REVIEW POTPOURRI – Composer: Khachaturian; Singer: Nat King Cole; Writer: William Hazlitt

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Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Khachaturian

Khachaturian: Gayaneh Ballet Excerpts; Piano Concerto; and Masquerade Suite – Jiri Belohlavek conducting the Brno State Philharmonic Orchestra, in Gayaneh, and Masquerade; pianist Mirka Pokorna with Vladimir Valek conducting the Prague Symphony Orchestra in the Piano Concerto. Supraphon SU 3107-2011, recorded between 1972 and 1980, CD.

Khachaturian

Aram Khachaturian (1903-1978) composed some of the most colorful, captivating music in these Ballets and the Piano Concerto. The exotic rhythms and atmospheric poetry give a unique beauty to a composer who was deeply rooted in his Armenian background, his most popular piece being the Gayaneh Sabre Dance which has been used innumerable times as background for chase or fighting scenes in cartoons and for TV commercials.

Certain moody passages of the Ballets remind me of the soundtrack music that Bernard Herrmann composed for Alfred Hitchcock thrillers, such as North by Northwest, Vertigo and Psycho.

A special favorite here is the Piano Concerto with a dramatic power and beauty of its own. Pianist Mirka Pokorna negotiated its difficulties with flair while conveying its beauty and delicacy with an exquisite touch. Her Czech Republic colleagues also did superb work.

A friend from Prague told me of being inspired to take up the piano at the age of nine after hearing Pokorna in a concert and visiting with her afterwards.

Nat King Cole

Nat King Cole –  Unforgettable; Capitol T-357, released in 1954, twelve inch LP.

Nat King Cole

Pianist/singer Nat King Cole (1919-1965) once stated that he sang the way he felt and that was that. After leading a jazz trio for the better part of the ‘40s, he gradually transitioned to pop singing around 1950.

His 1954 LP Unforgettable gathers a dozen songs that are gems already, a few of them best sellers as singles.

Among the hits, the title song; Answer Me, My Love; Too Young; Red Sails in the Sunset; Pretend; and the irreplaceable Mona Lisa, which was first released as a B side.

My first encounter with this LP was at the age of 6 or 7 when I heard a copy of it owned by my grandmother Annabelle Cates (1888-1974); not only was she fond of King Cole’s singing but also that of Ray Charles.

The other six selections, Portrait of Jenny; What’ll I Do; Lost April; the vivacious Hajji Baba; the immensely lovely Great American Songbook classic I Love You for Sentimental Reasons; and finally Make Her Mine, King Cole made his own.

Due to his chain smoking for years of Kool menthols, Nat King Cole died of lung cancer in January 1965, at the very young age of 45.

This deservedly classic album can be heard via YouTube.

William Hazlitt

William Hazlitt

English essayist William Hazlitt (1778-1830) wrote the following in his On Going a Journey:

“One of the pleasantest in the world is going a journey; but I like to go by myself. I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors, nature is company enough for me. I am then never less alone than when alone.

‘The fields his study, nature was his book.’

I cannot see the wit of walking and talking at the same time. When I am in the country I wish to vegetate like the country. I am not for criticizing hedgerows and black cattle. I go out of town in order to forget the town and all that is in it.”

Although Hazlitt is considered an important figure in 19th century English romanticism and celebrated its spirit, he brought a restraint to its more excessive qualities and his writings on literature and social behavior attracted much attention due to his ability to combine enthusiasm with discernment.

REVIEW POTPOURRI: Sir Eugene Goossens

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Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Sir Eugene Goossens

Sir Eugene Goossens

Sir Eugene Goossens (1893-1962) conducted the Rochester Philharmonic during the 1920s; succeeded Fritz Reiner as Music Director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra from 1931 to 1946; moved to Australia to lead the Sydney Symphony for ten years until forced to resign in 1956 due to his involvement with a woman who practiced witchcraft and other bizarre activities (just a year after he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth) ; and returned to England feeling emotionally disgraced.

Interestingly he still conducted English orchestras and made several very exciting LPs for Everest Records and EMI, some of the latter released here on Capitol Records when it was still marketing classical music before signing the Beatles in 1964.

Goossens’s Everest LPs included especially magnificent performances of Respighi’s Roman Festivals, a hyper colorful showpiece that displays the full orchestra in all its sonic glory, and Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, itself a masterpiece of rhythmic eloquence from the composer’s last ten years.

I own several 78 sets of Goossens that were released in the U.S. on both Victor black label and Red Seal between the late ‘20s and early ‘40s. They include Tchaikovsky Nutcracker excerpts and the 1812 Overture with the Royal Opera Orchestra of Covent Garden, a vibrantly expressive Schumann 4th Symphony from Cincinatti and the Grieg Peer Gynt Suite #1 from another London Orchestra.

