Sunday, February 21, 2016

Carpenter: Adventures in a Perambulator (Ormandy)

John Alden Carpenter
Barely remembered today, John Alden Carpenter (1876-1951), born 140 years ago next Sunday (Feb. 28) in the Chicago suburb of Park Ridge, Illinois, was among the most celebrated of living American composers in the period before such younger men as Aaron Copland and Samuel Barber became prominent. Like his almost exact contemporary, Charles Ives, he was a successful businessman who composed in his spare time, and also like Ives, his works are imbued with an American spirit; but while Ives' works are an evocation of 19th-century America through sometimes aggressively modern-sounding means, Carpenter's take the opposite route, often evoking the 20th century (e.g., his ballets Krazy Kat and Skyscrapers) in a more conservative style. One of his best-remembered works is this charming baby's-eye view of life on the streets one hundred years ago, written in 1914 for Frederick Stock and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra:

Carpenter: Adventures in a Perambulator, suite for orchestra
Recorded January 17, 22 and 23, 1934
and
Mozart: The Marriage of Figaro - Overture
Recorded January 23, 1934
Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy
Victor Musical Masterpiece set M-238, four 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 86.50 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 55.47 MB)

These were some of the fruits from Ormandy's first recording sessions as conductor of a major symphony orchestra. The series of sessions actually ran from Tuesday, January 16, through Wednesday the 24th - every day except Sunday. The session of the 17th which produced this Carpenter suite also produced the recording of Kodály's "Háry János" Suite that can be heard here.

UPDATE (June 16, 2016): The listings at USCB's online Discography of American Historical Recordings (formerly the Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Recordings) now include the 1934 Ormandy-Minneapolis sessions, and they indicate that retakes of the Carpenter suite from January 22 (sides 3 and 4) and January 23 (sides 6 and 7) were used for M-238.
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9 comments:

  1. BryanFebruary 21, 2016 at 5:25 PM

    Alternate links:

    FLAC:
    http://www.mediafire.com/download/88632jn4kcxiiic/Ormandy_-_Carpenter_FLACs.zip

    MP3:
    http://www.mediafire.com/download/ic083wqq489a0md/Ormandy_-_Carpenter_MP3s.zip

    ReplyDelete
  2. NickFebruary 22, 2016 at 4:15 AM

    Thanks so much, I look forward to hearing this! Best wishes, Nick

    ReplyDelete
  3. GrahamFebruary 22, 2016 at 7:54 PM

    Thanks, for making this available, I've only heard the revised version Carpenter made for the aborted second Fantasia Disney planned to do in 1941, so this will make an interesting comparison.

    ReplyDelete
  4. David FedermanFebruary 25, 2016 at 10:36 AM

    I am so grateful for this download. Somewhere in the recesses of memory, I could swear a valid recall of Leonard Bernstein conducting Carpenter's "Sea Drift." His piano music is also worthy of revival. This is a great start to resurrection from unjust obscurity.

    ReplyDelete
  5. AggelosFebruary 28, 2016 at 4:40 AM

    Bryan, could you lend a hand in relation to Rene Leibowitz and his Reader’s Digest Vinyls?
    Recently Scribendum released a boxset “The Art of Leibowitz” ( which I ordered and waiting for it to arrive )
    http://www.mdt.co.uk/leibowitz-rene-the-art-of-italiana-leibowitz-scribendum-13cds.html
    http://www.norpete.com/c0032.html
    It features many of the Rene Leibowitz recordings that he carried out for Reader’s Digest. Charles Gerhardt (on loan from RCA) was the producer for those, and the Decca engineering personnel – headed by Kenneth Wilkinson – was in charge of the recording sessions.
    But Scribendum didn’t manage to get on CD the Bach-Leibowitz Passacaglia and Fugue orchestral transcription. Do you have that Vinyl? If so, do you plan to upload it here?
    That Vinyl features Beethoven's Egmont Overture, Schumann's Manfred Overture and Weber's Der Freischutz Overture (everything conducted by Rene Leibowitz )

    ReplyDelete
  6. UnknownAugust 17, 2016 at 9:08 AM

    Aggelos, I have the Bach-Leibowitz Passacaglia and Fugue orchestral transcription as a single FLAC file if you are still interested?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. coppinsukAugust 29, 2016 at 11:38 AM

      Hi John,

      I wonder if you would be kind enough to forward the FLAC file of Rene Leibowitz to my personal email address: ?

      Thanking you.

      Cheers,

      Douglas (UK)

      Delete
    2. coppinsukAugust 29, 2016 at 11:39 AM

      Hi John,

      I wonder if you would be kind enough to forward the FLAC file of Rene Leibowitz to my personal email address: ?

      Thanking you.

      Cheers,

      Douglas (UK)

      Delete

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