Finn Viderø at the Compenius Organ

The 1610 Compenius Organ, Frederiksborg Castle, Denmark
(as pictured in the booklet for the Gramophone Shop Celebrities Album)

Happy New Year! Here, without further ado, is the companion album for the Finn Viderø set I posted a few weeks ago, made by HMV for the Gramophone Shop in New York, a selection of 16th and 17th century music played on the oldest organ in Denmark, built by Esaias Compenius in 1610:

Compenius Organ Album:

Samuel Scheidt: Magnificat secundi toni

Girolamo Frescobaldi: Canzone dopo l'Epistola

Heinrich Scheidemann: Praeambulum in Dorian Mode

Antonio Cabezón: Diferencias sobre "El Canto del Caballero"

Antonio Cabezón: Tiento del cuatro tono

Jean Titelouze: Magnificat quinti toni

Melchior Schildt: Praeambulum

Orlando Gibbons: Fantasia

Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck: O lux beata trinitas - 2 variations

Jakob Praetorius: Praeambulum

Michael Praetorius: Alvus tumescit virginis

Finn Viderø at the Compenius organ in Frederiksborg Castle, Denmark

Recorded c. 1949

Gramophone Shop Celebrities Album 8, six 78-rpm records

Link (FLAC files, 146.36 MB)

Link (MP3 files, 92.45 MB)

There were nine of these special albums produced by the Gramophone Shop, which, for some reason, began their numbering at Album 2 and went up through Album 10.  Here is a list of these:

GSC-2: Purcell: Eight Suites for Harpsichord (Sylvia Marlowe)
GSC-3: Treasures from the Repertory of Maggie Teyte
GSC-4: Songs of Gluck, Wagner and Franz (Lorri Lail, soprano)
GSC-5: Baroque Cantatas of 17th Century North Germany (Mogens Wöldike directing)
GSC-6: Seventeenth Century Organ Music (Finn Viderø)
GSC-7: Italian Songs of the Renaissance and Baroque (Gabriella Gatti)
GSC-8: Compenius Organ Album (Finn Viderø)
GSC-9: Choral Music of the Renaissance (Wöldike & Danish State Madrigal Choir)
GSC-10: Alto Cantatas of Schütz nnd Buxtehude (Lorri Lail, Finn Viderø)

All of these were recorded and manufactured by HMV except the Purcell Suites, which were American-made and pressed in vinylite. No indication is given as to who produced them, though my guess would be American Decca, given that Sylvia Marlowe would later record extensively for that label.

Seventeenth Century Organ Music (Finn Viderø)

Finn Viderø

One of the most renowned record shops in America in the second quarter of the twentieth century was New York's Gramophone Shop, on East 48th Street. Begun in the spring of 1928 by William H. Tyler and Joseph Brodan, the store did a thriving business in imported recordings and eventually took to releasing esoteric fare under its own imprint, although in most cases the actual records were recorded and pressed by HMV. (Latter-day collectors have additional reason to bless the existence of the Gramophone Shop - the three editions of the Encyclopedia of Recorded Music which it sponsored, from 1936, 1942, and 1948, which remain standard reference works.) Among its albums under the heading of "Gramophone Shop Celebrities" is this marvelous collection by the Danish organist Finn Viderø:

Seventeenth Century Organ Music:

Buxtehude: Toccata in F Major, BuxWV 156

Froberger: 2 Ricercare - In the Phrygian Mode; in F-Sharp Minor

Louis Marchand: Dialogue in C Major

Franz Tunder: Prelude in G Minor

Matthias Weckmann: Toccata in E Minor

Pachelbel: Fantasia in G Minor; Ricercare in C Minor

Buxtehude: Prelude and Fugue in D Minor, BuxWV 140

Buxtehude: Canzonetta in E Minor, BuxWV 169

Finn Viderø at the organ of Jaegersborg Church, Denmark

Recorded c. 1948 by HMV

Gramophone Shop Celebrities Album No. 6, six 78-rpm records

Link (FLAC files, 130.42 MB)

Link (MP3 files, 84.19 MB)

