Corelli: Concerto Grosso, Op. 6, No. 7 (Wöldike)

During the 78-rpm era, record buyers might well be forgiven for thinking that Arcangelo Corelli wrote only one concerto - the ever-popular "Christmas Concerto" - because, for all the attention paid to the other works in his Opus 6, he might as well have. There were, in fact, more recordings made of this eighth of the concerti through 1950 than of the others combined, and not until 1953 did an integral set of the twelve appear (in a Vox LP set) to mark the composer's tercentenary. Meanwhile, a few of the others did manage to make their way to records, including this first recording of No. 7 from Denmark:

Corelli: Concerto Grosso in D Major, Op. 6, No. 7
Chamber Orchestra of the Castle Church, Copenhagen
conducted by Mogens Wöldike
HMV DA 5256 and DA 5257, two 10-inch 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC file, 31.15 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 19.15 MB)

The concertino soloists are Else Marie Bruun and Julius Koppel, violins, and Torben Anton Svendsen, cello; the harpsichordist is unnamed, but I presume it to be Wöldike himself.

Regular followers of this blog will no doubt have noticed the preponderance lately of recordings from Denmark; this is due partly to relatively reasonable postage rates from that country to the USA of late, with the result that I have been buying a fair number of 78s from there in recent months. Stay tuned for more recordings by Danish artists and composers...

Hans Kindler

Slava Rostropovich, for all his achievements, was far from being the first cellist to make for himself a successful conducting career. He wasn't even the first cellist to become the music director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington. That honor goes to the orchestra's founder, the Rotterdam-born Hans Kindler (1892-1949). Kindler's recording career began in 1916 with Victor, as a cellist, on their lower-priced Blue Label series (five of these sides can be heard at the Library of Congress' National Jukebox). In 1919 he was promoted to Red Seals. Then, nine years after founding the National Symphony Orchestra in 1931, he came back to Victor as a conductor, with some 64 issued sides to his credit made between 1940 and 1945. The most interesting of these were on single records, including American works by Chadwick, William Schuman and Mary Howe. I'm sorry to say I don't have any of those, but here are three singles I do have, the first two listed being from the reclaimed record pile:

Corelli-Arbós: Suite for Strings
Recorded November 8, 1940
Victor 11-8111, one 78-rpm record

Liszt-Kindler: Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6
Recorded January 17, 1945
Victor 11-9154, one 78-rpm record

Mussorgsky-Kindler: Boris Godunov - "Love Music" (Act III)
Recorded April 2, 1942
Shostakovich: The Age of Gold - Polka
Recorded January 29, 1941
Victor 11-8239, one 78-rpm record

All by the National Symphony Orchestra (Washington, D.C.)
Hans Kindler, conductor
Link (FLAC files, 53.80 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 38.14 MB)

A number of Kindler's National Symphony recordings received a new lease on life in the 1950s, on the RCA Camden reissue label, including the Liszt record above. The pseudonym used was the "Globe Symphony Orchestra."

Zino Francescatti Violin Recital

Cover design by Alex Steinweiss
(restored by Peter Joelson)

A modest offering for my first upload following the Mediafire debacle, but one very dear to my heart.  I first owned this set in 1974, when I was 11, having purchased it from Clark Music, the mom-and-pop store that I spoke about in this post.  As I recall, the cost was $3.94, and it was something of a revelation to me that classical music could be found on ten-inch discs in album sets!  I associated the smaller format with popular and children's records.  Here are the details:

Violin Recital
1. Tartini: Variations on a Theme of Corelli
2. Shostakovich: Polka from "The Age of Gold"
3. Debussy: La Fille aux Cheveux de Lin
4. Debussy: Minstrels
5. Schumann: The Prophet Bird
6. Wieniawski: Caprice in A minor
Zino Francescatti, violin; Max Lanner, piano
Recorded April 12 and 25, 1946
Columbia Masterworks set M-660, three 10-inch 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 43.6 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 26.7 MB)

I believe this album contained the first piece I had ever heard by Shostakovich (at the time, I thought it sounded pretty weird!), as well as by Tartini and Wieniawski.

All files going back to May 2012 are now up and running.

