Op. 42)/Kiril Kondrashin conducts Philharmonia Orchestra (Op. 26)

Testament SBT 1224 74:52 (Distrib. Harmonia Mundi):

One of six in a series dedicated to the EMI inscriptions by Russian violinist Leonid Kogan (1924-1982), this CD features stunning playing by one of the most patrician of musicians, whose understated but impeccable style communicates silken elegance.
There are many similarities of taste and approach between Kogan and elder compatriot Jascha Heifetz, whom Kogan admired above all violinists. Kogan’s career, however, suffered the constraints of the Soviet political regime, and only late in his life did he receive the freedom to travel and to record abroad. I recall a brief moment of his talents appearing in the French film, My Night at Maud’s.

This all-Russian program of Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky (recorded 1955-1959) complements the program included in EMI’s “Artist Profile” set dedicated to Kogan (67732 2), which includes his later inscription of the Tchaikovsky Concerto with Constantin Silvestri. The collaboration with Kondrashin in the B Minor Serenade, Op. 26 is the same. For the Concerto, Kogan plays a slightly cut version with Belgian conductor Andre Vandernoot (known for his work with Gyorgy Cziffra), a fervent, propulsive reading that manages to light quite a few hefty sparks, despite some academic phrasing from Vandernoot. The “sleeper” is the truly fluid reading of the Prokofiev G Minor (Kogan avoided the D Major) Concerto with Basil Cameron, where soloist, flute and percussion often conspire in deft, intimate ensemble. Even with razor-sharp intonation and the long melodic line, Kogan is the master of restraint, the Gary Cooper of cool emotionalism. All the fire is implied.

The liquid Meditation of Tchaikovsky, his “souvenir of a beloved place,” is a discard from the Violin Concerto as a slow movement; but Kogan infuses it with the dignity and elevated character of an aria from Yevgeny Onegin. Conductor Silvestri is a past master of making string and harp colors, and he and Kogan really go at it in their rendition of the Mozart G Major Concerto (included in SBT 1223). The 1959 account of the Serenade with long-time associate Kiril Kondrashin is justly famous, sensitively wrought, appropriately sentimental and demonstrative of that plastic sense of rhythm and urgent phrase that makes Kogan’s art both captivating and elusive at once. I urge collectors to acquire all six Testaments for their Kogan preservations.

--Gary Lemco

 

 

Marilyn Horne in Salzburg = VIVALDI: "Nel profondo cieco mondo"/SCHUBERT: 4 Songs/HANDEL: "Iris, Hence away"/BIZET: 3 Chansons/FALLA: 7 Popular Spanish Songs/encores

Marilyn Horne, mezzo-soprano/Martin Katz, piano

VAI VAIA 1207 68:46:

Marilyn Horne (b. 1936) continues to be active despite her retirement from the stage, as Director of the Music Academy of the West, Santa Barbara, as well as heading her Marilyn Horne Foundation in support of vocal performance. This restoration of her 1979 Salzburg Festival recital shows her off in superb voice in many languages and in a diversity of styles, lyric, coloratura and spinto.

The lyrical side of Horne's multi-faceted talent shines forth in the Schubert group and in the tender romances of Bizet, each sung in its native language. Horne's "Im Fruhling" makes its kinship with the last movement of the Schubert posthumous A Major, D. 959 Sonata obvious. Her easy grace in the Bizet love songs makes us recall that Berlioz' Les Nuits d'Ete can be sung by varied voice ranges as well; the sultry exoticism of Victor Hugo's "Farewell from the Arabian Hostess" has suggested promises that Carmen fulfills. For those who savor Horne's razor sharp delivery in rapid and florid passages, her melismatic virtuosity in the opening Vivaldi aria from Orlando Furioso and the Handel aria from Semele will astonish. Horne has had an affection for Falla's 7 Popular Spanish Songs, their "deep song," since 1955: she sails through these, wrapping an entranced audience around her musical fingers. Pianist Katz makes the accompaniment to "Asturiana" sound like "Le Gibet" from Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit.

