Bruckner: String Quintet (Prisca Quartet)

Anton Bruckner

I'm afraid I'm a little late to the party, but last week (Sept. 4) saw the 188th anniversary of the birth of Anton Bruckner (1824-1896), and I guess it's better late than never.  So in his honor, I present the première recording of his finest chamber work, the String Quintet in F, which falls chronologically between the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies.  This features the Cologne-based Prisca Quartet, named after its leader, Walter Schulze-Prisca - whose name originally appears to have been simply Walter Schulze, but he took his wife's last name, Prisca, when he married her!  The playing sounds quite old-fashioned even by the standards of its time, and it may well be the slowest version of the Quintet on record.  (If the Scherzo weren't cut, it would be easier to make a comparison.)  Hans Roelofs, in his excellent Bruckner discography devoted to the composer's non-symphonic music, considers this recording to be of documentary interest only.  But this could be the closest we can come to hearing Bruckner's music as Bruckner himself would have heard it, and it's worth noting that Schulze-Prisca was born the same year, 1879, as this Quintet was written.  Judge for yourself:

Bruckner: String Quintet in F Major (1879) and
Haydn: Serenade (from Quartet in F, Op. 3, No. 5)
Prisca Quartet with Siegfried Meincke, viola
Recorded December 29-30, 1937
Decca-Polydor X 220 through X 225, six 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 135.05 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 54.9 MB)

During the 1930s, the Prisca Quartet recorded several sets for Deutsche Grammophon-Polydor.  Besides this Bruckner quintet, there were three Mozart quartets (one of which is available from Pristine Audio), and quartets by Beethoven, Haydn, Schubert and Verdi.  Oddly, all but the Haydn and Bruckner were released on ten-inch discs!

Ormandy's Beethoven Ninth

Cover design by Alex Steinweiss

Here's another treat for you Ormandy fans out there - the first of his two recordings of the Beethoven Choral Symphony, recorded only two weeks after V-E Day in 1945 (incidentally, at the same time as the Prokofiev Alexander Nevsky Cantata I uploaded earlier).  It features the Westminster Choir, directed by John Finlay Williamson, and soloists Stella Roman, Enid Szantho, Frederick Jagel, and Nicola Moscona.  This recording boasts two "firsts" - it was the first commercially-available recording of the Ninth made outside of a German-speaking country to have the vocal portions sung in the original German, and it was the first available on LP (in 1949).  It's also one of the few 78-era recordings to take the second repeat in the Scherzo - the only others I'm aware of are the two by Albert Coates (acoustical and electrical).

Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125
Soloists, Westminster Choir and Philadelphia Orchestra
Conducted by Eugene Ormandy
Recorded May 20 and 21, 1945
Columbia Masterworks set MM-591, eight 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 147.71 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 80.87 MB)

This is one of the few Columbia 78 sets to circulate with two distinct Steinweiss covers.  The other one looked like this:

(Please excuse the poor scan; it was lifted from an eBay ad.)  I suspect that this graphic illustration of "alle Menschen werden Brüder" was thought too hot to handle in some markets, although I once had a copy of the set with this cover, and the price sticker inside revealed that it had originally been purchased at Rich's Department Store - in Atlanta!

UPDATE (July 3, 2017): Since writing the above, I've found one source that seems to indicate that the blue cover was actually a replacement for the pink cover - see this article called "Beethoven in a Pink Cloud" in the Saturday Review of Literature (October 30, 1948).

Happy Birthday, Lenny!

Leonard Bernstein, 1944

Saturday marks the birthday of that phenomenon, Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990), and, to celebrate, I offer his first recording as a conductor.  Not, however, the first one offered to the public.  This recording of his ever-fresh ballet, Fancy Free, was made in June, 1944, for Decca - during the period when Victor and Columbia were unable to make recordings because of the Petrillo ban.  But it wasn't released until 1946, because it apparently took Decca that long to secure the definitive performance needed for the set's filler, that of Billie Holiday singing Bernstein's song "Big Stuff" (on which the ballet's Pas de deux section is based), with her lover at the time, Joe Guy, on trumpet.  In the meantime Lenny had switched his allegiance to Victor, which recorded and released two sets in 1945, both of his own music: a set of excerpts from On the Town (with Robert Shaw leading the chorus) and the Jeremiah Symphony (with the St. Louis Symphony).  I do not, alas, have these, but here is the Decca set:

Bernstein: Fancy Free - Ballet Music
Ballet Theatre Orchestra conducted by Leonard Bernstein
Recorded June 2, 1944
and
Bernstein: Big Stuff
Billie Holiday with Joe Guy (trumpet) and Rhythm Section
Recorded March 13, 1946
Decca set A-406, four 10-inch 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 67.79 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 28.05 MB)

Cover image, restored by Peter Joelson

Jack Benny Fiddles With the Classics

Sheer fun this week, as I present a children's album by that still much-beloved American comedian, Jack Benny (1894-1974).  Ostensibly a recording designed to introduce kids to the glories of the classical violin literature (excellently played by his friend Issac Stern), in Jack's hands it becomes a delightful story showcasing many of the facets of his on-air persona - his vanity, his bad violin playing; even his catchphrase "Well!!!" is worked in.  The record also features spoken contributions from his wife, Mary Livingstone, and the ever-dependable Mel Blanc.  Note also the delightful underscore by Billy May which accompanies the story portions, which seems to work in everything from Jack's trademark Kreutzer etude and Paderewski's Minuet in G, to "Hooray for Hollywood."  I have owned and loved this LP since my college days, when I purchased it from a local used record shop (my apologies for the nasty "cut-out" snip in the scan above, but that's how it was when I bought it!).  The album is a 1978 reissue of a 1956 release originally titled "Jack Benny Plays The Bee, Ably Assisted by Issac Stern":

"Jack Benny Fiddles With the Classics"
Jack Benny, Mary Livingstone, Mel Blanc, speakers
Issac Stern, violin, with orchestra conducted by Izler Solomon
Incidental Music composed and conducted by Billy May
Capitol Special Markets L-8108, one 12-inch LP record
Link (FLAC file, 95.93 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 46.6 MB)

That Jack Benny actually could play the violin quite well, when he wanted to, is proven by this YouTube posting of an excerpt from a 1961 concert in Carnegie Hall, where he plays the first movement of the Bach Double Concerto with Issac Stern (and Eugene Ormandy conducting):

YouTube link

Sor: Grand Sonata, Op. 22 (Oyanguren)

Julio Martinez Oyanguren

Born and trained in Uruguay, Julio Martinez Oyanguren (1901-1973) seems to have been the only classical guitarist besides the great Andrés Segovia whose recordings were sold at premium prices in the USA.  (A mere handful of Segovia's HMV recordings were released here on Victor Red Seal.)  During 1936-37 Oyanguren made a number of recordings for Columbia in New York: 22 sides were released in the Masterworks line, all of which were deleted during the Second World War.  All of them were of short pieces except this one set:

Sor: Grand Sonata in C Major, Op. 22
Julio Martinez Oyanguren, guitar
Recorded July 29 and 30, 1937
Columbia Masterworks set X-84, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 39.58 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 21.23 MB)

The work itself, a charming one, is the third of four sonatas by the Catalan guitarist and composer Fernando Sor (1778-1839), and the first of two "grand sonatas" - the adjective apparently being used to denote a multi-movement work, as the two earlier sonatas are single-movement ones.  It was published in Paris in the mid-1820s, though possibly dates from earlier.

Double Tippett for Double String Orchestra

Michael Tippett

What could be a better accompaniment to the 2012 Olympics than that most athletic-sounding work by an Englishman (at least in its outer movements!), the Concerto for Double String Orchestra of Michael Tippett (1905-1998)?  And so I present not only the first, but also the second, recording of this piece, both, as it happens, conducted by the same man, Walter Goehr (1903-1960):

Tippett: Concerto for Double String Orchestra (1939)
String Orchestra conducted by Walter Goehr
Recorded in the summer of 1943
Schott & Co. (unnumbered), three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 54.97 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 25.25 MB)

Tippett: Concerto for Double String Orchestra (1939)
Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Walter Goehr
Recorded March 3, 1952
HMV C 7926 through C 7928, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 58.28 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 26.15 MB)

The two recordings make for a fascinating comparison.  The first one, made while Tippett was incarcerated for being a conscientious objector during the Second World War, is lean and brisk, with a quite small string body; the second one is richer in sound and broader in tempo, especially in the slow movement, which clocks in at over a minute longer than the earlier recording.  The 1943 set, which was recorded at an independent London studio (Levy's), was sold on subscription for a hefty price (42 shillings - about $8.50 at the 1945 rate of exchange).  The 1952 set was one of the last 78 sets to be issued by HMV before the advent of LP, and in fact, was reissued on LP when the 78s were withdrawn, coupled with the Rawsthorne Symphonic Studies conducted by Constant Lambert that I uploaded earlier this year.