Bruno Walter in 18th Century Music

Bruno Walter at the Vienna Musikverein, January 16, 1938

Today I present the only commercial recordings of Baroque music conducted by Bruno Walter (1876-1962), as well as a Haydn symphony recording made on the same day as one of these recordings.  All three recordings were made in that fateful year, 1938, the year of the "Anschluss" - the Nazi annexation of Austria, where Walter, a Jew formerly active in Berlin, had been living and working since Hitler came to power.  (The picture above shows Walter in the green room of the Vienna Musikverein, shortly before his last concert there - which featured Mahler's Ninth Symphony.)  The details on the recordings:

Corelli: Concerto Grosso in G minor, Op. 6, No. 8 ("Christmas Concerto")
London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Bruno Walter
Recorded September 13, 1938
Victor Musical Masterpiece Set M-600, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC file, 46.62 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 25.73 MB)

Handel: Concerto Grosso in B minor, Op. 6, No. 12
Paris Conservatory Orchestra conducted by Bruno Walter
Recorded May 17, 1938
HMV DB 3601 and 3602, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC file, 36.38 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 14.99 MB)

Haydn: Symphony No. 86 in D
London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Bruno Walter
Recorded September 13, 1938
Victor Musical Masterpiece Set M-578, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 62.66 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 34.15 MB)

The Handel recording is particularly rare, as it received no US issue during the 78-rpm era (although Victor is known to have allocated a set number, M-952, for it).  The Haydn set is rare enough, both HMV and Victor versions having been deleted during the Second World War.  I originally offered the Corelli and Handel transfers back in 2007, but the Haydn symphony is a new upload.

Columbia Spanish Album (1930)

This week I present a program of Spanish music mostly conducted by the man who was considered in the first half of the 20th century to be the dean of Spanish conductors, Enrique Fernández Arbós (1863-1939).  Here he leads the Madrid Symphony Orchestra in works by Isaac Albéniz, Tomás Bretón and Joaquin Turina, in a set that was a mainstay in the US Columbia catalogue for 20 years: mentioned in a TIME magazine article of Nov. 10, 1930, the set was still listed in the 1949 Columbia Catalog.  My copy dates from about halfway between this timespan; the "tombstone" cover pictured above was used by Columbia from c. 1940-43 for most of its Masterworks albums.  By this time, the album was designated "Vol. 1" since a Vol. 2, with works by Granados, Bretón, Turina, and Arbós himself, had appeared in 1938.

Arbós (pictured above in 1894) shares the limelight in this album with one other conductor, Maurice Bastin (misspelled "Bustin" on the record labels), about whom I can find nothing on the Internet.  He leads the Orchestra of the Théatre Monnaie, Brussels, in two dances from De Falla's "La Vida Breve," the second one of which also features a wordless chorus.

Columbia Spanish Album, Vol. 1 - featuring:

De Falla: La Vida Breve - Two Dances
Brussels Monnaie Theatre Orchestra under Maurice Bastin

Bretón: En la Alhambra and Polo Gitano
Albeniz: Intermezzo from "Pepita Jiménez" and Navarra
Turina: Danzas Fantásticas, Nos. 2 and 3
Madrid Symphony Orchestra conducted by Enrique Fernández Arbós

Recorded c. 1928-29
Columbia Masterworks Set M-146, five 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 98.7 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 45.29 MB)

This isn't the first time that Señor Arbós has had to share the conducting credits in one of my uploads.  Back in 2007, I uploaded to RMCR a recording of Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 3 conducted by Désiré Defauw, which had as a filler a Corelli Sarabande conducted by Arbós.  This is still available, as are new FLAC files:

Bach: Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major
Brussels Royal Conservatory Orchestra conducted by Désiré Defauw
Recorded March 27-29, 1929
and
Corelli (arr. Arbós): Sarabande (from Sonata in D minor, Op. 5, No. 7)
Madrid Symphony Orchestra conducted by Enrique Fernández Arbós
Recorded April 6, 1929

English Columbia 9916 through 9918, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 66.16 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 25.76 MB)

Happy 100th, Lady Barbirolli!

Monday will mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Evelyn Rothwell, latterly known as Lady Barbirolli (1911-2008), oboist (a student of Leon Goossens, with whom she shared a wonderfully expressive way of playing the instrument) and the wife of conductor Sir John Barbirolli.  They are both pictured above, in a photograph accompanying the Daily Telegraph's obituary of her, which can be read here; she died only three years ago, one day after her 97th birthday.  To celebrate her birthday, I present the first two recordings she made in collaboration with her husband, both oboe concertos arranged by him from works in other media by Corelli and Pergolesi.  (Actually, all but one of the movements of the Pergolesi arrangement are now thought to be by other composers.)  Here are the details:

Corelli (arr. Barbirolli): Concerto in F for oboe and strings
Recorded June 7, 1946
HMV C 3540, one 78-rpm record

Pergolesi (arr. Barbirolli): Concerto in C minor for oboe and strings
Recorded March 25, 1948
HMV C 3731, one 78-rpm record

Both by Evelyn Rothwell with the Hallé Orchestra conducted by John Barbirolli
Link (FLAC files, 41.96 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 17.78 MB)

The sources for both works are spelled out in text files accompanying the recordings.

The Barbirollis' third recorded collaboration, a 2-disc set of the Mozart Oboe Concerto from December, 1948, can be heard at the CHARM website.