The three encores are entire worlds unto themselves: Donizetti's "Brindisi" from Lucretia Borgia embraces the art of bel canto with the mocking conceits of carpe diem voluptuousness. "My Heart at Thy Sweet Voice" from Saint-Saens' Samson et Dalila remains one of the great mezzo vehicles, allowing Horne to dip into her throaty, chest-toned lower register. Finally, Foster's "Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair," with its beguiling simplicity, emotionally poised on elegant harmonic shifts, all enunciated beautifully by music's most natural successor to the international artistry of Jennie Tourel.

--Gary Lemco

 

 

WAGNER: Overtures and Preludes: Die Meistersinger; Tristan und Isolde; Gotterdammerung: Siegfried’s Funeral March; Flying Dutchman; Tannhauser Overture; Lohengrin: Prelude to Act III; A Siegrfried Idyll

Karl Muck conducts Berlin State Opera Orchestra

Naxos Historical 8.110858 75:43:

Karl Muck (1859-1940), along with Arthur Nikisch and Felix Weingartner, belong to the older Germanic tradition, where the lean, athletic and largely unsentimental approach to Wagner is the rule. Muck found his way to Bayreuth in 1892, where his interpretations of the Ring cycle gained prominence; but in 1901 he led what became his calling card, Parsifal. By today’s standards, Muck’s tempos seem slow in the latter work, although the suppleness of phrase and the ease of transition well presage the taste of arch Wagnerian Hans Knappertsbusch.

Naxos supplements its release of Muck’s 1927-1928 Parsifal excerpts (8.110049-50) with these more popular Wagner staples, of which only the Meistersinger, Gotterdammerung, and the Siegfried Idyll were available commercially in the US.
Mark Obert-Thorne’s restorations are exceptionally quiet for the period, and we can well appreciate Muck’s athleticism in Meistersinger and the spun out eroticism in Tristan. The Siegfried Idyll comes in around the same length as Bruno Walter’s various inscriptions, although their inflections vary in nuance and tempo fluctuations. The Lohengrin Act III Prelude also exists in a Boston Symphony version, made just prior to Muck’s internment in 1918. Muck was ever the tough, durable conductor, well prepared and often volatile in performance. Like his contemporary Pfitzner, his talent and his irascibility were often at odds, making him politically incorrect. But these sets of his (virtually) complete electrical recordings mark him as a real force in music.

--Gary Lemco

 

 

The Original Philadelphia Woodwind Quintet = 20th Century: STRAVINSKY: Pastorale/BARBER: Summer Music, Op. 31/MILHAUD: Two Sketches, Op. 227b/NIELSEN: Quintet for Winds, Op. 43/GRAINGER: Walking Tune/PIERNE: Pastorale/HINDEMITH: Kleine Kammermusik, Op. 24, No. 2

Boston Records BR 1062 CD 62:01 (Distrib. Albany):

Boston Records has revived, on four CD’s, some of the forty-odd inscriptions made by the Philadelphia Orchestra Woodwind Quintet (founded 1950) for CBS Records between 1953-1967. This collection of 20th Century works dates 1953 (Hindemith) to 1963 (Pierne, Milhaud,, Stravinsky). We get to reassess the playing of illustrious (mostly French-trained) principals who made the “Stokowski sound”: John de Lancie, oboe; William Kincaid, flute; Anthony Gigliotti, clarinet; Sol Schoenbach, bassoon; and Mason Jones, horn. Each of the CD’s is dedicated to the memory of Sol Schoenbach. I have always claimed their great recording to be the Mozart Piano Quintet with Robert Casadesus (available via French Sony 5033882).