Of the Gramophone Shop's two co-founders, Mr. Tyler, who had since at least 1925 been the manager of the record department at the New York Band Instrument Company (as we find out in the June, 1925, issue of "The Talking Machine World"), has a connection with my native city, Atlanta, as well. For, by the time these "Gramophone Shop Celebrities" sets were being made in the late 40s, Mr. Tyler had left New York to found his own shop down here, at 845 Peachtree Street, known as Tyler's Gramophone Shop. My old mentor Bill Brooks spoke of working for this shop (and indeed, the 1947 Atlanta City Directory lists him as a salesman there) - which would explain the large number of imported records that Mr. Brooks possessed, for Mr. Tyler worked as an importer here as he had in New York. His store didn't last long, unfortunately. It's listed in only two editions of the city directories, 1947 and 1948-49. Some twenty years ago I acquired a few 78s from a lady who had been one of his customers (this lady's name, alas, I cannot remember, but she attended the church I was playing for at the time). She remembered Tyler's Gramophone Shop as "a wonderful place," and that "it closed down after Mr. Tyler committed suicide." The original Gramophone Shop in New York closed its doors for good early in 1954.

I do not know whether I will post again before Christmas, so everyone accept my best wishes for a happy holiday season!

Rare Baroque Music from Fiedler's Sinfonietta

Those of you seeing my title for this post, and then seeing the label picture above, must be thinking, "he's joking, right?" Because the Pachelbel Canon is so familiar to us nowadays, that it's hard to imagine a time, not so long ago, that the piece, and its composer, was almost as unknown as two of the other composers whose works Arthur Fiedler's little orchestra (composed of Boston Symphony players) recorded during the same week. (Doubtless many people, particularly cellists, wish this were still the case! I myself always had fun with it, as a continuo harpsichordist, because I could slip in tunes like "Jolly Old Saint Nicholas" with the right hand and see if anybody noticed. Nobody ever did.) The other two composers represented here are, even today, hardly household names: the lutenist Esajas Reusner (1636-1679) and Rev. William Felton (1713-1769):

William Felton: Organ Concerto No. 3 in B-Flat Major
E. Power Biggs with Arthur Fiedler's Sinfonietta
Recorded March 17, 1940
Victor Musical Masterpiece set DM-866, two 10-inch 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC file, 33.74 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 21.69 MB)

Esajas Reusner: Suite No. 1 (arr. J. G. Stanley) and
Pachelbel: Canon in D Major
Arthur Fiedler's Sinfonietta
Recorded March 21, 1940
Victor Musical Masterpiece set M-969, two 10-inch 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 35.35 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 24.25 MB)

It's taken six years, but between 8 and 9 o'clock this morning this blog passed a milestone: one million pageviews! It now stands at 1,000,301. My thanks to you, my loyal fans, for making this possible.

Handel: Cuckoo and the Nightingale (Biggs, Fiedler)

E. Power Biggs, 1937

As I was growing up, E. Power Biggs (1906-1977) was a one-man institution in organ-playing, at least in my awareness, through his many, many Columbia LPs spanning a wide range of repertoire, performed on historic organs all over the world. His career at Columbia spanned some thirty years, but before this, he had been at Victor from 1939 to 1946, where most of his work was done on the 1937 Aeolian-Skinner organ built to Baroque specifications (pictured above) and located in Harvard's Germanic Museum. His recordings included collaborations with Arthur Fiedler and his Sinfonietta composed of Boston Symphony players; in fact Biggs' first Victor release was of a Handel concerto with Fiedler, which Larry Austin has made available here. A year later, they recorded this most popular of the Handel concertos:

Handel: Concerto No. 13 in F Major ("The Cuckoo and the Nightingale")
E. Power Biggs, organ, with Arthur Fiedler's Sinfonietta
Recorded March 17, 1940
RCA Victor set M-733, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC file, 40.36 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 28.11 MB)

Both Biggs and Fiedler would later make complete recordings of the Handel organ concertos in stereo - but not together: Biggs' set was with Boult and the London Philharmonic, for Columbia, and Fiedler's was with Carl Weinrich for RCA.