Some of these earlier recordings were dismissed if not ignored by so-called music critics “in the know” who usually didn’t know what they were talking about; Goossens always conducted with sound musicianship and ability at conveying the inner meaning of a piece.

His family background included both a father and grandfather who were also conductors and named Eugene, Sir Eugene being Eugene III. He was the oldest of five children, each of whom were talented musicians.

Brother Adolphe was a French horn player of great potential but was tragically killed in the World War I Battle of the Somme in 1916 at the age of 20.

The remaining three siblings, oboist Leon and two sisters Marie and Sidonie who were harpists lived well into their 90s, Sidonie living three centuries (1899-2004) making it to 105 and for decades principal harp in the BBC Symphony.

Two BBC Maestros, Sir Adrian Boult and Pierre Boulez praised Sidonie’s “reassuring presence, irreproachable professional conscience and faultless attitude” and were very close personal friends. As a sideline she and her husband raised chickens and pigs on their 400 acre farm.

Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

The Letters of Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (1917-2007) chronicle the perceptions of a very active historian of the 20th century United States in both its progress in social and political change and its lack of change. He taught for decades at Harvard and was one of the inner circle of intellectuals working in the White House during President John F. Kennedy’s Thousand Days, itself the title of his account of that period before Dallas ended it on November 22, 1963.

Two letters capture Schlesin­ger’s innate Democrat party loyalty. In a 1958 letter to a now forgotten journalist/diplomat, he displays a concern about then Vice-President Richard Nixon’s proclamation of himself as the “new Nixon” who is more congenial and less sleazy than the Nixon who threw dirt at his opponents in the 1946 and 1950 Congressional races, both of which he won.

Schlesinger writes, “Plainly, if the Democrats have any sense, they must do something to combat it before 1960 [the year Nixon ran against Kennedy for the White House and lost by a narrow margin].” But then Schlesinger admits quickly that, despite a lot of possible solutions being thrown around, it would be wasted efforts and that, “in the end, Nixon will have to destroy himself.”

In September, 1960, Schlesinger sends a more positive note to Jackie Kennedy, “I think that Nixon’s ugliness is going to boomerang before too long. ” A month later in the televised Nixon/Kennedy debates, Nixon’s 5 o’clock shadow worked against him compared to Kennedy’s smoothly shaved youthful charisma.

Elsewhere Schlesinger had some misgivings about the conservative William Buckley’s world view yet the two were friendly.

With the radical leftist Noam Chomsky, Schlesinger heavily trashed Chomsky’s 1969 book American Power and the New Mandarins in a Chicago Tribune review and some time later wrote that Chomsky “begins as a preacher to the world and ends as an intellectual crook.”

REVIEW POTPOURRI: Samuel de Champlain

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Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Samuel de Champlain

Samuel de Champlain

In his fascinatingly detailed Voyages, Samuel de Champlain (1567-1635) wrote of traveling up the Penobscot River in the following entry for September 5th, 1604:

“The same day we passed also near to an island about four or five leagues long. From this island to the main land on the north, the distance is less than a hundred paces. It is very high, and notched in places, so that there is the appearance to one at sea, as of seven or eight mountains extending along near each other. The summit of most of them is destitute of trees, as there are only rocks on them. The woods consists of pines, firs, and birches only. I named it Isle des Monts Deserts.”

As a younger man growing up in France, Champlain was an accomplished military officer for five years during the various bestial religious wars that King Henry IV was constantly waging. In return for his faithful service, the King supported Champlain’s interest in traveling to North America to explore and report on the region; he journeyed upwards of 30 times across the Atlantic.

David Oistrakh

David Oistrakh Plays the World’s Greatest Violin Concertos – Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky; Murray Hill S27606, three LPs.

David Oistrakh

David Oistrakh (1908-1974) was the most frequently recorded violinist to emerge from the former Soviet Union. Before his first trip to the United States in 1955, he was lionized by record collectors via the many Melodiya tapes released on dime store LPs from such labels as Vox, Period, Hall of Fame, Colosseum etcs. The fidelity and record surfaces were often grainy but the wondrously heartfelt playing and stunning virtuosity stood him in the same class as Jascha Heifetz, Isaac Stern, Nathan Milstein and Zino Francescatti.

The Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky Concertos were each recorded several times by Oistrakh. The above recordings were derived from Melodiya with Alexander Gauk conducting the Moscow State Symphony in the Beethoven; Kiril Kondrashin and the Symphony Orchestra of Radio Moscow in Brahms; Kondrashin again and the National Philharmonic in Mendelssohn; and Samuel Samosud leading the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra in Tchaikovsky. All four performances have been previously released several times on other labels.

