Oscar Levant in a Recital of Modern Music

Oscar Levant

The Pittsburgh-born pianist, composer, author, actor, and (in later years) professional neurotic Oscar Levant (1906-1972) probably doesn't need any introduction to my readers, but perhaps this particular album does, for with the exception of the oft-reissued Gershwin preludes, it is comparatively rare. It actually was his first, issued in mid-1942, when he was already famous for his role as a panelist on the radio quiz show "Information Please" and as the author of the best-selling "A Smattering of Ignorance", and, in some respects, the most satisfying of the dozen or so albums he would make for Columbia:

Oscar Levant in a Recital of Modern Music:

Gershwin: Three Preludes

Debussy: Les Collines d'Anacapri

Debussy: Jardins sous la pluie

Jelobinsky: Etudes, Op. 19, Nos. 1 and 2 

Shostakovich: Prelude in A Minor, Op. 34, No. 2

Shostakovich: Polka from "The Golden Age"

Ravel: Sonatine - Menuet

Levant: Sonatina - First movement (Con ritmo)

Oscar Levant, piano

Recorded December 17, 1941, and January 20, 1942

Columbia Masterworks set M-508, four 10-inch 78-rpm records

Link (FLAC files, 54.67 MB)

Link (MP3 files, 40.61 MB)

Gershwin, Debussy, Ravel and Shostakovich are of course very well-known, but Levant the composer and Valery Viktorovich Jelobinsky (1913-1946) are far less so. The latter (whose name has also been transliterated "Zhelobinsky") was quite prolific in his short career, with six symphonies, three piano concertos and four operas to his credit. Shostakovich evidently thought highly of him, but posterity seems to have completely ignored him. This is the only recording ever made of the second of these two Etudes (from a set of six, which Horowitz championed for a time); Raymond Lewenthal later included the first one on a Westminster LP.

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."

Encores - The First Piano Quartet

Founded in 1941 as a radio ensemble, the First Piano Quartet, consisting of four pianists - Vladimir Padwa, Frank Mittler, Adam Garner and Edward Edson - enjoyed great popularity during its first decade or so of existence. It's easy to understand why. Their arrangements, made by the players themselves, were great fun, were usually quite brilliant and were performed with a tightness of ensemble that made the four pianos sound almost like one super-piano. The music chosen, popular classics and semi-classics, made few demands on listeners' ears; the pieces never exceeded two 78-rpm record sides in length. When the "FPQ" began recording for Victor in 1946, the company initially didn't consider them Red Seal material, putting their first three single releases and their first album (a set of Lecuona favorites) in the black-label 46-0000 "Double Feature" series. By 1948 these had all been reissued with red labels, and all their subsequent releases appeared as Red Seals, including this, their third album:

First Piano Quartet Encores:
Liszt: Liebestraum No. 3
Grieg: In the Hall of the Mountain King
Rimsky-Korsakov: Flight of the Bumblebee
Mendelssohn: Scherzo in E minor
Villa-Lobos: Polichinelle
Brahms: Lullaby
Rachmaninoff: Italian Polka
Schubert: Moment Musicale No. 3
Liadov: The Music Box
Shostakovich: Polka (from "The Golden Age")
Virgil Thomson: Ragtime Bass
Recorded Dec. 22-23, 1947
RCA Victor WMO-1263, three 45-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 57.85 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 42.70 MB)

The group's last RCA release was 1952's "FPQ on the Air" (LM-1227/WDM-1624), by which time Padwa had been replaced with Glauco d'Attili - the first of numerous personnel changes to the ensemble. A few EP reissues followed, but their recordings had all but vanished from the Schwann catalog by 1959, though the group continued to exist until 1972.