Saint-Saëns: Symphony No. 3 (Munch, New York Philharmonic)

Cover design by Alex Steinweiss

This Saturday, September 26, marks the birth anniversary of the great Alsatian conductor Charles Munch (1891-1968), and so I present the first recording he made in America, in 1947, not with the Boston Symphony (that appointment was to come two years later) but with the New York Philharmonic. It's also the second-only recording made anywhere of Saint-Saëns' "Organ" Symphony (after Piero Coppola's 1930 version for French HMV) - perhaps understandably, it wasn't until the stereo era that the piece became the vehicle for high-powered collaborations between famous organists and conductors that it is now:

Saint-Saëns: Symphony No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 78
Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York conducted by Charles Munch
Edouard Nies-Berger (organ); Walter Hendl (piano)
Recorded November 10, 1947
Columbia Masterworks set MM-747, four 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 90.03 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 54.40 MB)

Edouard Nies-Berger (1903-2002), born in Munch's hometown of Strasbourg, was a protegé of Albert Schweitzer. He came to the USA in 1922 and was the official organist of the New York Philharmonic at the time this recording was made. Shamefully, Columbia did not even bother to identify his first name, billing him on the cover and labels as "E. Nies-Berger." But that was more information than they gave about the pianist, who was completely uncredited. James North, in his Philharmonic discography, says that Walter Hendl (1917-2007), then the assistant conductor of the orchestra, fulfilled this role.

Bach from Copenhagen

Frederiksberg Church, Copenhagen

This week, two organ pieces by J. S. Bach, played by an organist about whom I can find out absolutely nothing online - indeed, there's more information available about the organ itself!  Presumably, Georg Krarup was a staff organist at the Frederiksberg Church in Copenhagen, built in 1734 on land donated by King Frederick IV; the organ used in this recording is the church's third, built in 1947 by the firm of Marcussen & Son, and is an instrument with a light, pleasing, Baroque-style sound:

Bach: Trio Sonata No. 4 in E Minor, BWV 528 and
Bach: "Little" Prelude and Fugue No. 4 in F Major, BWV 556
Georg Krarup at the organ of Frederiksberg Church, Copenhagen
Recorded c. 1951-52
HMV Z 7046 and Z 7047, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 40.59 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 22.59 MB)

This recording has the distinction of being the last release that I can trace in HMV's Danish plum label automatic-sequence series, which featured some very interesting repertoire, as can be seen from this list (the orchestra is always that of the Danish State Radio, unless otherwise indicated):

Z 7000/3 Nielsen: Symphony No. 2 (Thomas Jensen)
Z 7004/7  Brahms: Symphony No. 2 (Fritz Busch)
Z 7008/12 Dvorak: "New World" Symphony (Nikolai Malko)
Z 7013/5  Niels Viggo Bentzon: Partita for piano, Op. 38 (Composer)
Z 7016/8  Haydn: Symphony No. 91 (Mogens Wöldike)
Z 7019/21 Tchaikovsky: Francesca da Rimini (Issay Dobrowen)
Z 7022/6  Nielsen: Symphony No. 5 (Erik Tuxen)
Z 7027/9  Bach: Cantata No. 82 (Bernhard Sonnerstedt, Wöldike)
Z 7030/1  Bentzon: Piano Sonata No. 3 (Composer)
Z 7032/3  Beethoven: Gellert-Lieder, Op. 48 (Børg Lowenfalk, Lund Christiansen)
Z 7034/5  Bach: Orgelbuchlein - 12 selections (Georg Krarup)
Z 7036/7  Bentzon: Chamber Concerto, Op. 52 (Copenhagen Collegium Musicum)
Z 7038/40 Prokofiev: Peter and the Wolf (with Danish narration) (Markevitch, Philharmonia)
Z 7041/3  Jørgen Jersild: Alice i Eventyrland (Wöldike, Danish Madrigal Cho.)
Z 7044/5  Bach: Orgelbuchlein - 9 selections (Krarup)
Z 7046/7  Bach: Trio Sonata No. 4 (Krarup)

The Brahms, Dvorak and Tchaikovsky sets also turned up in the regular English plum label C series.