Murray Hill Records was a boon for budget-minded record collectors including myself. While attending the University of Southern Maine at Gorham over 50 years ago, a friend who was manager of the campus bookstore drew my attention to several of the label’s multi-disc albums and those of others including Vox, Everest, Concert-Disc, and Westminster Gold.

She graciously allowed me to store a large number of those records on layaway; by purchasing one or two weekly, I was finally able to acquire all of them within six months.

David Oistrakh was also a gifted violist and collaborated with his violinist son Igor (1931-2021) in the Mozart K. 364 Sinfonia Cocertante for both instruments. Finally, he achieved a very justified reputation as a conductor and his recordings of the Tchaikovsky Pathetique Symphony, Grieg’s Piano Concerto with his good friend Sviatoslav Richter and the Mahler 4th Symphony are superb examples.

During World War II, Oistrakh performed the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, in Leningrad, while it was bombarded and starved by the Nazi armies during the 900-day siege and did concerts for Soviet troops on the hazardous front lines.

In 1964, Oistrakh suffered a heart attack, was told by the doctors to take it easy but ignored their advice, continuing to perform, conduct and teach non-stop. In October 1974, he was conducting the Brahms Symphonies with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam when he died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 66.

Many Oistrakh performances can be accessed through YouTube.

One of my absolute favorite Oistrakh recordings is the one he did on a Columbia Masterworks LP of the Sibelius Violin Concerto in 1960 with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra – the note by note teamwork of soloist, conductor and responsive orchestra musicians still leaves me breathless.

REVIEW POTPOURRI: Gene Hackman

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Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Gene Hackman

Gene Hackman

Gene Hackman won an Oscar for best actor in 1971’s The French Connection yet interestingly was almost the last choice for the role of NYC Detective Popeye Doyle after it was turned down by Paul Newman, Jackie Gleason, Charles Bronson, Lee Marvin, Robert Mitchum, Steve McQueen, Peter Boyle, James Caan, etc.

Based on Robin Moore’s investigative book of the same title, it chronicles the efforts of the New York City Police Department and FBI to confiscate a huge shipment of heroin arriving by ship from French drug dealers and to arrest the ringleader Alain Charnier, nicknamed “Frog One,” who has traveled to the City to meet with American distributors and who is portrayed with suave elegance by Fernando Rey.

The superb cast included Roy Scheider as Doyle’s partner Russo, Marcel Bozzuffi as Charnier’s #2 man “Frog Two” Nicoli, and Eddie Egan, the real life Popeye Doyle, as Doyle’s supervisor.

I have seen the film only once when it first hit the theaters more than 50 years ago but still remember its minute by minute tension and suspense- two scenes in particular. First, Doyle is walking on the street towards a young mother pushing her baby in the carriage. From out of nowhere several deafening sniper rifle shots kill the mother, narrowly missing Doyle. He espies the assassin Frog Two who has decided on his own to kill Doyle against the more cautious Frog One’s orders.

Secondly, Doyle pursues the sniper via a high speed car chase alongside an elevated train which Frog Two has seized control of at gunpoint, shooting a conductor in cold blood. Doyle shoots Frog in the back when he tries to escape .

The cinematography with its shots combining the gritty mean streets, the Brooklyn docks and the elegant five-star restaurant where Frogs One and Two are dining while Doyle and others are conducting surveillance was very compelling.

Hackman’s colleague Roy Scheider (1932-2008) did superb performances in Marathon Man, Scorpion and 52 Pickup. Fernando Rey (1917-1994) was memorable as an honest South American diplomat in 1970’s The Adventurers, itself panned by most reviewers on its release as trashy but which I found a highly entertaining soap opera spectacle while agreeing that it was trashy. Rey also appeared as an Italian anarchist confined in a concentration camp in Director Lina Wertmiller’s 1974 Seven Beauties.

Finally Eddie Egan appeared in 1972’s Prime Cut as an inner circle Mafia businessman who hires a gangland enforcer portrayed by Lee Marvin to go “straighten out” a double-crossing underling who runs a mid-western slaughterhouse for more than just hogs and a sex trafficking business with underage girls, against the orders of the leadership. The underling is portrayed with a certain self-deprecating humor by none other than Gene Hackman.

Evelyn Waugh

Evelyn Waugh

English novelist Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) once stated – “The opinions of the young are not necessarily the opinions of the future.”

Kitty Kallen

Kitty Kallen – Star Bright (Mara); Gently Johnny – Decca, 9-30267, recorded 1957, seven-inch vinyl 45.

Kitty Kallen (1921-2016), after scoring the big band hits I’m Beginning to See the Light; and They’re Either Too Young or Too Old, moved on to an ex­qui­sitely rich period in early 1950s pop singing with Little Things Mean a Lot, In the Chapel by the Moonlight and Jerome Kern’s I’m Old Fashioned.

