A Boston Pops Miscellany

Arthur Fiedler, c. 1935

Summer is here - traditionally the time when orchestras do their "pops" seasons, and none is more celebrated than those of Boston (though in latter days, rivaled by those in Cincinnati). The Boston "Pops" began making recordings 82 summers ago, and purveyed everything from standard repertoire to traditional and contemporary light music. All three are represented here in this batch:

Wagner: Rienzi - Overture and Tannhäuser - Fest-Marsch
Boston Pops Orchestra conducted by Arthur Fiedler
Recorded June 28-29, 1937
Victor Musical Masterpiece set DM-569, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 45.17 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 29.84 MB)

Album of Strauss Waltzes
(Wein, Weib und Gesang; Wiener Blut; Künstlerleben; Kaiser; Frühlingsstimmen)
Boston Pops Orchestra conducted by Arthur Fiedler
Recorded 1936-37
Victor Musical Masterpiece set M-445, five 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 103.12 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 67.24 MB)

Piston: The Incredible Flutist - Ballet Suite
Boston Pops Orchestra conducted by Arthur Fiedler
Recorded June 29, 1939
Victor Musical Masterpiece set DM-621, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC file, 41.67 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 29.91 MB)

Not being a Viennese waltz aficionado, I can't say how authentic Fiedler's interpretations of Johann Strauss may be, but I certainly enjoyed them - he plays them with all the zest and gusto one could want. The Piston recording is wholly delightful, but the solo flutist is unfortunately not credited. On Fiedler's later (1953) recording, James Pappoutsakis did the honors, and since that gentleman became the BSO's assistant principal flute the year this recording was made, it's quite possible he did the honors on this occasion also.

Hanson and Piston by Hanson

Just in time for the Fourth of July, a couple of Pulitzer Prize-winning symphonies which are utterly different from each other, and therefore complement each other nicely.  Piston's, which received the 1948 Pulitzer, is yet another of those "Great American Third Symphonies" (a phenomenon started by Roy Harris, and continued by William Schuman and Aaron Copland) and seems to me one of the finest of his eight, with a spiky scherzo that makes one regret he didn't write more symphonies with scherzos (only Nos. 4 and 6 also have them), which fits into an overall slow-fast-slow-fast four movement pattern of the type that had been recently been popularized by Shostakovich and Prokofiev in their Fifth Symphonies.  Hanson's Fourth, the 1944 Pulitzer winner, has the exact opposite pattern, and is cast as an orchestral Requiem "In Memory of my beloved Father." (Had he taken the idea from Britten's "Sinfonia da Requiem"?)  The Sibelian echoes are very strong here, but even so this strikes me as the finest of Hanson's symphonies among those that I've heard (which is all of them except Nos. 5 and 7), and of course the performance is authoritative.

Piston: Symphony No. 3 (1947)
Hanson: Symphony No. 4 (1943)
Eastman Rochester Orchestra conducted by Howard Hanson
Recorded May 11, 1954 (Piston) and May 11-13, 1953 (Hanson)
Mercury Golden Imports SRI-75107, one LP record
Link (FLAC files, 141.32 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 64.8 MB)

This LP is a reissue from the late 1970s, one of about 150 reissues pressed by Philips in the Netherlands of Mercury Living Presence material.  It was, unfortunately, "enhanced" with fake stereo, even though this had become passé by the 70s, and naturally I have "monoed" it back again in this transfer.  As far as I am aware, neither of these recordings has ever appeared on CD; they were not part of the slew of Mercury Living Presence CD reissues produced in the 1990s, although they certainly should have been.

Ormandy: Three American Symphonies

Eugene Ormandy may not have been as visible a supporter of contemporary American music as, say, Serge Koussevitzky in Boston or Leonard Bernstein almost everywhere, but he certainly did his part in keeping it before the public.  Here are three American symphonies performed and recorded by him in the 1950s - I believe all three were once offered as an Albany Records CD, which is now out-of-print:

William Schuman: Symphony No. 6 (1948)

Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy

Recorded November 15, 1953

Side 1 of Columbia Masterworks ML-4992, one vinyl LP record

Link (FLAC file, 66.37 MB)

Link (MP3 file, 37.01 MB)

Walter Piston: Symphony No. 4 (1950)

Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy

Recorded April 15, 1954, under the auspices of the

Walter W. Naumberg Foundation

Side 2 of Columbia Masterworks ML-4992, one vinyl LP record

Link (FLAC files, 69.2 MB)

Link (MP3 files, 39.98 MB)

Roy Harris: Symphony No. 7 (1952)

Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy

Recorded October 23, 1955

Side 1 of Columbia Special Products CML-5095, one vinyl LP record

Link (FLAC file, 56.24 MB)

Link (MP3 file, 24.57)

About the works themselves, I can say little beyond that the Piston symphony is one of his most accessible scores, the Schuman one of his thornier ones.  The Harris, a one-movement work like his famous Third, seems to me one of his finest (of course, I've only heard two others - the Third and the "Symphony 1933"), a variation form based on a long, passacaglia-like theme similar to that in the Piano Quintet uploaded earlier.  I don't have original liner notes for this record, as it came in a generic Columbia Special Products sleeve, so I offer with the download an extract from Dan Stehman's 1984 monograph on the composer, analyzing the symphony.

The Composer as Accompanist

John Ireland

Back in 2008 I offered two different recordings featuring composers as piano accompanists in their chamber works.  One of these was John Ireland (1879-1962), who made at least two such recordings of which I am aware.  One was of his First Violin Sonata, with Frederick Grinke, for Decca in 1945.  This has turned up on a Dutton CD, but I am unaware of any subsequent release of the other recording, that of the Cello Sonata with Antoni Sala, with, as a filler, a solo piano piece by Ireland, which I present here:

Ireland: Cello Sonata in G minor (1923)
Antoni Sala, cello; John Ireland, piano
Recorded October 25, 1928
and
Ireland: April (1925)
John Ireland, piano
Recorded February 18, 1929
English Columbia L 2314 through L 2317, four 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 59.62 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 26.73 MB)

I know very little about Antoni Sala, other than that he was Spanish and was the cellist on a fine Parlophone recording of the Arensky Piano Trio, Op. 35, with Eileen Joyce and Henri Temianka, which turned up some years ago on a Biddulph double CD set devoted to Temianka.

Walter Piston

There could hardly be imagined a more different musical idiom than that of the other composer-pianist whom I present here, Walter Piston (1894-1976), in one of his very rare appearances on records as a performer.  Here he accompanies Louis Krasner in his Violin Sonata, a recording which appeared only a month before Krasner's famous recording of the Berg Violin Concerto, which Krasner commissioned:

Piston: Sonata for Violin and Piano (1939)
Louis Krasner, violin; Walter Piston, piano
Recorded November 24, 1939
Columbia Masterworks set MX-199, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 39.01 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 21.22 MB)

This recording was reviewed in the TIME magazine issue of August, 1941, where Piston is described as an "atonalist."  He was hardly that!  Wonder if the review had him mixed up with Berg?

Columbia had two sets of music by Piston on its catalogue during the 78-rpm era; here's the other one:

Piston: String Quartet No. 1 (1933) and
Cowell: Movement for String Quartet (Quartet No. 2, 1934)
Dorian String Quartet
Recorded September 27, 1939
Columbia Masterworks Set M-388, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 55.52 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 27.23 MB)

The cellist in the Dorian String Quartet was the 23-year-old Bernard Greenhouse; the other members were Alexander Cores and Harry Friedman, violins, and David Mankovitz, viola.