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5 (Rodzinski)

Cover design by Alex Steinweiss

It's been quite a while since I have offered anything by Shostakovich.  Well, here is his most famous work, conducted by the man who gave it its American première (with the NBC Symphony in April, 1938) - Artur Rodzinski.  By the time this recording - the work's third, following ones by Mravinsky and Stokowski - was made, the United States had entered the Second World War as an ally of the Soviet Union, which perhaps explains the militant-looking cover art depicted above!  Moreover, between the time of the recording (in February, 1942) and its release (around October the same year), Shostakovich had appeared on the cover of TIME Magazine in his fireman's helmet in connection with the American première of his Seventh Symphony conducted by Toscanini, so he was very much the "man of the hour" among musicians in the public mind.  So Columbia must have figured they had a sure winner in this recording, and indeed it appears to have sold quite well for a contemporary symphony.  It usually turns up in terrible pressings made during the war from recycled shellac, but I was fortunate enough to find a copy made in the immediate postwar period:

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47
Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Artur Rodzinski
Recorded February 22, 1942
Columbia Masterworks set MM-520, five 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 96.98 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 69.31 MB)

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 13 (Ormandy)

Cover design by Thomas Upshur

Shostakovich's Thirteenth Symphony, based on five poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, is one of the Russian master's most powerful works, and represents the closest he ever came to outright public dissent against the Soviet government.  So close was it to the composer's heart that he celebrated the date of its completion, July 20, 1962, as an anniversary for the rest of his life; only the date of the première of his First Symphony enjoyed a similar honor.  The Soviet authorities, naturally, did their best to suppress the Thirteenth Symphony, banning it after two performances.  An unofficial recording of the second of these performances, conducted by Kiril Kondrashin, somehow turned up on Everest in 1967, in terrible sonics made worse by their unfortunate application of fake stereo.  This recording by Ormandy was the first professionally made one, done in the wake of the Western première, from a score that had to be smuggled out of the USSR:

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 13, Op. 113 ("Babi Yar")
Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy
with Tom Krause, baritone, and the Male Chorus of the Mendelssohn Club
Recorded January 21 and 23, 1970
RCA Red Seal LSC-3162, one stereo LP record
Link (FLAC files, 293.23 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 113.5 MB)

I'm very fond of this recording; I got to know the work through it some thirty-seven years ago from, believe it or not, an 8-track tape!  Ormandy went on to make early recordings of Shostakovich's last two symphonies; I also had the Fifteenth as an 8-track.

Links for my previous posts are now restored going as far back as April, 2011, and I hope to have everything back up and running within the week.

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.

Shostakovich: Sixth Symphony (Reiner)

Cover design by Alex Steinweiss

Well, Shostakovich's birthday is upon us again, on Tuesday (I first celebrated it on this blog two years ago, with Efrem Kurtz's 1947 recording of his Ninth Symphony).  Here is Fritz Reiner's only commercial recording of a work by Shostakovich, which happens to be my favorite of his 15 symphonies, primarily because it's the first major Shostakovich work I ever came to know, through this very set:

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 54
and
Kabalevsky: Colas Breugnon - Overture
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra conducted by Fritz Reiner
Recorded March 26, 1945
Columbia Masterworks set MM-585, five 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 95.39 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 50.5 MB)

This set was issued in direct competition with Stokowski's 1940 recording, with the Philadelphia Orchestra, on Victor, and was then reissued on LP (unlike Stoki's).  Incredibly, the next version of the Shostakovich Sixth wasn't made until 1958 (a fine one, by Sir Adrian Boult, on Everest), by which time this Reiner version had been deleted!

This is the second copy of MM-585 that I have owned, thanks to Ken Halperin of Collecting Record Covers.  The first I purchased as a lad of almost twelve, from a wonderful shop in downtown Decatur, Ga., called Clark Music, at 115 Sycamore Street.  I could write a book about this place, which was so important to me during the 1970s.  It was, among other things, the site of my first summer job.  Clark's was a mom-and-pop operation opened in 1945 by Mayo and Mary Clark, which originally sold both sporting goods and musical merchandise.  Mr. Clark oversaw the former, and Mrs. Clark the latter.  They apparently never sent back to the manufacturers anything they couldn't sell, for when I discovered the store in 1973, the back wall was crammed with 78s, classical and popular, in brand-new condition.  Mrs. Clark also insisted the prices were the same as in the late 40s, and I know now that she was right, but for one of my limited means, these were still expensive!  This Shostakovich set cost $7.25, and I remember that after buying it, I had to call a neighbor for a ride home, for I had miscalculated the sales tax, and ended up a penny short of the 15-cent bus fare!  Clark's finally closed its doors in 1990, shortly after Mrs. Clark died, and I miss it still.  I found some wonderful treasures there.

