Mozart Serenades by E. F.

Two albums containing Mozart serenades this week, the common denominator to both being that a conductor with the initials "E. F." leads a (presumably) hand-picked ensemble. Here are the details:

Mozart: "Salzburg Serenades"
(Concertante and Rondo from Serenade No. 9 in D, K. 320;
Serenata Notturna in D, K. 239)
Edvard Fendler conducting the Vox Chamber Orchestra
Recorded c. 1945-46
Vox Album 161, four 10-inch 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 63.91 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 41.28 MB)

Mozart: Serenade No. 10 in B-Flat, K. 361, for thirteen wind instruments
Edwin Fischer conducting his Chamber Orchestra
Recorded September 1939
Victor Musical Masterpiece set DM-743, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 68.76 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 43.88 MB)

Leipzig-born Fendler (1902-1987), who would appear to have left Germany with the rise of Nazism, ended up with conducting jobs in places as diverse as the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Mobile (Alabama) and Beaumont (Texas). He had made recordings in France before the war - among them, another version of this same Serenata Notturna. The "Vox Chamber Orchestra" was, I suspect, an ad hoc body of New York players.

Edwin Fischer (1886-1960) was, of course, much better known as a pianist, but was a fine conductor as well, and he often combined the two roles, most notably with Bach. This recording, made in Berlin, manages to get Mozart's great Gran Partita onto three discs by omitting two movements and excising one of two trios of a minuet, and by scrupulously avoiding repeats. What remains, however, is very well played and conducted indeed.

Mozart: Wind Divertimenti (Danish Radio members)

Resuming my uploads of records from Denmark (actually, the one pictured above is from the reclaimed record pile), I present two Mozart divertimenti for wind sextet. These were recorded five years apart, yet share three of the players between them, including the leader of the ensemble, oboist Waldemar Wolsing (1910-1993). Here are the details:

Mozart: Divertimento No. 12 in E-Flat Major, K. 252
Members of the Danish State Radio Orchestra:
Waldemar Wolsing and Erik Hovaldt, oboes
Ingbert Mikkelsen and Knud E. Olsen, horns
Carl Bloch and Leif Carlsen, bassoons
Recorded October 16, 1952
English Columbia DX 1872, one 78-rpm record
Link (FLAC file, 19.57 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 12.48 MB)

Mozart: Divertimento No. 14 in B-Flat Major, K. 270
Waldemar Wolsing and Hans Woldbye, oboes
Ingbert Mikkelsen and Wang Breidahl, horns
Kjell Roikjer and Carl Bloch, bassoons
Recorded October 19, 1947
HMV DA 5260 and DA 5261, two 10-inch 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC file, 26.36 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 16.01 MB)

The HMV records do not identify the players as members of the Danish State Radio Orchestra, but I imagine they were. Two days prior to recording K. 270, Wolsing, Mikkelsen and Roikjer, as members of the Wind Quintet of 1932, participated in this recording of Vagn Holmboe's Notturno.

Mozart: Quintet in D, K. 593 (Budapest Quartet & Katims)

The Budapest Quartet with Milton Katims

This past spring, I uploaded a Mozart string quintet recording (C major, K. 515) by the Budapest String Quartet with their frequent collaborator, Milton Katims, as the second violist. At the same time as I acquired that set, I also obtained the one I present today; however, the other set gave me an excuse to add a nice Steinweiss cover to my online gallery, whereas this one's cover is generic. Moreover, I think this recording was slightly more widely circulated than the K. 515 one was. Be that as it may, I see no reason to withhold this transfer any longer:

Mozart: String Quintet in D Major, K. 593
The Budapest String Quartet (Roisman-Ortenberg-Kroyt-Schneider)
with Milton Katims, second viola
Recorded December 12-13, 1946
Columbia Masterworks set MM-708, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 64.49 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 42.88 MB)

I hadn't meant to be inactive quite so long - two weeks! But shortly after posting my last post, I stumbled across the Internet Archive's making available of the complete run of the Phonograph Monthly Review magazine from 1926 to 1932, and this has lured me away from other record-related pursuits fairly consistently since. PMR is one of those publications I've heard about but have never been able to read until now, and it chronicles a very exciting time in American recording history, the beginnings of the push to create a library of symphonic and chamber music masterworks in recorded form. As such, it fulfilled the same function that "The Gramophone" magazine did in England starting three years earlier. The latter magazine is still with us, of course, but PMR, alas, fell victim to the Great Depression.

