by Peter Cates Laura Nyro Smile, Columbia AL 33912 LP ,1975. The late Laura Nyro was one very gifted singer, songwriter and pianist. A number of songs, Stoney End, Stoned Soul Picnic, Wedding Bell Blues, etc. have been covered by such artists as Barbra Streisand and the Fifth Dimension. The 1975 Smile is a sterling […]
by Peter Cates Yellow Rolls Royce/Umbrellas of Cherbourg Excerpts Cinema Sound Stage Orchestra, Somerset records, LP, 1965. The 1964 films, Yellow Rolls Royce/Umbrellas of Cherbourg generated original musical sound tracks. The above release had no connection with the originals. The Cinema players were hired by D.L.Miller, a fascinating businessman worthy of a biography while the […]
by Peter Cates Bizet Carmen excerpts Remington RLP-199-15, mono LP, recorded in 1950. Remington records was started in 1950 and stayed in business until 1957. The records themselves often had noisy surfaces; they also had very beautiful and colorful album covers, which makes them often collectible and also very expensive on different Internet sites. Finally, […]
by Peter Cates The World’s Greatest Cellists Sine Qua Non-SQN-112X, three LPs, released 1973. The set contains an assortment of truly great masterworks performed by three of the greatest practitioners of the cello. Each individual and his offering(s) will be considered: Pablo Casals (1876-1973) did more than any previous player to expand appreciation of the […]
by Peter Cates Sarah Vaughan Sings the Mancini Songbook Mercury, 61009, stereo LP, recorded 1965. This very fine album, a bringing together of one of the finest singers and composers in American music history, was a collaboration that never got the attention it truly deserved. Singer Sarah Vaughan (1924-1990) brought thorough professionalism, exquisite taste, and […]
by Peter Cates (Read part one here.) Zino Francescatti had a style of playing that was elegant, vibrantly alive and communicative and recorded an early ‘50s Columbia mono LP with Dimitri Mitropoulos and the New York Philharmonic in which this style truly shined. A late ‘50s second recording of the firebrand Jascha Heifetz paired him […]
by Peter Cates This week I am focusing on the recordings of the Violin Concerto of Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847), conceived in 1838 and completed and first performed by the composer’s concertmaster, Ferdinand David, of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, where Mendelssohn was music director from 1835 to 1847. David also proved invaluable with his advice on […]
by Peter Cates David Halberstam The Fifties Villard Press, 1993, 733 pages A maxim that underscored journalist David Halberstam’s work ethic was that being a professional meant doing the work one loved on the days one didn’t feel like doing it; this combination of passion and painstaking self-discipline resulted in roughly 22 books and countless […]
by Peter Cates Something a little different this week: Beethoven’s 5 Piano Concertos were a very significant body of work because they both consolidated the best of what the composer learned from his predecessors — Haydn, Mozart etc. – and broke new ground on the expansion of the piano’s technical possibilities and musical depths. These […]
by Peter Cates Count Basie Prime Time Pablo, CD, recorded January 18-20, 1977. Jazz pianist/bandleader Count Basie (1904 -1984) appeared in the 1943 film, Stage Door Canteen, performing with singer Ethel Waters and his orchestra and doing a captivating solo turn. I say captivating because, whenever his short , stubby fingers touched a key, he […]