Photo courtesy of the blog Next Stop...Decatur

Shostakovich: Tenth Symphony (Mitropoulos)

Cover photograph by Howard Zieff

Today I present the first recording made in the West of one of Shostakovich's greatest symphonies, the Tenth, by the great Dimitri Mitropoulos (1896-1960).  And it remains one of the most searingly intense, with the fastest second movement on record.  Mitropoulos would, of course, have had no way of knowing that this movement was Shostakovich's musical portrait of Stalin (as the composer admitted in his memoirs), and more's the wonder, for the performance blazes with rage like no other I've heard.  The third movement, which has always seemed to me like Shostakovich's own self-portrait (that D-S-C-H motto!), is also on the brisk side, and gains a special urgency thereby.

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Op. 93
Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of N.Y. conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos
Recorded October 18, 1954
Columbia Masterworks ML-4959, one 12-inch LP record
Link (FLAC files, 132.27 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 63.92)

I can't pass up the opportunity to comment on the rather startling cover for this LP (pictured above).  Charles Burr, in his liner note for ML-4959 (which is for the most part a long essay about the relationship of the Soviet composer to the Soviet government), says of the conclusion of the symphony that "there is an escape from tragedy back into the happiness of childhood, for it is only childhood that permits the dwelling once again in personal, non-political emotions." And yet the cover photograph displays a kid who doesn't look very happy to me! while behind him a faceless figure - obviously one of authority - stands in a displeased pose with arms crossed.  If this isn't a metaphor for the relationship of the composer to the state, I don't know what is.  This photograph was taken by Howard Zieff, later to become a film director, whose credits in that arena include "My Girl" and "Private Benjamin."

Shostakovich: Second and Third Symphonies

Cover design by Lorraine Fox

This is the first time that I have offered a stereophonic recording on this blog, one that I feel is deserving of wider circulation than it is currently receiving.  These, the two poor stepchildren of Shostakovich's symphonic oeuvre, which the composer himself essentially disowned, have never received more persuasive performances than on this 1968 release conducted by Morton Gould.  They have seldom been recorded at all, except in complete cycles of Shostakovich's symphonies (on the other hand, these are the only Shostakovich symphonies Gould recorded), and most of these recordings seem to take the attitude that, yes, this music is junk, but these symphonies are part of one of the most important 20th-century cycles and therefore can't be ignored, so let's make the music sound more important than it is and hope nobody notices.  A fatal approach, if you ask me.  Gould, a fine composer of much fun music himself, understood that the way to make this music come off was to have fun with it.  After all, Shostakovich was a young man in his early 20s when he wrote it, and in the relatively carefree days before Stalin put his stranglehold over all the arts, nose-thumbing was an essential part of Shostakovich's musical nature.  Even the ridiculous words are an object of fun for Gould's chorus - just listen to the way they belt out the final line of the Second Symphony - "October, Communism, and LEHHHHHHH-NIN!"

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 2, Op. 14 ("To October") and
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 3, Op. 20 ("May Day")
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Morton Gould
Issued in 1968
RCA Red Seal LSC-3044, one stereo LP record
Link (FLAC file [Symphony No. 2], 104.22 MB)
Link (FLAC file [Symphony No. 3], 156.68 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 73.41 MB)

If anyone knows recording details for this release, I would certainly like to hear about it.