Ortenberg, Foss and the Budapest Quartet

Cover design by Alex Steinweiss

For a dozen years, beginning in 1932, one half of the famed Budapest String Quartet consisted of the Schneider brothers - Alexander as second violinist and Mischa as cellist.  Then in 1944, Alexander decided to strike out on his own with other projects (for example, a fruitful partnership with harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick), and he was replaced in the Quartet by the Odessa-born Edgar Ortenberg (1900-1996).  One of the first recording projects with Ortenberg, and in fact the first Budapest Quartet recording with him to be released, was this Mozart quintet with another frequent Budapest collaborator, Milton Katims (1909-2006):

Mozart: String Quintet in C Major, K. 515
Budapest String Quartet (Roisman-Ortenberg-Kroyt-Schneider)
with Milton Katims, second viola
Recorded February 6 and April 23, 1945
Columbia Masterworks MM-586, four 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 80.06 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 54.29 MB)

At about the same time, Ortenberg made his only American recording as a violin soloist, this first recording of a Hindemith violin sonata:

Hindemith: Sonata in E (1935) and
Foss: Dedication (1944)
Edgar Ortenberg, violin; Lukas Foss, piano
Issued May, 1944
Hargail set MW-300, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 43.73 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 27.12 MB)

This would also appear to be Lukas Foss' first appearance on record as either pianist or composer.  He was in his early 20s at the time.

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.

Mozart: Quartet in D, K. 499 (Budapest Quartet)

As I have mentioned before, this year I came into possession of four or five Budapest Quartet sets from the ensemble's vintage period (1933-35) in superb early Victor pressings. Here is one of those, a Mozart recording from 1934:

Mozart: Quartet in D Major, K. 499
The Budapest String Quartet (Roisman-Schneider-Ipolyi-Schneider)
Recorded April 5, 1934
Victor Musical Masterpiece set M-222, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 67.87 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 40.13 MB)

It's interesting to note that the records of this set were issued in Victor's lower-priced 12" Red Seal series (9000 and up), priced at $1.50 per disk, as opposed to the $2 series (6000 and up, skipping to 14000 when 8999 was reached). Only in 1935 did the Budapest Quartet "graduate" to the higher-priced series; of course, such distinctions were erased when, in 1940, Victor dropped the price of almost all Red Seals to $1 per 12" record. (The exceptions were the operatic ensembles - Lucia sextets and Rigoletto quartets - which remained $3.50 as before.)

My best wishes to everyone for a Merry Christmas and a safe, prosperous 2016!

Mozart: Horn Concerto No. 4 (Dennis Brain)

Cover design by Alex Steinweiss

Today I present one of the earliest solo recordings by the tragically short-lived horn virtuoso Dennis Brain (1921-1957), which may not be particularly rare, perhaps (most of his recordings have been widely reissued over the years), but it is wonderful, and putting it on this blog is an excuse to put another delightful Steinweiss album cover into the public eye! This is, for all intents and purposes, the recording that introduced Dennis Brain to the American record-buying public (as a soloist, that is - the Léner Quartet's version of a Mozart divertimento, in which he and his father Aubrey had augmented the ensemble by two horns, had been issued here in 1940). It was the first to be made available as domestically-pressed discs obtainable through regular channels, some four years after it was released in England:

