The Incomparable Leon Goossens - Postscript

Leon Goossens

My Christmas present to myself this year was a new turntable - an Audio-Technica LP120 3-speed direct drive unit - meaning that it will no longer be necessary for me to switch out between turntables to handle LPs and 78s (at least, I hope it won't be!).  Here is my first project using the new table: an LP featuring two oboe concertos played by the great Leon Goossens, as a kind of postscript to the transfers of concerto recordings by him that I offered earlier:

Bach-Tovey: Concerto in A, BWV 1055, for oboe d'amore and strings
Recorded June 1, 1949, and July 30, 1952
and
Vaughan Williams: Concerto for Oboe and Strings
Recorded June 16, July 7 and September 1, 1952

Leon Goossens, with the Philharmonia String Orchestra
conducted by Walter Susskind
HMV CLP 1656, one 12-inch LP record
Link (FLAC files, 96.04 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 50.18 MB)

No doubt both of these, like the earlier Goossens concerto recordings, would have been issued as English Columbia 78 sets had not the long-delayed launch of LP by EMI in September 1952 intervened.  As it was, both recordings had to wait eleven years for full issue.  In the case of the Bach, an incomplete issue actually did occur in 1953, on American Columbia (ML 4782) - apparently only the first three 78-rpm matrices of the required four were available to CBS, with the result that the concerto, on that release, cuts off about a minute into the finale!

My best wishes to everyone for a prosperous and collectingful New Year!

The Incomparable Leon Goossens

I started this blog over a year ago with some oboe recordings (by Mitch Miller), so it seems fitting that I should return to posting uploads of vintage recordings by celebrating that supreme exponent of the instrument, Leon Goossens (1897-1988).  I present no less than eight concertos recorded by him between 1937 and 1950, three of which I have offered before (on RMCR, in 2007 - the concertos by Albinoni, Vivaldi, and Scarlatti-Bryan).  I have decided to offer these uploads in two batches, one containing Baroque oboe concertos, and the other containing 20th-century works, both original and arrangements:

Part One:
Albinoni: Concerto in D, Op. 7, No. 6
Handel: Concerto No. 1 in B-Flat
Marcello: Concerto in C minor (& Fiocco: Arioso)
Vivaldi: Concerto in D minor, Op. 8, No. 9 (& Albinoni: Allegro)
Link (FLAC files, 108.4 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 46.11 MB)

Part Two:
Cimarosa-Benjamin: Concerto (& Bach: Sinfonia from "Easter Oratorio")
Eugene Goossens: Concerto in One Movement, Op. 45
Scarlatti-Bryan: Concerto No. 1 in G (& Pierné: Aubade)
Richard Strauss: Concerto for oboe and small orchestra
Link (FLAC files, 160.97 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 70.48 MB)

The Cimarosa, Marcello and Strauss recordings have had quite a bit of currency over the years, the others perhaps somewhat less so.  The conductors include Eugene Goossens, Leon's eldest brother (in the Handel, the earliest of these recordings), Malcolm Sargent (in the Cimarosa), Alceo Galliera (in the Strauss), and Walter Susskind (in the rest).

Eugene Goossens is also heard as a conductor on the following two recordings of Baroque arrangements, which I originally uploaded in 2007:

Bach-Goossens: Suite in G (after French Suites Nos. 3 and 5)
London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Eugene Goossens
Recorded June 25, 1931
HMV C 2273, one 78-rpm record
Link (FLAC file, 23.32 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 9.58 MB)

Scarlatti-Tommasini: The Good-Humoured Ladies - Ballet Suite
London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Eugene Goossens
Recorded June 29, 1936
RCA Victor Red Seal set M-512, two 78 rpm-records
Link (FLAC file, 43.89 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 23.03 MB)

Finally, one of the earliest recordings billing Leon Goossens as a soloist - again, this is a "reissue," having been originally uploaded in 2008:

Mozart: Oboe Quartet in F, K. 370
and
Bach: Sinfonia to Cantata No. 156
Leon Goossens, oboe, and the Spencer Dyke String Quartet
Recorded in May, 1925 by English Parlophone
National Gramophonic Society Q, R, S, three 10-inch 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 44.53 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 15.79 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)