Shostakovich by the Stuyvesant String Quartet

The Stuyvesant String Quartet as pictured for their recording of the Shostakovich Quartet, Op. 49

This is the second of two posts dealing with the Stuyvesant String Quartet, and presents them in two works by Shostakovich, one of them recorded only a week after the American première of the work by the same artists.  This was the Piano Quintet, Op. 57, which Shostakovich had written the year before, and played the first performance with the Beethoven Quartet in November, 1940.  Here the pianist is Vivian Rivkin, the wife of conductor Dean Dixon:

Shostakovich: Quintet for Piano and Strings, Op. 57
Vivian Rivkin, piano, with the Stuyvesant String Quartet
Recorded May 7 and 8, 1941
Columbia Masterworks set MM-483, four 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 72.85 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 33.42 MB)

As I mentioned in the previous post, the Stuyvesant Quartet, founded in 1938 by the Shulman brothers, Sylvan (first violinist) and Alan (cellist), had varying inner voices during its first five or six years of existence.  On the Shostakovich Quintet, these are Harry Glickman (second violin) and Louis Kievman (viola).  For the next recording, made the day before the Petrillo recording ban took effect, these had changed to Maurice Wilk (second violin) and Emanuel Vardi (viola):

Shostakovich: Quartet No. 1, Op. 49
The Stuyvesant String Quartet
Recorded July 30, 1942
Columbia Masterworks set MX-231, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 33.45 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 17.13 MB)

At the time of this recording, Shostakovich had written only one string quartet.  This wasn't the first recording of it, but the previous one, by the York Quartet, was already out of print by the time the Stuyvesant's appeared, having been issued on the fly-by-night Royale label.

Before founding the Stuyvesant Quartet, Sylvan and Alan Shulman played in the Kreiner Quartet, founded in 1935 by the violist, Edward Kriener.  This group, with Josef Gingold as its second violinist, made a handful of recordings, including this first recording of Malipiero's "Rispetti e Strambotti", a work that would later become a specialty of the Stuyvesant String Quartet:

Malipiero: Rispetti e Strambotti (String Quartet No. 1) and
Beryl Rubinstein: Passepied
The Kreiner Quartet
Recorded June 7, July 19 and August 14, 1937
Victor Musical Masterpiece set DM-397, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 63.65 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 38.26 MB)

These uploads complete the "reissue" program I have been working on for the last two or three months; I originally offered these recordings in 2008.

Shostakovich: First Piano Concerto

Here is the first recording of Shostakovich's First Piano Concerto, for piano, trumpet and strings.  It's played with panache by the Australian pianist Eileen Joyce (1908-1991), accompanied by the Hallé Orchestra (with principal trumpeter Arthur Lockwood) under the tragically short-lived Leslie Heward (1897-1943).  This recording was actually presented about a month ago by Tin Ear at The Music Parlour, as part of a series of Leslie Heward recordings, but that derived from a 1985 LP transfer, whereas mine is from the actual 78s (American pressings of British matrices), so I hope Tin Ear will forgive my encroachment upon his territory.  Besides, with my transfer you also get the filler side, a solo piano recording by Eileen Joyce of two Scriabin preludes.  And it gives me an excuse to present another Steinweiss cover:

This is the third copy of MM-527 that I have owned; the first I acquired on a hot summer day in 1976, when I was thirteen.  I was strolling the streets of downtown Decatur, Ga., probably going from the library to catch the bus home, when I spied a new used-bookshop called Cantrell's Books and Things at 112 E. Ponce de Leon Avenue (now the site of a folk art gallery intriguingly called "Wild Oats and Billy Goats").  Going in, I found that among the "things" were one wall lined with 78-rpm classical sets going for 50 cents per disc.  I had about four and a half dollars on me, so I bought as much as I could afford, namely, two sets: one was Beethoven's Op. 132 quartet played by the Budapest Quartet (Columbia MM-545) and the other was this Shostakovich piano concerto recording.  I had recently discovered Shostakovich and knew several of the symphonies but none of the concertos.  I loved Op. 35 on first hearing; it is still one of my favorite Shostakovich works, and this is still my favorite recording of it.