Given the ensemble’s penchant for French music, the airy, breezy figures of Milhaud’s “Madrigal” and “Pastoral” and Pierne’s Pastorale appear perfectly natural; in fact, “pastoral” easily provides the rubric of this CD. For Stravinsky’s early work, violin Veda Reynolds and English horn Louis Rosenblatt lend support. The 1956 Barber work owes much to his earlier orchestra piece Horizon, rarely heard. Here, and in the tricky Nielsen Quintet, syncopated and swirling filigree for clarinet and oboe receive star treatment. A bit of charm is Grainger’s 1905 Walking Tune, published as one of Room-Music Tidbits, with its unmistakable perambulatory character. The 1922 Kammermusic of Hindemith is in a decidedly less ‘academic’ guise than many of his rigorous and expressionistic works. This five-movement suite is a happy piece, rife with triplets and graceful three-note intimations of the waltz, all rendered with sophisticated, suave flair by veterans at their trade.

--Gary Lemco

 

 

CHABRIER: Espana Rhapsody/FRANCK: Psyche--Suite/ROUSSEL:The Spider's Feast, Op. 17/Faure: Pelleas et Melisande Suite, Op. 80/DUKAS: The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Paul Paray conducts Detroit Symphony Orchestra

Rediscovery RD 057 72:53:

The latest reissue from Rediscovery's negotiations of Mercury label originals finds Paul Paray in his especial, Gallic-Iberian milieu, leading the Detroit Symphony 1953-1955 in music both lithe and languorous. The opening Espana is liquid fun, as delicate and suave as any of Beecham's excursions, and even more ripe in color (listen to the col legno effects), with crystalline evocations from bassoon, flute, and battery (Paray's own training was here). Franck's Psyche can come off as monochromatic, but Paray gets his cellos to graduate their mauve and darker browns to a sensuous luster. The infrequently heard "Psyche Asleep" makes a haunting foil for the sporadic outbursts of passion in "Psyche and Eros." The Faure, too is cut from somber cloth, with moments of relaxation in the spinning song and the sicilienne, only to hear Melisande shrouded by death, all played with deliberation and affection by Paray.

If the magical balances Paray achieves in Chabrier were not enough, the shimmering and evanescent ensemble he elicits for Roussel should gratify the most fastidious taste. Along with the reading by Cluytens for EMI, this is the most polished, most debonair of performances, simply ravishing in color, with strings and harp in full, dexterous panoply. If Paray's Dukas does not quite generate the sparks of the more virtuosic Mitropoulos or Stokowski, it has a slightly more restrained character, that allows the more martial, polyphonic aspects of the score to shine. The last ten minutes of the disc are appreciations by various musicians of Paray and his rehearsal methods, his keen ear, and his musical standards in building repertory and the Detroit Symphony after its post-Depression decline. Musically and aesthetically satisfying on many levels!

--Gary Lemco

 

 

KODALY: Galanta Dances; Marosszek Dances; Hary Janos Suite/IPPOLITOV-IVANOV: Caucasian Sketches, Op. 10

Artur Rodzinski conducts Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Westminster 471 267-2 74:54 (Distrib. Universal):

This welcome reissue features Artur Rodzinski (1892-1958) in the kind of color-music program in which he excelled. The 1955 Westminster LP's had competed with both the DGG Kodaly with Fricsay and the CBS issue of Mitropoulos and the New York Philharmonic in Hary Janos and Caucasian Sketches (the Mitropoulos Galanta Dances were never issued). Rodzinski met Kodaly back in 1937 and came back to New York a believer, scheduling a 1946 Hary Janos in honor of the composer's visit. Beecham's orchestra is top-notch, with oboe, flute, violas and cellos all conspiring to create kaleidoscopic national dances of Magyar sensibility. The Hary Janos singspiel has an easy-going, self-important pomp that has rusticity and streamlined taste. While few performances of Ippolitov-Ivanov's suite have the tragic dimensions of the Mitropoulos version, Rodzinski (and a live concert tape from Stokowski) makes a satisfying second choice. Recorded sound remastering by Andrew Wedman is impressively lifelike. Recommended. [The Galanta & Marossek Dances were paired on a wonderful Westminster mono audiophile LP with wide grooves and recorded only on the outside half of each side; would be an interesting comparison with the CD if I still had it...Ed.]