1957’s Star Bright and side 2’s Gently Johnny didn’t hit any top 40 lists but Kitty’s phenomenally and uniquely lovely singing transformed both songs into little gems with her Decca conductor Jack Pleis’s arrangements. Around that time, she suffered a nervous breakdown and withdrew from live appearances for a couple of years, although she continued some recording.

In 1959, Columbia Records legendary Mitch Miller arranged a session for Kitty in which If I Give My Heart to You became a hit.

Tchaikovsky

Tchaikovsky: Romeo and Juliet – Serge Kousse­vitzky conducting the Boston Symphony; Victor Red Seal DM-347, three 12-inch 78s, recorded December 28 and 29, 1936.

Tchaikovsky

After several failed performances resulting in constant revising since 1870, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) finally experienced the world premiere of his tone poem Romeo and Juliet in all its completed perfection at an 1886 concert in Tiflis, now known as Tbilisi, Georgia, under the direction of composer/conductor Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov (1859-1935).

Serge Koussevitzky conducted a typically high quality interpretation in which powerful dramatic outbursts were blended with rich instrumental sonorities, lyrical details and responsive playing from his 105 Boston Symphony musicians whom he cajoled, brow beat, pleaded with and screamed at for most of his 25 years as music director from 1924 to 1949.

A one side bonus in this album is Sibelius’s Maiden with the Roses from his Swan White incidental Music.

 

 

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REVIEW POTPOURRI: Poet Lee Sharkey

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Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Poet Lee Sharkey

Lee Sharkey

Poet Lee Sharkey (1945-2020) moved to Maine in 1971 and taught writing for several years at the University of Maine’s Farmington campus. She was also a social and peace activist, mentored aspiring writers from many walks of life, particularly those in prison and psychiatric hospitals, and protested the Iraq War as a member of the Women in Black which frequently held rallies in the state capital.

Her poem exercise in the Maine Speaks anthology evokes the need for empathy on the deepest emotional level towards those who are suffering for whatever reason :

“focus on someone you love as much as you love your breath.
imagine yourself abruptly deprived of that relationship. imagine your breathing.
imagine a world where everyone’s lost their most precious possession,
and wanders helplessly. now watch them disappear: each was someone’s beloved
if only their own. imagine mourning without mourners, voiceless dirges
stampeding across grasslands like bison before Massacring Buffalo Bill,
the tremors of earth, image and after image, settling into the absence of language.”

Anyone who’s familiar with 20th century American poetry might notice a similarity between Sharkey’s use of lower case letters at the beginning of a sentence or phrase and that of e.e. cummings. The similarity pretty much ends there.

For me, Sharkey’s compassionate depiction of the human condition parallels on a spiritual level that of the 19th century English poet Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) whose pious Anglican faith extended to reaching out to women in prison, unwed mothers and prostitutes in friendship and whose own poems evoked the terrifying gap between those who live the easy life of selfish luxury and those who are suffering.

An example is her poem Pastime:

“A boat amid the ripples, drifting, rocking,
Two idle people, without pause or aim;
While in the ominous west there gathers darkness
Flushed with flame.

“A haycock in a hayfield backing, lapping,
Two drowsy people pillowed round about;
While in the ominous west across the darkness
Flame leaps out.
“Better a wrecked life than a life so aimless,
Better a wrecked life than a life so soft;
The ominous west glooms thundering, with its fire
Lit aloft.”

Paul Whiteman

Paul Whiteman

Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra – Rhapsody in Blue; Reader’s Digest RDK-5965, cassette, 1989 reissue of various 1920s Victor 78s.

Bandleader Paul Whiteman (1890-1967) conducted the 1924 world premiere at Carnegie Hall of Rhapsody in Blue (among those in the audience was Sergei Rachmaninoff ) .

Whiteman had an incredibly successful and musically accomplished dance band which recorded for Victor, sold several million discs and acquired so much wealth that he bought his own train for nationwide tours and fitted it with comfortable accommodations for band members, the caboose being his own luxurious suite.

He hired a few African American musicians during the horrible years of racial segregation and employed Bing Crosby and Johnny Mercer at the beginning of their careers.

The tape contains ten selections that include the first recording of Rhapsody in Blue with George Gershwin at the piano and a number of Great American Songbook standards – Old Man River, Linger Awhile, When It’s Sleepytime Down South, Stairway to the Stars and the Japanese Sandman. The transfers from the old 78s were done well.

In 1948, Whiteman wrote a fascinating book of anecdotes, Records for the Millions, via which he mentions two of his hobbies, collecting records and photographs.

Gene Hackman

Gene Hackman

Among the many fine films of recently deceased actor Gene Hackman is the 1986 Hoosiers. It’s a very evocative period piece taking place in 1951 in rural Indiana in which a high school basketball coach portrayed by Hackman is trying to motivate his players to win the state championship but is struggling with his own private issues and those of some of the players. The cinematography conveying the landscape of the small town Midwest, the vintage cars and the unspoiled countryside is sublime. Hackman’s fellow cast members include Dennis Hopper and Barbara Hersey.

