Bizet: Jeux d'Enfants (Antal Dorati)

Antal Dorati

As I mentioned at about this time last year, when I put up this post, Christmas is for children, and so children and their games are the focus of this post.  Bizet's delightful set of twelve pieces for piano duet illustrating various kids' antics dates from 1871, and he later orchestrated five of the pieces to form his "Petite Suite."  The latter was recorded several times during the 78 era, but the complete set of pieces in its original duet form had to wait until Vitya Vronsky and Victor Babin released a ten-inch LP of them in 1950.  In the meantime, a young Antal Dorati made this recording of a Ballet Russes arrangement, adding to Bizet's "Petite Suite" five additional orchestrations by Pierre Kolpikoff of pieces previously unrecorded:

Bizet: Jeux d'Enfants - Suite, Op. 22
London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Antal Dorati
Recorded September 17 and 27, 1937
Victor Musical Masterpiece set M-510, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC file, 41.06 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 29.84 MB)

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Bloch and Gould on Mercury Wing

This one's in response to a request.  One of my correspondents had expressed a desire to hear again Antal Dorati's performance, with the Minneapolis Symphony, of Morton Gould's "Spirituals for Orchestra," saying that this recording is superior not only to Walter Susskind's 1958 Everest recording (with the London Symphony, which can be heard on Youtube here and here) but even to Gould's own (with the Chicago Symphony)!  I don't know about the latter claim, since I don't know that recording, but it does seem to me that Dorati gets it right (and I would also add that he beats Rodzinski, who was one of the first to conduct the piece, and whose Columbia 78 set with the New York Philharmonic I used to have):

Morton Gould: Spirituals for Orchestra (1941)
Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra conducted by Antal Dorati
Recorded February 5-7, 1953
Side 2 of Mercury Wing MGW-14034, one LP record
Link (FLAC files, 51.65 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 29.61 MB)

This LP, which I found in my father's record collection, is a reissue, and the coupling is, it seems to me, a bit incongruous.  But it is the finest, most dynamic performance I think I have ever heard of Bloch's First (and, at the time this recording was made, only) Concerto Grosso:

Bloch: Concerto Grosso No. 1, for string orchestra with piano obbligato (1925)
Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Rafael Kubelik
with George Schick (piano)
Recorded April 23-24, 1951
Side 1 of Mercury Wing MGW-14034, one LP record
Link (FLAC files, 69.33 MB)
Link (FLAC files, 32.21 MB)