Brahms by the Léner Quartet

The Léner String Quartet

The Léner String Quartet of Budapest were famed, in the 1920s, for being the first string quartet to record the complete quartets of Beethoven.  A less ambitious undertaking, perhaps, but no less noteworthy, was their being the first to record the complete quartets of Brahms, in marvelously idiomatic performances, of which this is a sample:

Brahms: Quartet No. 2 in A minor, Op. 51, No. 2
The Léner String Quartet
Recorded August 11 and 13, 1931
Columbia Masterworks Set No. 173, four 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 81.16 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 36.62 MB)

They actually recorded this particular quartet twice, the above recording replacing an acoustical version of 1925.  It was my intention to bring you this earlier recording when I purchased this set, which was advertised in a mail order catalogue as Columbia Set 35 (the last acoustical set issued in the USA by Columbia).  When I received the package, the album cover was indeed that for Set No. 35, but imagine my consternation upon unwrapping the actual records, to discover Royal Blue shellac pressings with "Electrical Process" on the labels!

My guess is that the store which sold this set in the 1930s had stocked Set No. 35 for years without selling it, then when Set No. 173 was released as its replacement, the distributor offered the new discs in exchange for the old ones, without the store's having to return the album as well, and therefore the new discs were sold housed in the old album.  This is something that could have happened with a number of Léner Quartet sets, so I suppose the lesson to be learned here is that I shouldn't buy any more of their purported "acoustic" sets based on the set number only, that I should instead insist on being quoted the actual disc numbers; if they are indeed acoustical they will be below 67200-D.  I guess I shouldn't gripe too much, because this is a beautiful performance of a great quartet, but I doubt that I would have paid $50 for it, particularly as it, unlike the acoustical version, has been reissued before, long out-of-print though it may be....

Two by Eric Coates

Eric Coates

Fred over at Random Classics recently gave us the London Suite by the "uncrowned king of British light music" (to use Peter Dempsey's phrase from a Naxos reissue), Eric Coates (1886-1957), as conducted by a veteran of American light music, Morton Gould.  I answer with its sequel, conducted, as were many recordings of his music during his lifetime, by the composer himself:

Eric Coates: London Again - Suite (1936) and By the Tamarisk (Intermezzo)
Symphony Orchestra conducted by Eric Coates
Recorded April 30 and May 1, 1936
Columbia Masterworks set MX-102, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 43.57 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 22.59 MB)

American Columbia had quite a few recordings by Eric Coates on its catalogue, as he was then very popular over here, but only two of them made it into the Masterworks album set series (the other was the "Cinderella" Fantasy).  When I was a boy of eleven, I owned (but alas, no longer own) an American Columbia coupling of Coates conducting his magnificent London Bridge and Knightsbridge marches (the latter being a movement from the original London Suite), and I have loved his music, with its sense of everything being right in the world, ever since.

During the 1940s, Coates switched his recording allegiance from EMI to Decca, and one of his first productions for that label was a recording of his 1944 suite, The Three Elizabeths, which boasts another wonderful march that honors the then-18-year-old Princess Elizabeth, the current Queen:

Eric Coates: The Three Elizabeths - Suite (1944)
National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Eric Coates
Recorded November 15, 1944
English Decca AK 1109 and AK 1110, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC file, 46.36 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 24.77 MB)

This, by the way, is not the same recording as one that Fred offered last year, on a London LP coupled with Coates' Four Centuries Suite.  That recording is a remake, dating from the early 1950s.  This set was among the first English Decca "ffrr" records imported into the US after the war, and sold in special (US-made) albums, in this case with a catalogue number of EDA-8:

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."