 

 

 

REVIEW POTPOURRI: The Cathedrals

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Peter Catesby Peter Cates

The Cathedrals

The Cathedrals

The Cathedrals – Masters of Gospel; Riversong 84418-2876-4, 1992 cassette.

The Cathedrals is a gospel men’s quartet in the tradition of the two most well known ones from the Deep South – the Blackwood Brothers; and the Statesmen.

This cassette is a generously filled anthology of 15 previously released selections- such titles as As It Was In the Days of Noah, Take This Whole World, Blood Washed Band, An Old Convention Song, etc., with scholarly notes on the background of each selection.

The four gentlemen sang in a festive, fervent manner, the results making for conducive listening one side at a time. And there are times when well sung gospel tunes make for great listening, hence my attraction to hearing this tape.

Bellini

Vincenzo Bellini

Bellini: I Puritani; Riccardo Muti conducting the Ambrosian Opera Chorus and the Philharmonica Orchestra of London with a cast that includes soprano Montserrat Caballe, tenor Alfredo Kraus, and baritones Matteo Manuguerra and Agostino Ferrin etcs.; EMI CLASSICS 077776966328, recorded July-August 1979, three compact discs.

Opera composer Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835) attended a production of Rossini’s Semiramide in 1824 while studying music, in Naples, Italy. A friend who accompanied him later wrote that “Bellini was so affected upon hearing it that…he…explained…in words of sad discomfort, that it seemed to him impossible to write good music in the face of that classic music by Rossini.”

Fortunately for musical posterity, the young man freed himself from this inhibition and would compose several very good operas, including the masterpieces Norma, La Sonnambula and the especially magnificent I Puritani before he died, at 33, from what was described as amoebic dysentery. During his last years, his operas had become popular in Paris and he was idolized in its social circles.

Puritani is most notable for the streams of melody in its arias, duets, vocal ensemble, choruses and orchestral writing. This 1979 recording features beautiful singing from Caballe, Krauss, Manuguerra, Ferrin and others while the conducting of Riccardo Muti, still active in his 80s, was among the best he achieved during those early years in his 30s – within a year, he would replace Eugene Ormandy as music director of the Phildelphia Orchestra.

Rusty Draper

Rusty Draper

Rusty Draper – The Shifting, Whispering Sands; and Time; Mercury 70696, seven inch 45, recorded 1955.

Pretty much forgotten in recent years, country singer Rusty Draper (1923-2003) had a few hits on Mercury records during the mid 1950s along with a TV show which featured other country singers. The Shifting Whispering Sands was among Billboard’s top 20 in 1955 and is sung with a concurrent story line narrated by Draper which combines wisdom about the shifting sands in the passage of time with corny sentimentality; Billy Vaughan did a best selling cover of it for Dot records. Side 2’s Time is a throwaway.

Draper sang decently but not memorably with the very good David Carroll’s arrangements.

Rossini

Rossini

Rossini: Stabat Mater- Fac Ut Portem (Oh, Endow Me); contralto Louise Homer; Victrola Red Seal 88132,12-inch one-sided acoustic shellac, recorded 1908.

Louise Homer (1871-1947) concertized several times in Portland and Bangor, according to the memoirs of her husband Sidney, and had a richly expressive contralto voice.

Starting in 1907, she recorded arias of Gluck, Handel, Saint-Saens and Mendelssohn; one of the best Star Spangled Banners and several hymns with soprano Alma Gluck (1884-1938) for Victrola Red Seal. And a large number of them make for wonderful listening.

The above Rossini selection from his Stabat Mater is a gem, despite the acoustic fidelity.

REVIEW POTPOURRI: Listening to a pile of 78s

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Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Listening to a pile of 78s

After listening to a pile of 78s that are both long forgotten and musically captivating, I wish I could write about each and every one of them, but, for reasons of time and space, can only pick a few; hopefully they can be heard via YouTube.

Ella Mae Morse

1. Capitol – #1922 – from the early ‘50s featured jazz/pop vocalist Ella Mae Morse performing Blacksmith Blues; and Love Me or Leave Me, the latter a 1920s hit for Ruth Etting and the title of a 1955 semi-fictionalized biopic with Doris Day portraying Miss Etting and co-stars James Cagney and Cameron Mitchell.

Morse was one of the several artists whom Johnny Mercer and Buddy De Sylva signed up in 1942 when they started Capitol Records and quickly earned a reputation for high quality music among collectors.

She sang with verve and had the pulsating arrangements of conductor Nelson Riddle who was kept busy at Capitol recording with Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra.