Mozart: Horn Concerto No. 4 in E-Flat, K. 495
Dennis Brain, with the Hallé Orchestra
conducted by Malcolm Sargent and Laurence Turner
Recorded June 21, 1943
Columbia Masterworks set MX-285, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 51.45 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 32.16 MB)

The double conductor attribution requires some explanation. The story is that Sargent was late for the recording session, so Turner, the orchestra's first violinist, took over and conducted the recording while waiting for him to arrive. English Columbia solved the problem of wording the record labels in a most frustrating manner for record collectors, by leaving off the conductor's name(s) entirely. At least they were honest, I suppose. Victor, when issuing Stokowski's 1939 recording of Saint-Saëns' "Carnival of the Animals" with the Philadelphia Orchestra, credited everything to Stoki, even though one of the sides was a retake conducted by Saul Caston.

Mozart: Symphony No. 39 (Szell)

Cover design by Alex Steinweiss
(restored by Peter Joelson)

Growing up in the 70s, I would hear the term "Big Five" bandied about as it applied to American orchestras - those of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago and Cleveland.  Thirty years prior, the number was the "Big Three" - neither the Chicago nor the Cleveland orchestras reached that exalted status until Fritz Reiner took over the one, and George Szell (1897-1970) the other.  Szell assumed the directorship in Cleveland in 1946, and held the post until his death, transforming the orchestra in the process.  Among the first of their many recordings is the following:

Mozart: Symphony No. 39 in E Flat Major, K. 543
Cleveland Orchestra conducted by George Szell
Recorded April 22, 1947
Columbia Masterworks set MM-801, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 66.44 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 43.76 MB)

This wasn't Szell's first recording of the Mozart E Flat Symphony.  One of his earliest recordings featured it, an acoustical version for German Odeon with the orchestra of the Berlin Staatsoper in 1924.  Of great rarity, I should imagine - I've never encountered it.

The Cleveland Orchestra was already a fine one when Szell took it over, as many recordings with it by Nikolai Sokoloff, Artur Rodzinski and Erich Leinsdorf prove.  One of the first I ever owned is this one by Rodzinski of an old warhorse:

Tchaikovsky: Marche Slave, Op. 31
Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Artur Rodzinski
Recorded December 14, 1940
Columbia 11567-D, one 78-rpm record
Link (FLAC file, 22.00 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 13.59 MB)

This is one of the reclaimed records that I talk about in this post; I bought it new from Clark Music in Decatur, Ga., in 1974, when I was 11, and I have been, so far, the only owner of this copy.

Mozart: Violin Concerto No. 5 (Adolf Busch)

Adolf Busch

This recording represents my first-ever exposure to the music-making of the great German violinist and quartet leader, Adolf Busch (1891-1952). I was thirteen when I obtained my first copy of this set at Clark Music in Decatur, Ga. (It wasn't part of the inventory when I discovered the store three years before, but as I gradually depleted the supply of classical 78 sets kept in the back of the store, Mrs. Clark would replace them with other goodies she had been keeping in her "warehouse," and this was one of those items.) I had heard of Busch and his Busch Chamber Players from old Columbia ads for their famous set of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, but this was my first opportunity to actually hear them (it happened to be my introduction to this wonderful concerto as well), and I was hooked:

Mozart: Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Major, K. 219
and
Tartini: Adagio ("Air") from Violin Sonata in G, Op. 2, No. 12
Adolf Busch (violin) with the Busch Chamber Players
Recorded April 30, 1945 (Mozart) and May 3, 1945 (Tartini)
Columbia Masterworks set MM-609, four 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 77.62 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 55.76 MB)

Tully Potter, who has written the definitive work on Adolf Busch (published in 2010 by Toccata Press), tells us that this recording followed the Busch Chamber Players' first American tour in the spring of 1945, which took them to 54 towns in 20 states (and Ontario). Many of the towns were out West, and many had never heard a live orchestra before. The orchestra numbered 27 players (including the 19-year-old Eugene Istomin as pianist in several concertos and for continuo work), of which 14 were women, including both horn players. The touring repertoire included this Mozart concerto as well as the following works which the orchestra subsequently recorded: the Bach Double Concerto (which Busch played with Frances Magnes as second fiddle), the Bach D minor clavier concerto (with Istomin), Dvořák's Notturno for strings, Busch's own arrangements of several African-American spirituals, Mozart's "Eine kleine Nachtmusik" and the 3rd Concert by Rameau. The last two works were, alas, never issued.

