Bill Gale - Let's Polka!

Cover design by Alex Steinweiss

"Who can resist the twinkling two-four tempo of the Polka?" So begin the liner notes for this album. Who indeed, especially when they are as well-played as here? More's the pity, that I can find out so little about the artist who presents these specimens of the dance. All I can establish with certainty is that his real name was Wasyl Gula, of Ukrainian ethnicity (that beleaguered country of late), that he fronted a number of different polka bands throughout his career, both under his birth name and under his Americanized name as Bill Gale, and that he also composed quite a number of polkas (including two in this album). The band here contains not only the expected accordions and clarinets, but also some surprising instruments like slide whistle and xylophone (quite startling it is to hear the latter instrument break into a virtuoso riff in the middle of Smetana's "Bartered Bride" Polka!). Irresistible, too, is the inspired silliness of the "Laugh Polka," and the nautical overtones of the "Goofy Gob" Polka (one of Mr. Gale's own). Here are the particulars of the set:

Let's Polka
Bill Gale and his Music Makers
1. Clarinet Polka
2. Smetana: Bartered Bride - Polka
3. Bell Polka
4. Laugh Polka
5. Helena Polka
6. Goofy Gob Polka
7. Beer Barrel Polka ("Roll Out the Barrel")
8. Gypsy Polka
Recorded March 25, 1941
Columbia set C-56, four 10-inch 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 71.31 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 39.46 MB)

Sibelius: Symphonies Nos. 4 and 5 (Ormandy)

Cover design by Stanley Harris

More music from Scandinavia, but of much more mainstream repertoire than in my last post! This fine recording of two Sibelius symphonies was issued in commemoration of the composer's 90th birthday, and it remained in the catalog for over 20 years - it's still listed in the Schwann 2 Fall and Winter 1975-76 edition, albeit as a Columbia Special Products release.  It's Ormandy's first recording of both works; he would re-record them for RCA in the 1970s.  (Ormandy had a special relationship with Sibelius; a touching reminiscence by the conductor can be read here.)

Sibelius: Symphony No. 4 in A Minor, Op. 63 and
Sibelius: Symphony No. 5 in E-Flat Major, Op. 82
Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy
Recorded November 28 and December 19, 1954
Columbia Masterworks ML-5045, one LP record
Link (FLAC files, 153.28 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 97.97 MB)

The cover pictured above is the original one for ML-5045, and was also used for the Philips release in Europe.  Two or three years later, the LP was reissued with this rather innocuous cover, for reasons that are unclear to me (image borrowed from www.discogs.com):

Niels Viggo Bentzon: Chamber Concerto

Niels Viggo Bentzon, 1986

Sometimes called "the wild man of Danish music," Niels Viggo Bentzon (1919-2000) was certainly wildly prolific - 664 opus numbers!  Of these, I've heard about one percent, and have found this Chamber Concerto of 1948 to be particularly vital.  Essentially a triple piano concerto with chamber accompaniment (the scoring, besides the pianos, is for clarinet, bassoon, two trumpets, double bass, timpani, snare drum and triangle), it features two fast movements filled with Hindemithian neo-Baroque bustle flanking a long slow movement which may owe more to Bartók with its arabesques and arpeggios; however, with its steady, procession-like tread I'm reminded more of Falla's harpsichord concerto.  Maybe the overall structure of the concerto and its chamber scoring reinforces this impression.  In any case, the piece is great fun, and it's played here by the composer with two pianistic colleagues, and the group to whom it was dedicated:

Bentzon: Chamber Concerto for 11 Instruments, Op. 52
Niels Viggo Bentzon, Georg Vásárhelyi and Herman D. Koppel, pianos
Copenhagen Collegium Musicum conducted by Lavard Friisholm
Recorded February 16, 1951
HMV Z 7036 and 7037, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 41.27 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 27.32 MB)

A word about Bentzon's two fellow pianists on this recording: Georg Vásárhelyi (1912-2002) was a Hungarian who studied with Bartók and Edwin Fischer before settling in Denmark, where he taught generations of piano students, including Bentzon.  Herman D. Koppel (1908-1998) was a Copenhagen-born pianist and composer, who, as a young man, had performed Carl Nielsen's piano music in the presence of the composer.

Chopin: Rondo, Op. 73 (Bartlett and Robertson)

Of the 32 issued sides recorded for American Columbia by duo-pianists Ethel Bartlett and Rae Robertson between 1940 and 1945, the two comprising this disc may well be the rarest, for they are the only two such sides by the duo not listed in the 1949 Columbia Catalog, nor does there appear to have been any other issue of them.  The piece thus honored, if you can call it that, is this charming Rondo by Chopin, one of five free-standing works he was to write in this form, and his only work for two pianos to be graced with an opus number (posthumously given, as it is early, dating from 1828):

Chopin: Rondo in C Major for Two Pianos, Op. 73
Ethel Bartlett and Rae Robertson, pianos
Recorded January 29, 1941
Columbia 71190-D, one 78-rpm record
Link (FLAC file, 17.72 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 13.62 MB)

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)

Mozart: Divertimento, K. 563 (Pasquier Trio)