2. Decca – #28736 – had the Mills Brothers utilizing their uniquely smooth harmonies on Don’t Let Me Dream; and Pretty Butterfly, with lyrics by Sunny Skylar set to the tune of Antonin Dvorak’s Humoresque (Skylar, who died at 95 in 2009, supplied the English lyrics for the 1940s Latin American pop classics Besame Mucho; and Amor.).

The disc was recorded in 1953 and had superb big band arrangements from Owen Bradley, who usually oversaw country singers in Nashville such as Red Foley, Ernest Tubb, Patsy Cline, Kitty Wells, Loretta Lynn, Conway Twitty and Brenda Lee.

Donald Novis

3. Decca – #1833 – recorded 1939, had British tenor Donald Novis (1906-1966) singing Charmaine; and Angela Mia in a style best described as an especially syrupy imitation of Irish tenor John McCormack without McCormack’s distinctive vocalism.

Novis was accompanied by organist Eddie Dunstedter (1897-1974). Despite misgivings about Novis’s singing, I did enjoy this blue label Decca 78, which retailed for 35 cents.

Charmaine later became more famous as an early ‘50s hit record for Mantovani and his Orchestra and the theme song for his syndicated early ‘60s TV show .

4. Victor – #27869 – recorded 1943, had the phenomenal Tommy Dorsey (1905-1956) and his Orchestra in two selections.

Tulullah Bankhead

Side One’s I’ll Take Tallulah was a topic of the day roll call of then-famous movie actresses, Tallulah Bankhead being the honoree, and was written by the songwriting team of Yip Harburg and Burton Lane for the MGM musical Ship Ahoy; in 1947, Harburg and Lane would write the Broadway musical masterpiece Finian’s Rainbow. Dorsey’s lead singers Frank Sinatra and the Pied Pipers did the vocals.

The second side, Not So Quiet Please, was, for me, the main attraction, and a very exciting instrumental showcase for Dorsey’s young drummer Buddy Rich by composer Sy Oliver.

Rich also had a bad temper and, for some strange reason, started badgering the already bad tempered Sinatra who responded by throwing a glass pitcher of ice water at the drummer, which missed him by less than an inch. Later the two kissed and made up, even sharing an apartment for a brief period.

Frank Munn

5. A late 1920s dime store label Supertone – #S2113 – had tenor Frank Munn (1894-1953) giving sublime renditions of two classic songs from the very old days of the 1890s to early 1900s – the especially exquisite Silver Threads Among the Gold; and When You and I Were Young, Maggie. Munn was listed as the pseudonymous Frank Whalen. His singing had the phrasing, delivery, conviction and eloquence, qualities that were lacking in the previously mentioned tenor Donald Novis.

6. Victrola Red Seal – #87571– acoustically recorded in April 1920, on a one-sided ten-inch shellac, had the great Irish tenor John McCormack (1884-1945) and violinist Fritz Kreisler (1875-1962) collaborating in a very powerful song, When Night Descends, by composer Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943). A quite exceptional disc from more than 100 years ago.

REVIEW POTPOURRI: Maine Speaks anthology

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Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Maine Speaks anthology

Lawrence S. Hall

The 1987 Maine Speaks anthology contains what has elsewhere been often considered the most famous 20th century short story from our Pine Tree State – The Ledge, by Lawrence Sargent Hall (1915-1993).

However, before today (February 2, 2025), I was totally unfamiliar with the story, and the writer, let alone the resulting popularity after it was first published in 1959; I simply started reading it out of curiosity and became sucked into its skillfully drawn atmosphere of suspense and dread.

The plot depicts a fisherman taking his 13 year-old-son and 15-year-old nephew out early one Christmas morning to a rock ledge off the Maine coast to shoot ducks. His boat is moored at an outlying island where the three take a skiff roughly 300 yards further to the ledge.

They are bagging birds by the dozens, highly anticipating the delicious eating; in the excitement of the moment, they don’t notice that the skiff has loosened and floated dangerously far away until only visible in the distance and they are now stuck on the ledge with no means of getting off before high tides.

Meanwhile, the freezing cold waves are rising around the ledge. I am not going to reveal the ending.

But I will provide a couple of passages conveying the situation, atmosphere and attitude, sometimes simultaneously, as in the first example:

“They had it figured exactly right for today. The ledge would not be going under until after the gunning was over, and they would be home for supper in good season. With a little luck the boys would have a skiff-load of birds to show for their first time outside. Well beyond the legal limit, which was no matter. You took what you could get in this life, or the next man made out and you didn’t. ”

As can be seen, with situation, the preceding quote conveys the seemingly careful planning of every detail in this venture, leaving little to chance – “They had it figured exactly right”; with atmosphere, the imminent danger – “the ledge would not be going under”; and with attitude, the rationalizing dishonesty of the fisherman in taking “what you could get in this life. ”

The second quote hints at the possibility of a lurking bombshell in one otherwise perfectly nice day:

“This could be one of those days where all the right conditions masked an incalculable flaw.”