Mozart: Piano Concerto, K. 491 (Casadesus)

Cover design by Alex Steinweiss

I grew up on Robert Casadesus' recordings of the Mozart piano concertos, in his incomparable collaborations with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra from the 1950s and 1960s.  These were my introduction to these magical works, when I was a teenager, and ever since, this has seemed to me the right way to play Mozart.  So I was delighted to find recently the very first Mozart concerto recording made by the great French pianist (and although the pressing is not ideal, perhaps, being a postwar one, it does at least boast a Steinweiss album cover I hadn't encountered before):

Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 24 in C Minor, K. 491

Robert Casadesus, pianist

Orchestre Symphonique de Paris conducted by Eugène Bigot

Recorded December 20 and 21, 1937

and

Mozart: Rondo in D Major, K. 485

Robert Casadesus, pianist

Recorded December 8, 1937

Columbia Masterworks set MM-356, four 78-rpm records

Link (FLAC files, 86.04 MB)

Link (MP3 files, 58.56 MB)

Mozart: Jupiter Symphony (Coates)

Last week we had Leopold Stokowski's 132nd birthday, and this week (April 23) we have the same for Albert Coates, that great gramophonic pioneer. And so I offer his first recording of Mozart's "Jupiter" Symphony (an electrically-recorded replacement succeeded it three years later). It isn't known whether it's the first complete recording of the work (an abridged one by the Victor Concert Orchestra had preceded it); the other contender would be a Deutsche Grammophon set conducted by Johannes Heidenreich, and since Deutsche Grammophon's recording ledgers were lost in the Second World War, we don't know when that recording was made. We do know that it was released in March, 1924, five months after the Coates version had been completed, but ten months before it actually appeared, having been held up by the need to record a suitable filler. (DG didn't bother about such niceties as suitable fillers - theirs was Richard Strauss conducting two movements from his "Bourgeois Gentilhomme" Suite!) What can be said about Coates' version is that it's probably the fastest on record - 28 minutes total, and that's with exposition repeats not only in the first movement and finale, but the slow movement as well, probably for the only time on 78-rpm discs for this particular symphony. (Had the repeats not been observed, the total timing would have amounted to only about 21 minutes.  Coates was well known for his speedy tempos.)

Mozart: Symphony No. 41 in C Major, K. 551 ("Jupiter")
Recorded August 27 and October 16, 1923
and
Mozart: Overture to "Der Schauspieldirektor" (The Impresario), K. 486
Recorded October 22, 1924
Symphony Orchestra conducted by Albert Coates
HMV D 942 through D 945, four 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 102.47 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 57.25 MB)

Mozart: Divertimento, K. 563 (Pasquier Trio)

The Pasquier Trio

The string trio repertoire is not large, but it is rich - and made richer by the efforts of the Pasquier Trio, three brothers (Jean, violin; Pierre, viola; Étienne, cello) for whom such composers as Pierné, Roussel, Moeran and Françaix wrote string trios.  The cornerstone of this repertoire is surely Mozart's wonderful Divertimento in E-Flat, K. 563.  Who but Mozart, whose birthday we will be celebrating on January 27, could compose the greatest work ever written for the combination of violin, viola and cello, pouring the most profound of his ideas into it, and then modestly call the result a "divertimento"?  Here is the work's first recording, and the first of three the Pasquier brothers would make:

Mozart: Divertimento in E-Flat, K. 563, for string trio
The Pasquier Trio
Recorded June 26-27, 1935
Columbia Masterworks set AM-351, five 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 107.13 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 66.49 MB)

This transfer is taken from a very nice early pressing of the American Columbia set, which has sustained a little wear (those early automatic changers did no favors for the spindle holes, I'm afraid), so I was surprised and pleased by how well the result sounds.