--Gary Lemco

 

 

BEETHOVEN: Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61; Symphony No. 8 in F Major, Op. 93

Ginette Neveu, violin/Hans Rosbaud conducts Southwest Radio-Symphony, Baden-Baden

Hanssler CD 93.033 73:30 (Distrib. Albany):

Hans Rosbaud (1895-1962) is more associated with the Second Viennese School and post-modernism than with music of the Classics, but he managed to make splendid recordings of music by Mozart, Haydn, Gluck, and some Beethoven. This reissue offers two live concerts, made twelve years apart, with the brilliant but ill-fated French violin virtuoso Ginette Neveu (1919-1949) in a performance of the D Major Concerto less than a month prior to her tragic death in an airplane crash, an inscription available through Music&Arts (CD-550) around a decade ago. The 1961 F Major Symphony receives a broad canvas, urged with playful wit and some crisp attacks in the course of its iconoclastic formality. The Concerto is singularly long of limb, Neveu's taking breathless periods and splicing them together, with conductor hard pressed to keep up. Neveu was the French Nathan Milstein, assuming a blistering pace and relentlessly pursuing it to its logical conclusion. If conductor Richard Kapp is correct, from our many conversations on his mentor Rosbaud at our old "First Hearing" sessions, Southwest German Radio has an unissued treasure-trove of Rosbaud materials, so perhaps the archives are beginning to surface.

--Gary Lemco

 

 

SHULMAN: The Music of Alan Shulman = Theme and Variations for Viola and Orchestra; Rendezvous for Clarinet and Strings; A Nocturne for Strings; Hatikvah; Waltzes for Orchestra; A Laurentian Overture; Minuet for Moderns; The Bop Gavotte

Emanuel Vardi, viola/Alfred Gollodoro, clarinet/Conductors: Leonard Bernstein; Guido Cantelli; Frank Black; Milton Katims; Samuel Antek; Don Gillis/
NBC Symphony Orchestra

Bridge Records 9119 48:23:

Alan Shulman (b. 1915) is a Baltimore-born composer and cellist, a Peabody graduate and pupil of Emanuel Feuermann, and founder of the Stuyvesant String Quartet. This album of NBC performances 1940-1954 gives us a formidable, if somewhat brief, sense of his compositions, which are songful and sincere, touched by elements of jazz, Broadway, and Jewish hymnody. The latter comes through in hints in his most ambitious and successful work, the Theme and Variations for Viola and Orchestra, most blatantly in his arrangement of Hatikvah, performed from 1949 with Leonard Bernstein.

Himself a member of Toscanini's NBC Symphony, Shulman writes graciously for strings; his Nocturne (under Katims, 1938) and the 1949 Cello Concerto (a tape exists with Leonard Rose and Dimitri Mitropoulos) attest to an easy facility and lyric impulse. The 1949 Waltzes for Orchestra (under Katims) could have been penned by Richard Rodgers, cross fertilized by Ravel. The audience's fervent enthusiasm after the last waltz makes us wonder why commercial record companies did not promote Shulman: certainly the Laurentian Overture (a tribute to the Canadian mountain chain) with Cantelli from March 1, 1952 equals the populist strain we hear in Grofe and Siegmeister. Although the pirate label AS Disc released a Cantelli all-American program, this piece (dedicated to actress Tallulah Bankhead) was not included.