One of Hall’s beliefs was that he considered great fiction more true to life and fact to be mere fact because great fiction seeks out the truth behind mere facts. “Fiction….reveals beyond what perhaps happened what could, or would, or should happen.”

Elsewhere, he stated that he wrote “out of fascination with the experience of humankind living on this planet.”

Hall got his undergraduate degree from Bowdoin College, in Brunswick, in 1936 and a Ph.D from Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1943, doing his thesis on another Bowdoin alumnus, Nathaniel Hawthorne, which he later published.

During World War II, Hall worked for the Office of Strategic Services, better known as the OSS, an earlier incarnation of the CIA where he ran a censorship unit.

From 1946 to 1986, he was an English professor at Bowdoin and resided on Orr’s Island, near Harpswell, where for a few years he also ran a boat yard.

In 1999, novelist John Updike included The Ledge when he edited The Best American Short Stories of the Century, praising it as “timeless – a naturalistic anecdote terrible in its tidal simplicity and inexorability fatally weighted in every detail.”

REVIEW POTPOURRI: Gershwin & Ravel; Herbert Kegel; Leroy Vandyke

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Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Gershwin & Ravel

George Gershwin

Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue – Adolph Drescher, pianist; C.A. Bunte conducting the Pro Musica Symphony Orchestra.

Ravel: Bolero – Samo Hubad conducting the Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Sony Music Special Products BT 22444, cassette, 1991.

The late 1980s tearing down of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union and its Iron Curtain precipitated, among other benefits, a flood of available classical recordings from very talented artists such as, to name a few examples, pianist Dubrovka Tomsic and conductors Anton Nanut, Marko Munih, Heinz Rogner etcs. Often the companies of inexpensive releases used pseudonyms but Google has proved useful for spotting them.

Maurice Ravel

The names on this cassette release however were real people. Pianist Adolph Drescher (1921-1967) collaborated with Maestro C.A. Bunte (1927-2016) in a very good Rhapsody in Blue, arguably the most frequently recorded piece of George Gershwin (1898-1937) while Samo Hubad (1917-2016) conducted Bolero, a piece that remains, for many the most popular; and for many others the most disliked piece that Maurice Ravel (1874-1937) ever composed. Hubad achieved a strikingly good performance.

I have read that Ravel himself was quite pleased with what he achieved with the piece as a tour de force.

The 1991 release date may be a reissue of 1960s tapings since pianist Drescher died in 1967.

Herbert Kegel

Mahler Symphony #3 – Herbert Kegel conducting the Dresden Philharmonic; Weitblick SSS0029, two CDs. Recorded March 25, 1984.

The late East German Maestro Herbert Kegel conducted a phenomenally exciting and eloquently shaped performance of Gustav Mahler’s longest, sprawling Symphony and one I also consider a masterpiece, having collected over 40 different recordings. Kegel was very gifted whether conducting Beethoven, Mahler, Carl Orff, Alban Berg or Dimitri Shostakovich.

He also struggled most of his life with depression and committed suicide during the early 1990s.

Leroy Vandyke

Leroy Vandyke – Auctioneer; and I Fell in Love with a Pony Tail; Dot 45-15503, seven inch vinyl 45, recorded 1956.

Still living at 95, country singer Leroy Vandyke recorded two very hokey and, despite hokey, quite enjoyable songs, Auctioneer being hugely popular.

All Star Trio

All Star Trio and their Orchestra – Hortense, Medley Fox Trot; and Never Mind, Fox Trot; Victor 18863, recorded 1922, ten inch acoustic shellac.

Three very gifted musician, including a xylophonist, and their backup orchestra played two very perky and enlivening dance tunes . An intriguing example of roaring ‘20s dance music from 103 years ago.

The 1920s and ’30s generated a rich recorded legacy of dance bands which, in turn, provided employment for numerous giants of the World War II big band era, such as Benny Goodman, the Dorsey Brothers, Glenn Miller, etc.

REVIEW POTPOURRI: Composer: Gustav Mahler; Author: William Saroyan

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Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Gustav Mahler

Gustav Mahler

German composer Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) suffered three major traumas the summer of 1907 – His oldest daughter Maria died from diptheria.

After a brilliant few years as music director of the Vienna Court Opera, Mahler was forced out by a combination of systemic anti-Semitism and sleazy underhandedness.
Finally he was diagnosed with angina and given at best two to four years to live .

