Walton: Sinfonia Concertante

Sacheverell, Edith, and Osbert Sitwell

A piano concerto in all but name, William Walton's delightful Sinfonia Concertante (the first of Walton's four concertos) had its genesis in a ballet written in 1925-26 for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballet russes, but after the great impresario rejected it, Walton decided to turn the score into something more practical. The result was this three-movement concerto, unveiled in 1928 with each movement bearing a dedication to one of the Sitwell siblings, his friends and patrons - the first to Osbert, the second to Edith, and the third to Sacheverell. (One can hear Sachie's fondness for the music of Scarlatti reflected in "his" movement.) In 1943 Walton revisited the piece, simplifying the piano part, and, as his relationship with the Sitwells had cooled, he removed the dedications; I knew nothing of them until I began researching for this post, and I have enjoyed this work for thirty years! Shortly thereafter, the Sinfonia Concertante received this first recording:

Walton: Sinfonia Concertante (1927, rev. 1943)
Phyllis Sellick, piano
City of Birmingham Orchestra conducted by William Walton
Recorded August 8, 1945

and

Walton: Henry V (film music, 1944) - Two Pieces for Strings
(Death of Falstaff; Touch her soft lips and part)
Philharmonia String Orchestra conducted by William Walton
Recorded October 12, 1945

HMV C 7635 through C 7637, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 58.28 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 37.07 MB)

The pieces from "Henry V" used as the filler for this set were recorded as part of a session, 68 years ago tomorrow, that Walton shared with his friend Constant Lambert, whose ballet "Romeo and Juliet" was the first English ballet presented by Diaghilev, and who thus inspired, indirectly, the Sinfonia Concertante. Lambert's contribution to the session produced several short pieces for Columbia, including a Purcell Chaconne.

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.

Constant Lambert conducts Alan Rawsthorne

Alan Rawsthorne

Constant Lambert and Alan Rawsthorne, who were friends and drinking companions, shared not only the same year of birth (1905) but also a passion for cats and fish, and even the same wife!  (Not at the same time, of course.  Lambert died 20 years before Rawsthorne, who then married his widow, the painter Isabel Nicholas.)  It probably did no harm to their friendship that their compositional styles were utterly dissimilar.  Rawsthorne's music sounds to me like a kind of English Hindemith, neoclassical and a little dry at times, while Lambert's (to judge from the two works I know, "The Rio Grande" and the Piano Concerto) seems more like an English Gershwin.  Certainly Lambert the conductor was a persuasive advocate for the music of his friend, and he in fact made the first recordings of any of Rawsthorne's orchestral works, which I present here:

Rawsthorne: Symphonic Studies (1939) and
Rawsthorne: "Street Corner" Overture (1944)
Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Constant Lambert
Recorded March 28 and 29, 1946
HMV C 3542 through 3544, and C 3502, four 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 69.36 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 29.7 MB)

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!

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)

Constant Lambert Conducts

This week I present several rare recordings by Constant Lambert (1905-1951), conductor, composer, raconteur, writer and wit.  As a conductor, he was renowned for his interpretations of Russian and English music, and both are featured in these downloads.  From Russia we get Lambert's brilliant and exciting interpretations of two tone poems, Tchaikovsky's Hamlet and Glazunov's Stenka Razin, and from England the Purcell Chaconne in G minor in a string orchestra arrangment.  (This is not the famous Purcell Chacony, as the first volume of the World's Encyclopedia of Music erroneously states - but an arrangement of No. 6 of the Ten Sonatas in Four Parts, which is also in G minor and also in the form of a chaconne.)  These three different recordings feature three different orchestras, and in fact the Glazunov was the first appearance of the Liverpool Philharmonic on records.  Here are the details:

Tchaikovsky: Hamlet - Overture-Fantasia, Op. 67
Hallé Orchestra conducted by Constant Lambert
Recorded October 9, 1942
Columbia Masterworks set MX-243, 2 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC file, 43.11 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 22.31 MB)

Glazunov: Stenka Razin - Symphonic Poem, Op. 13
Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Constant Lambert
Recorded December 22, 1942 and January 12, 1943
English Columbia DX 1107 and DX 1108, 2 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC file, 35.87 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 16.24 MB)

Purcell, arr. Whittaker: Chaconne in G minor, Z. 807
Philharmonia String Orchestra conducted by Constant Lambert
Recorded October 12, 1945
English Columbia DX 1230, 1 78-rpm record
Link (FLAC file, 22.15 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 8.98 MB)

Back in 2008 I uploaded another Constant Lambert recording, in tandem with one by Walter Goehr, as both featured orchestral works of Bizet in their first recordings.  These have been re-uploaded; the details:

Bizet: Carnival (from "Roma" Suite)
Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Constant Lambert
Recorded October 29, 1943
English Columbia DX 1136, 1 78-rpm record
Link (FLAC file, 17.37 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 6.63 MB)

Bizet: Symphony in C Major (+ Danse Bohemienne from "Fair Maid of Perth")
London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Walter Goehr
Recorded November 26, 1937
Victor Musical Masterpiece Set DM-721, 4 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 67.45 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 32.23 MB)

Gladys Ripley sings "Sea Pictures"

This post features the British contralto Gladys Ripley (1908-1955), a beautiful woman with a beautiful voice, whose life, sadly, was cut short by throat cancer at the age of 47 (the age I am now!).  Here she sings Elgar's fine orchestral song cycle, "Sea Pictures" (composed in 1897-99) with, as a filler, a surprisingly gloomy song by Haydn, "The Spirit's Song" ("Hark! Hark what I tell to thee").  This 1946 recording features the collaboration of that greatly underrated conductor, George Weldon (1908-1963), who conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra.

Elgar: Sea Pictures, Op. 37 (+ Haydn: The Spirit's Song)
Gladys Ripley, contralto
Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by George Weldon
Recorded May 28, 1946
HMV C 3498 through C 3500, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 63.46 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 32.17 MB)

I have up several other George Weldon recordings with the orchestra of which he was Music Director from 1944 to 1951, the City of Birmingham Orchestra.  (That's Birmingham, England, of course - not Birmingham, Alabama! Those of us here in the Southern US have to be reminded of that periodically.)  The first of these is a new offering, and the others are re-uploads of transfers I made over three years ago; however, the Dvořák symphony upload now contains scans of the booklet for the set that I was unable to provide earlier.  Here are the details:

Sibelius: King Christian II Suite - Elegie and Musette
City of Birmingham Orchestra, conducted by George Weldon
Recorded March 22, 1945
Columbia DX 1220, one 78-rpm record
Link (FLAC files, 18.53 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 7.76 MB)

Edward German: Welsh Rhapsody
City of Birmingham Orchestra, conducted by George Weldon
Recorded April 16, 1945
Columbia DX 1274 and 1275, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC file, 43.43 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 19.7 MB)

Dvořák: Symphony No. 5 in F, Op. 76, and
Glinka: Ruslan and Ludmilla - Overture
City of Birmingham Orchestra, conducted by George Weldon
Recorded June 25-27, 1945 (Dvořák) and June 7, 1946 (Glinka)
Columbia DX 1315 through 1319, five 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 105.57 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 48.23 MB)

For those interested in reading further about George Weldon, there's a free downloadable biography (in PDF format) available here.