Shostakovich: Piano Concerto No. 1 in C minor, Op. 35 (+ 2 Scriabin Preludes)
Eileen Joyce, piano; Arthur Lockwood, trumpet;
Hallé Orchestra conducted by Leslie Heward
Recorded October 24, 1941
Columbia Masterworks MM-527, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 56.81 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 28.63 MB)

Another record by Miss Joyce is this one of two Beethoven bagatelles, including the ever-popular "Für Elise":

Beethoven: Bagatelle in C, Op. 33, No. 2 and "Für Elise"
Eileen Joyce, piano
Recorded May, 1940
English Columbia DX 974, one 78-rpm record
Link (FLAC files, 15.32 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 7.2 MB)

And from Leslie Heward, two recordings that I uploaded previously, of Haydn and Mozart, which are still available:

Haydn: Symphony No. 103 in E-Flat ("Drum Roll")
Mozart: Adagio and Fugue in C minor, K. 546
Hallé Orchestra conducted by Leslie Heward
Recorded September 29 and 25, 1941
Columbia Masterworks MM-547, three 78-rpm records
English Columbia DX 1056, one 78-rpm record
Link (FLAC files, 82.75 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 34.94 MB)

Happy Birthday, Dmitri Shostakovich!

One of my all-time favorite composers, Dmitri Shostakovich, was born 104 years ago this Saturday, on September 25, 1906.  To celebrate, I present two early recordings of his music, including one that might very well be the earliest.  This is of two excerpts from his 1929 ballet, "The Golden Age" - the Polka and Russian Dance.  It was recorded in the early 1930's for Pathé (issued by Columbia in the US and Britain) by the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris under Julius Ehrlich - the exact recording date is unknown.  The other contender for the title of "First Shostakovich Recording" would be Stokowski's November 1933 account of the First Symphony, with the Philadelphia Orchestra, which has been reissued on CD by Pearl.  Both recordings were reviewed in the September 1934 issue of Gramophone Magazine, which I would love to be able to link to, but, maddeningly, this review does not appear to have been scanned into Gramophone's archive, nor do PDF scans of the actual pages appear to be downloadable as in the past.  (Fortunately, about a year ago, I did get to download PDF scans of a number of Columbia ads from the magazine, including one that advertises this Ehrlich recording, and have included it in the ZIP file at the link below.)  The record of "Golden Age" excerpts was one of a pair designed to show how "far-out" the music from Bolshevik Russia had become.  The other record features orchestral music that graphically illustrates the noise made by machinery - Mossolov's "Steel Foundry" and Meytuss' "Dnieper Water Power Station."  The whole package was called, in its American release, "Strange Music of the Modern Russian School" - a hilarious title, I think!  Here are the links for this set:

"Modern Russian Music"
Orchestre Symphonique de Paris conducted by Julius Ehrlich
Columbia Masterworks set M-347, two 10-inch 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 27.12 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 12.81 MB)

The other Shostakovich recording I present is of the Ninth Symphony of 1945, for me one of the most delightful of his fifteen symphonies.  This is only the second recording made of it, by the New York Philharmonic (or, as it was called in those days, the "Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York") conducted by Russian-born Efrem Kurtz (1900-1995).  It's a fine one, marred only by the extremely slow tempo that he takes for the second movement, probably resulting from an incorrect metronome marking in the earliest scores of the symphony published in America.  It was released at the same time as the first recording, by Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony (currently available on a Biddulph CD).  I've also included, as a bonus, a transfer of a single record by Kurtz and the New York Philharmonic, of a Shostakovich Waltz and a Prokofiev March:

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 9, Op. 70; Waltz from "The Golden Mountains"
Prokofiev: March, Op. 99*
Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York conducted by Efrem Kurtz
Recorded April 8, 1947, and *April 20, 1946
Columbia Masterworks set MM-688, four 78-rpm records and
Columbia Masterworks 12881-D, one 78-rpm record
Link (FLAC files, 82.33 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 41.48 MB)

Below I reproduce the cover art for the 78-rpm album of the Shostakovich Ninth (thanks to Buster, Joe and others for the advice on how to do scans of large record covers!).  It's by the inimitable Alex Steinweiss, Columbia's art director during the 40s.  Note the stick figures in the background: there are nine of them, to match the fact that it's a "Symphony No. 9" - a typical Steinweissism.