In a letter to his good friend Bruno Walter, Mahler wrote:

“With one stroke, I have lost everything I have gained in terms of who I thought I was and have to learn my first steps again like a newborn. ”

In 1908, the composer began work on Das Lied von der Erde, translated as Song of the Earth and based on ancient Chinese poetry. It is a song cycle of six movements scored for tenor, contralto (or baritone), and orchestra and, along with the Ninth and unfinished Tenth Symphonies, was not performed until after Mahler’s death.

The poems from which the composer drew inspiration speak of the transience and superficiality of life in this world, of its temporary joys and sorrows and of fate, with such titles as Drinking Song of Earth’s Misery; Lonely One in Autumn; Of Youth; Of Beauty; Drunken Man; and Fate, topics already preoccupying his mind with the cardiac Damocles sword hanging by a thread.

The Symphonies and Song Cycles all evoke the constant clash between Mahler’s intensely spiritual side – his ongoing desire to experience peace and create his music; and his bitter, angry, at times vitriolic personality in dealing with a world that made it impossible to experience that peace because of all its bombast and violence. In short, Gustav Mahler was a manic/depressive.

In his liner notes for a 78 set of Das Lied, Nicholas Slonimsky (1894-1995) pinpointed a certain duality in this musical worldview and then recounted the circumstances of this piece’s composition:

“Although Mahler invariably denied that his symphonies had a program or story behind them, each work was a chapter in his struggle with himself, or, as he believed, with some mystical evil force.

“Bruno Walter [1876-1962], his friend and interpreter, tells us a strange story which seems to have come from out of Edgar Allan Poe:

‘While at work in his cottage in Toblach [a summer lakeside retreat in Italy], he was suddenly frightened by an indefinable noise. All at once something terribly dark came rushing in by the window, and, when he jumped up in horror, he saw that he was in the presence of an eagle which filled the little room with its violence. The fearsome meeting was quickly over, and the eagle disappeared as stormily as it had come. When Mahler sat down, exhausted by his fright, a crow came fluttering from under the sofa and flew out. ‘

“Walter thinks that this episode happened at the time Mahler was composing Das Lied, and that Mahler referred to the work as a Symphony in songs:

‘It was to have been his Ninth. Subsequently, however, he changed his mind. He thought of Beethoven and Bruckner, whose Ninth had marked the ultimate of their creation and life, and did not care to challenge fate. He turned to the last movement of Das Lied, it also being the longest, and said to me, “What do you think of it? Will not people do away with themselves when they hear it?” ‘ ”

As mentioned earlier, Mahler managed to complete the Ninth Symphony and a completed movement and sketches for a Tenth Symphony. On May 18, 1911, he died from a combination of pneumonia and other ailments. Six months and 12 days later on November 30, Bruno Walter conducted the world premiere in Munich.

On May 24, 1936, Walter led the Vienna Philharmonic in a live performance which was recorded and released on Columbia Masterworks (MM-300, seven 12-inch 78s) with contralto Kerstin Thorborg and tenor Charles Kullman; the Maestro would record it again with the VPO in 1947 and with the New York Philharmonic in 1960. Each of them is very good.

The work has generated many other recordings of distinction. My first exposure to this extraordinary music came via a 1967 recording on the Decca/London label, yet again with the Vienna Philharmonic but this time conducted by Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) with tenor James King and baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, and a performance brimming with eloquence on a sublime level.

It and other performances can be heard on YouTube.

Bernstein also left very persuasive recordings of the ten Symphonies and the Songs of a Wayfarer and Kindertotenlieder Cycles. Interestingly he declared Das Lied von der Erde “Mahler’s greatest Symphony.”

William Saroyan

William Saroyan

A 1943 novel, The Human Comedy, by the Armenian/American writer William Saroyan (1908-1981), opens with a joyously colorful scene through the mind of a little boy:

“The little boy named Ulysses Macauley one day stood over the new gopher hole in the backyard of his house on Santa Clara Avenue, in Ithaca, California. The gopher of this hole pushed up fresh moist dirt and peeked out at the boy, who was certainly a stranger but perhaps not an enemy. Before this miracle had been fully enjoyed by the boy, one of the birds of Ithaca flew into the old walnut tree in the backyard and after settling itself on a branch broke into rapture, moving the boy’s fascination from the earth to the tree.

Next, best of all, a freight train puffed and roared far away. The boy listened, and felt the earth beneath him tremble with the moving of the train. Then he broke into running, moving (it seemed to him) swifter than any life in the world.”
Saroyan once gave the following advice to a young writer “to learn to breathe deeply,…to taste food when you eat…when you sleep really to sleep…to be wholly alive with all your might.”

In 1939, Saroyan collaborated with a younger cousin Ross Bagdasarian (1919-1972) in transforming an Armenian folk song into Rosemary Clooney’s 1951 megahit record Come On A My House.

Bagdasarian would achieve his own fame as David Seville, the creator of TV’s Alvin and the Chipmunks.