The perky Rendezvous for Clarinet and Strings was composed for and played by Benny Goodman; in this 1946 tape the solo is Alfred Gollodoro, former bass clarinet with the NBC. The 1953-54 "novelties" written for Skitch Henderson (here played under Don Gillis) are dry, witty pieces in the manner of Leroy Anderson, with a touch of Beethoven's Eighth in the Minuet. My own reaction to Shulman's Theme and Variations, with Emanuel Vardi and Frank Black, 1940, remains quite strong, that it is a highly polished, lyrically sophisticated piece that needs to be heard more often. Bridge has done Shulman and music lovers good service in assembling this tribute to an under-rated talent. [Sonics show the age of these sources but still serviceable for this under-represented and interesting music...Ed.]

--Gary Lemco

 

 

TCHAIKOVSKY: The Sleeping Beauty--Complete Ballet, Op. 66

Gennady Rozdestvensky conducts BBC Symphony Orchestra
BBC Legends BBCL 4091-2 72:04; 69:13 (Distrib. Koch):

I first heard Tchaikovsky's most beautiful ballet The Sleeping Beauty (1889-90) with Andre Kostelanetz conducting a severely cut edition. When Mercury offered Antal Dorati and then London proffered Ernest Ansermet in alternate, complete editions, I was quick to pounce on the LP's. Russian virtuoso conductor Gennady Rozdestvensky first led the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra and then made his debut at Covent Garden with this same music back in the 1950's. When the BBC asked him to prepare the complete score for recording, he made a few judicious cuts in Acts II and III in order to maintain continuity, but otherwise kept the dances and panorama intact. This BBC CD is from the pre-recording concert of October 10, 1979, a sort of two-year anniversary celebration of Rozdestvensky's tenure with the BBC Symphony.

This "special concert edition" of the ballet is simply first class. While Stokowski, Karajan and Bernstein, or for the older generation Weldon, Malko and Lambert, have made lovely, extended selections from the ballet--along with the aforementioned Dorati and Ansermet readings of the complete score--Rozdestvensky opens with a torrent of sound that does not quit. No principals are credited in this edition, but the tone of the trombones, the violins, the flute, the oboe, the cellos is ravishing. Favorite sections like the Act I grand Waltz and the Act III Polonaise, as well as all the characteristic dances after the wedding, are sumptuously mounted, with no apologies for sentiment. The whole enterprise flows seamlessly, a real kaleidoscope of "symphonically-conceived ballet." If you must own one version of this music, choose this, since it repays in musical value many times. Igor Stravinsky used to say of his copy of The Sleeping Beauty, "All orchestration is there."

--Gary Lemco

 

 

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: Symphony No. 4 in F Minor; Symphony No. 5 in D Major

Ralph Vaughan Williams conducts BBC Symphony Orchestra (No. 4); John Barbirolli conducts Halle Orchestra (No. 5)

Dutton CDBP 9731 65:51 (Distrib. Harmonia Mundi):

Dutton restores two classic renditions of seminal Vaughan Williams symphonies, both original recorded versions of these works. Vaughan Williams, a gifted but under-represented conductor of his own oeuvre, made his record of the fierce Fourth Symphony in 1937, two years after Adrian Boult gave the world premier. The Fourth, like that of Sibelius, is perhaps Vaughan Williams’ most intrinsically ‘musical’ symphony, less inclined to any folksy melos and keeping a frenzied grip on the range of harmonic motion, from a minor second to the final concession to a major third. While I have always been keen on the Mitropoulos version of this dark piece, Vaughan Williams exacts no less than sustained tension and solemnity in the proceedings.

The 1944 inscription of the D Major by Barbirolli and his Halle Orchestra is only their second recording together, but it is an altogether sympathetic reading of a work Barbirolli was to champion affectionately throughout his career. The sheer contrast between the aggressive F Minor and the relatively halcyon D Major (dedicated to Sibelius) sporadically finds moments of similarity, when Barbirolli occasionally permits a dark cloud to pass through the D Major’s sunny skies. Given that the piece was conceived amidst the horrors of a world war, its vision of a better tomorrow must have appealed to Barbirolli’s natural optimism. Even after almost 60 years, the performance still shines, essential Vaughan Williams repertory.

--Gary Lemco