Szell and the Budapest Quartet

George Szell

George Szell (1897-1970) made his international reputation as the music director of the Cleveland Orchestra via his recordings for American Columbia (and through their subsidiary, Epic), but, at the time the recording I present here was made, that was all in the future.  His career with American Columbia actually began as a pianist, with members of the Budapest Quartet, in the two piano quartets by Mozart, of which this was the first to be released:

Mozart: Quartet No. 2 in E-Flat Major, K. 493

George Szell, piano, with members of the Budapest String Quartet

Recorded July 20, 1946, in Hollywood

Columbia Masterworks set MM-493, three 78-rpm records

Link (FLAC files, 56.95 MB)

Link (MP3 files, 29.12 MB)

By the time this release appeared, early in 1947, Szell had already begun making recordings with the Cleveland Orchestra, two of which were actually issued before the other Mozart piano quartet was.

Sorry to be away for so long, but most of my free time this month has been spent glorying in the new Mercury Living Presence CD box which I decided to spring for earlier this summer.  It's also given me a couple of ideas for future transfers...

Mozart by Koussevitzky

In a recent issue of Classical Recordings Quarterly, in an article entitled "Why Don't the Record Companies..." (the same article that inspired this post), Donald Manildi laments the lack of a systematic approach to CD reissues of recordings by Serge Koussevitzky (1874-1951), the great Russian conductor, such as that given to comparable figures like Toscanini and Stokowski.  He notes that many CD reissues of Koussevitzky's considerable legacy have been allowed to go out of print, and that his Mozart recordings, in particular, have largely been untapped.  Well, in an attempt to rectify that situation, I present three major Mozart works, all recorded at Tanglewood in the late 1940s:

Mozart: Serenade No. 10 in B-Flat, K. 361, for 13 wind instruments
Members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Serge Koussevitzky
Recorded August 15, 1947
RCA Victor WDM-1303, four 45-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 74.73 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 38.04 MB)

Mozart: Symphony No. 33 in B-Flat Major, K. 319 and
Mozart: Overture to "Idomeneo, Re di Creta", K. 366
Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Serge Koussevitzky
Recorded August 15, 1946, and August 17, 1949
RCA Victor WDM-1369, three 45-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 69.14 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 36.58 MB)

Mozart: Symphony No. 36 in C Major, K. 425 ("Linz")
Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Serge Koussevitzky
Recorded August 16, 1949
RCA Victor WDM-1354, three 45-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 64.86 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 31.61 MB)

Some may find Koussevitzky's approach to Mozart a little hard-driven, particularly in the symphonies; he is much closer to Toscanini than to Beecham or Walter.  Perhaps this is why his Mozart recordings have been ignored - they are unfashionable.  No such reservations about the Serenade!  This is a wonderfully relaxed and unbuttoned reading from the Boston wind players, and the only regret here is that two of the movements (as well as one of the Menuetto's trios) were omitted.

Mozart by Mitropoulos

The great Greek conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos (1896-1960) was renowned as an interpreter of 20th century music, but one hardly associates him at all with music before Beethoven (except for a few orchestral transcriptions of Bach organ works).  He made only one commercial recording of Mozart's music, other than a concerto accompaniment (for Vronsky and Babin in the concerto for two pianos), and that was of a piece so obscure that it represented a first on records at the time.  This was of two entr'actes from his incidental music for "Thamos, King of Egypt" - a play by Tobias Philipp von Gelber that is only remembered today because of Mozart's music:

Mozart: Thamos, King of Egypt, K. 345 - Entr'actes 1 and 2
Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos
Recorded December 3, 1940
Columbia Masterworks 11578-D, one 78-rpm record
Link (FLAC files, 17.33 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 9.67 MB)

Lewis Richards, American Harpsichordist

Lewis Richards

Michigan-born Lewis Richards (1881-1940) appears to have been the first American to figure in the harpsichord revival of the early 20th century.  He acquired a Pleyel harpsichord in Brussels, where he had trained as a pianist, and embarked on a career with it in 1923, becoming the first harpsichordist to play a concerto with an American orchestra - the Haydn D major in Minneapolis - beating Wanda Landowska to the honor by a matter of months.  In 1927 he was the first harpsichordist in modern times to play at the White House, for President Calvin Coolidge.  (One hopes that "Silent Cal" enjoyed the recital more than he did most societal functions.  One unfortunate lady, seated next to him at a dinner party, is supposed to have said, "Mr. Coolidge, I've made a bet with a friend who said it's impossible to get more than two words out of you." His reply: "You lose.") Richards made pitifully few recordings; only three ten-inch Brunswick issues, with this coupling (which duplicated a coupling by Landowska on Victor) being the first:

Mozart: Rondo alla turca ("Turkish March")
Handel: Air and Variations ("The Harmonious Blacksmith")
Lewis Richards, harpsichordist
Recorded May 21, 1925
Brunswick 2930, one ten-inch 78-rpm record
Link (FLAC files, 19.12 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 8.29 MB)

This was almost certainly the first electrical recording of the harpsichord, done by Brunswick's "Light Ray" process only about a month after the company began using it.  The Mozart side is frankly experimental - it begins and ends quietly, with a crescendo in the middle and a diminuendo at the end which are impossible on the harpsichord.  Although some of this can perhaps be attributed to registration, it really sounds to me as though the engineers were getting the effect by playing with the controls!

Mozart: Jupiter Symphony (Bruno Walter, 1945)

Cover design by Alex Steinweiss
(restored by Peter Joelson)

In honor of Mozart's 257th birthday tomorrow, here's one of the rarer recordings of the "Jupiter" Symphony, the second of four that Bruno Walter was to make, and the first of two with the New York Philharmonic.  At the time of its issue, its competition would have been included Beecham on Columbia, as well as Walter's earlier recording with the Vienna Philharmonic on Victor.  Two years later came Toscanini's version on Victor.  All three of the competing sets turn up rather more frequently than this one does:

Mozart: Symphony No. 41 in C Major, K. 551 ("Jupiter")

and

Mozart: Cosi fan tutte, K. 588 - Overture

Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York conducted by Bruno Walter

Recorded January 23, 1945

Columbia Masterworks set MM-565, four 78-rpm records

Link (FLAC files, 81.42 MB)

Link (MP3 files, 44.18 MB)

Mozart Violin Sonatas (Schneider & Kirkpatrick)

Cover design by Alex Steinweiss

This Sunday is the birthday of the Lithuanian-born violinist, conductor and teacher Alexander Schneider (1908-1993), perhaps best known for his work with the Budapest String Quartet, of which he was second violinist from 1932 to 1944 and again from 1956 to their disbanding in 1967.  In between his two stints with the Quartet, he was involved in a variety of projects, perhaps the most famous being organizing the Prades Festival with Pablo Casals.  One of the most intriguing projects was a fruitful collaboration begun in 1944 with the harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick (1911-1984), which even resulted in a number of contemporary works being written for them, including a sonata by Milhaud and a Sonatina by Walter Piston.  They recorded the latter work, as well as six Bach sonatas, six by Handel, and eight by Mozart.  The duo's first appearance on records was this album of three Mozart sonatas:

Mozart: Violin Sonatas, K. 296, 378 and 379
Alexander Schneider, violin; Ralph Kirkpatrick, harpsichord
Recorded November 26-28, 1945
Columbia Masterworks set MM-650, six 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 132.25 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 70.02 MB)