Franck: Organ Chorales (Guy Weitz)

Guy Weitz

During the late 1920s, when the introduction of electrical recording made it possible for the record companies to make on-location recordings on a wide scale, a great deal of attention was focused on the one instrument which had no chance of being recorded by the acoustical process - the pipe organ.  The pages of the HMV and Columbia catalogues of this period are littered with organ records, most of them by organists of strictly local (British) reputation - men such as G. D. Cunningham and George Thalben-Ball.  An exception was the Belgian-born organist and composer Guy Weitz (1883-1970), a student of Widor and Guilmant at the Schola Cantorum in Paris.  At the onset of war in 1914 he fled Belgium for London, where he was organist at the Farm Street Church from 1917 to 1967.  HMV got him to make these first recordings of two Franck chorales:

Franck: Chorale No. 1 in E Major
Guy Weitz at the Organ of St. Thomas' Church, Wandsworth
Recorded October 7, 1929
HMV C 1825 and C 1826, two 78-rpm records

Franck: Chorale No. 3 in A minor and
Widor: Symphony No. 4 - Andante cantabile
Guy Weitz at the Organ of Westminster Cathedral, London
Recorded December 16, 1926, and May 4, 1927
HMV C 1378 and C 1379, two 78-rpm records

Both recordings are available in one bundle:
Link (FLAC files, 71.91 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 31.99 MB)

Handel Organ Concertos

This week I present several recordings of Handel organ concertos by two British organists that, decidedly, represent a bygone style of playing this music!  Featured first is George Dorrington Cunningham (1878-1948), who went by the rather unfortunate initials "G. D." (I wonder if they had the same connotations in those days?), and who was appointed Birmingham City Organist in 1924.  E. Power Biggs was one of his students.  His recordings of two Handel concerti, with George Weldon and the City of Birmingham Orchestra, were made late in his life, and exhibit a considerably beefier style of Handel playing than we are accustomed to today, with a big organ sound and a full symphonic-sized string orchestra accompaniment:

Handel: Organ Concerto No. 2 in B-Flat, Op. 4, No. 2 and

Handel: Organ Concerto No. 4 in F, Op. 4, No. 4

G. D. Cunningham (organ) and the

City of Birmingham Orchestra conducted by George Weldon

Recorded June 4, 1945

English Columbia DX 1358 through 1360, three 78-rpm records

Link (FLAC files, 59.19 MB)

Link (MP3 files, 25.99 MB)

If the Cunningham performances seem oversized, they're positively sedate compared to what follows.  Cunningham's student, and successor as Birmingham City Organist, was George Thalben-Ball (1896-1987), who here turns in a performance of Handel's Organ Concerto in B-Flat, Op. 7, No. 3, as arranged and orchestrated by Sir Henry J. Wood.  Thalben-Ball's playing is flamboyant, to say the least, and the Wood orchestration, for full symphony orchestra with brass and percussion, is certainly anachronistic but it's great fun!  Handel's original ordering of the movements is also altered, and this perfomance interpolates not only the Minuet from "Berenice" but also a big cadenza by Thalben-Ball that takes up most of the last side.

Handel: Organ Concerto No. 9 in B-Flat, Op. 7, No. 3 (arr. Henry J. Wood) and

Arne: Organ Concerto No. 6 in B-Flat - Allegro moderato

George Thalben-Ball (organ) and the

Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Walter Susskind

Recorded June 4, Sept. 23, and Oct. 11, 1948

HMV C 3814 through 3816, three 78-rpm records

Link (FLAC files, 59.9 MB)

Link (MP3 files, 27.31 MB)

Sir Henry Wood, of course, was a great conductor who left a fair number of recordings himself (though his recorded legacy hardly does him justice), and among these were several featuring Baroque music.  One of the very first uploads I ever offered, way back in the spring of 2007, was one of him conducting two Bach Brandenburg Concertos, and this is still available for those who may have missed it the first time:

Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G and

Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 in B-Flat

Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Henry J. Wood

Recorded June 16, 1932 (#3) and June 12, 1930 (#6)

Columbia 68084-D, 67842-D, and 67843-D, three 78-rpm records

Link (FLAC files, 53.32 MB)

Link (MP3 files, 20.4 MB)