The Pasquier Trio

The string trio repertoire is not large, but it is rich - and made richer by the efforts of the Pasquier Trio, three brothers (Jean, violin; Pierre, viola; Étienne, cello) for whom such composers as Pierné, Roussel, Moeran and Françaix wrote string trios.  The cornerstone of this repertoire is surely Mozart's wonderful Divertimento in E-Flat, K. 563.  Who but Mozart, whose birthday we will be celebrating on January 27, could compose the greatest work ever written for the combination of violin, viola and cello, pouring the most profound of his ideas into it, and then modestly call the result a "divertimento"?  Here is the work's first recording, and the first of three the Pasquier brothers would make:

Mozart: Divertimento in E-Flat, K. 563, for string trio
The Pasquier Trio
Recorded June 26-27, 1935
Columbia Masterworks set AM-351, five 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 107.13 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 66.49 MB)

This transfer is taken from a very nice early pressing of the American Columbia set, which has sustained a little wear (those early automatic changers did no favors for the spindle holes, I'm afraid), so I was surprised and pleased by how well the result sounds.

Hindemith by the Los Angeles Wind Quintet

Good things come in small packages, goes the old cliché, and it's certainly true in this case.  Hindemith's delightful wind quintet, "Kleine Kammermusik" - the second part of an opus that also includes the first of his seven chamber concertos under the collective title of "Kammermusik" - may be small in size but it's big in entertainment value.  It's played here by a quintet of Hollywood studio musicians consisting of Haakon Bergh, flute; Gordon Pope, oboe; D. H. McKenney, clarinet; Don Christlieb, bassoon; and Jack Cave, horn.  The two players whose dates I have been able to trace online (Bergh and Christlieb) were both young men in their twenties when this recording was made, and I imagine the others were similarly young, for they are fully in sympathy with Hindemith's idiom:

Hindemith: Kleine Kammermusik, Op. 24, No. 2
The Los Angeles Wind Quintet
Recorded c. 1939
Columbia Masterworks set MX-149, two 10-inch 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC file, 32.88 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 22.40 MB)

Incredibly, this is not the first recording of the piece; an earlier one was made acoustically by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Wind Quintet for Deutsche Grammophon-Polydor.  This, I expect, is ultra rare, and I hope to hear it someday before I die, although I cannot imagine it would be as fine as this Los Angeles performance.

Nielsen: Symphony No. 6 (Thomas Jensen)

Cover design by George Maas

The symphonies of Carl Nielsen have, over the past fifty years or so, entered the international concert repertory, thanks in part to the advocacy of conductors with international reputations like Barbirolli, Bernstein and Herbert Blomstedt.  Sixty years ago, however, this wasn't the case; it seems that only Danish conductors and Danish orchestras were recording them.  But what recordings!  There is an intensity and commitment about them that later recordings, for all their relative polish, can't quite match.  The first conductor to record a Nielsen symphony was Thomas Jensen (1898-1963) - the Second, in 1944, for HMV.  Jensen had studied music theory with the composer, and played the cello under his baton.  Here he is leading that Cinderella of the Nielsen symphonic canon, the wonderfully wacky, anything-but-simple Sinfonia Semplice, in its first recording:

Nielsen: Symphony No. 6 ("Sinfonia Semplice")
Danish State Radio Orchestra conducted by Thomas Jensen
Recorded June 17-19, 1952
Mercury MG-10137, one LP record
Link (FLAC files, 80.34 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 55.77 MB)

Franck: Quartet in D (Virtuoso String Quartet)

In the next (February 2014) newsletter of the 78rpm Community, I have a discography of the Virtuoso String Quartet slated to appear.  In tandem with this, I present their most ambitious recording, the first ever made of Franck's wonderful String Quartet.  This is already available at CHARM, as I have said before, but interest was expressed in my transfer, and there's one thing you will get from my download that CHARM doesn't have - the original liner notes!  These contain a reasonably good analysis of the piece, written by someone whose initials were "P.M.S.L.", and they also contain, at the end, a pat on the back for HMV's recording department - something Victor often did in their early liner notes, but it's surprising to see this from their staid English counterpart.  This was, in fact, one of HMV's last acoustical recordings, made over five sessions in 1925 just before they signed on to use Western Electric's system of electrical recording in May, and it remained in their catalogue longer than most of their acoustically recorded sets - until 1934, when it was replaced by the Quatour Pro Arte's version of the same work:

Franck: String Quartet in D Major
The Virtuoso String Quartet (Hayward-Virgo-Jeremy-Sharpe)
Recorded January 14 to April 20, 1925
HMV D 1006 through D 1011, six 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 149.02 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 74.09 MB)

This is, for me, as fine a recording of the Franck quartet as any since, although it must be admitted that there aren't that many to choose from, at least from the pre-digital era.  Indeed, during the 1970s, the work was completely absent from the Schwann Long Playing Record Catalog!  I remember how eagerly I snapped up the Fitzwilliam Quartet's L'Oiseau Lyre recording (their first project after their famed Shostakovich cycle) when it was released in the USA in 1980, for it gave me a chance to finally hear the piece.