At the time, the substitution of a harpsichord for the piano in these works was somewhat controversial, and still might raise some eyebrows; but it must be understood that the pianos of Mozart's time were actually closer in sonority to the harpsichord than to the modern grand piano, and in 1945 replicas of fortepianos (the term that has come to be used for early pianos) were still a good twenty or thirty years in the future.  So the use of the harpsichord here represents a compromise, although in truth it works better in the earliest Mozart violin sonatas than in the later ones.  Ralph Kirkpatrick, with all his artistry, was probably the only harpsichordist at the time who was able to pull it off convincingly.

Dimitri-in-the-Dell

Cover design by Alex Steinweiss
(restored by Peter Joelson)

The spotlight this week is on the great Greek conductor and pianist, Dimitri Mitropoulos (1896-1960), who, at the time of these recordings, was the principal conductor of the Minneapolis Symphony.  Here, however, he is leading the Robin Hood Dell Orchestra of Philadelphia (essentially the Philadelphia Orchestra) in a couple of their earliest recordings under that name.  To simultaneously play and conduct Prokofiev's extremely demanding Third Piano Concerto was a Mitropoulos specialty (he first carried out the feat in Berlin in 1930), and, in fact, I'm unaware of anyone who has done the dual role with this piece since.  (Since writing the above, I've learned that Van Cliburn actually did so, at a 1961 concert in New York that was a memorial for Mitropoulos! Stokowski was supposed to conduct, but was laid up from an accident, so Cliburn, who had taken conducting lessons from Bruno Walter, assumed conducting duties as well.)  And even if there are quite a few wrong notes in this performance, one can't help admiring Mitropoulos' gumption not merely in pulling it off, but in posing the challenge to its only competition in the record catalogues at the time - the composer's own recording of 1932:

Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 3 in C major, Op. 26
Dimitri Mitropoulos with the Robin Hood Dell Orchestra of Philadelphia
Recorded July 26, 1946
Columbia Masterworks set MM-667, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 71.05 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 38.43 MB)

In the next recording presented here, Mitropoulos reverts to his more accustomed role as conductor only, since for even so prestigious a talent as his, it would have been impossible to play both piano parts as well as conduct in the Mozart two-piano concerto:

Mozart: Concerto for two pianos in E-Flat major, K. 365
Vitya Vronsky and Victor Babin, duo-pianists
Robin Hood Dell Orchestra of Philadelphia conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos
Recorded September 21, 1945
Columbia Masterworks set MM-628, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 61.87 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 36.2 MB)

Happy Birthday, Denis Matthews!

Monday marks the 92nd birth anniversary of the British pianist Denis Matthews, who came to a sad end - he committed suicide on Christmas Day, 1988.  He was most famous for his recordings of Mozart and Beethoven, with at least eight of Mozart's concertos in his discography.  Here is the first of these, made in 1944, when he was in R.A.F. uniform:

Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 23 in A, K. 488
Denis Matthews with the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
conducted by George Weldon
Recorded August 28, 1944
English Columbia DX 1167 through DX 1169, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 64.79 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 27.79 MB)

A little over a year ago, I presented several single discs of Matthews playing solo works by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and John Field.  Here is another to add to that collection:

Bach: Prelude and Fugue No. 8 in E-Flat minor (Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I)
Denis Matthews, piano
Recorded April 25, 1949
English Columbia DX 1635, one 78-rpm record
Link (FLAC file, 21.54 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 9.66 MB)

According to CHARM, Matthews recorded at least five of the Bach "Well-Tempered Clavier" preludes and fugues, but only this one and the No. 1 in C were actually issued.  Matthews' Bach discography is rather meager, but it does include a fine version of the Triple Concerto in C, BWV 1064, with Edwin Fischer and Ronald Smith, from the Bach anniversary year of 1950, available on an EMI CD.