Maurice Ravel

by Peter Cates

Ravel

Bolero, Pavane for a Dead Princess, and La Valse

William Steinberg conducting the Pittsburg Symphony; Capitol SP 8475, stereo lp, recorded October 29, 1958, at Pittsburgh’s Syrian Mosque.

One of the most gifted conductors to have emerged in the last century, William Steinberg (1899-1978), led the Pittsburgh Symphony from 1952 to 1976 , until he resigned because of heart problems. During his lifetime, he was music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic before Pittsburgh and the Boston Symphony from 1969-72, while juggling his time with Pittsburgh. And he had guest engagements with most of the distinguished orchestras and opera houses as well. His Wiki biography provides a number of interesting details about the Maestro’s career.

He recorded a sizable amount of repertoire for Capitol records from the beginning of his tenure in Pittsburgh until he left that label in 1960. Among his recordings is the above program of French composer, Maurice Ravel, 1874-1937, consisting of three works – Bolero, Pavane for a Dead Princess and La Valse.

Bolero was composed for the ballet dancer Ida Rubinstein, after she commissioned Ravel when he returned from a successful tour of the United States during the mid-to-late ‘20s. Its debut on November 22, 1928, elicited nasty comments from certain ‘thinkers,’ but also became an overnight sensation and has remained a much-recorded classic. It is still dismissed as bombastic trash by a number of listeners but, for myself and others, a perennially captivating work for its fascinating build-up of dynamics from the barely audible pianissimi of the snare drum, plucking strings and flute to the rip-roaring conclusion at the same unvarying tempo. Steinberg pulled off these challenges with exactitude and achieved exquisite phrasing of the melodic line from the strings and woodwinds. Other very good recordings include those of conductors Anton Nanut and Paul Paray.

Pavane for a Dead Princess was first written as a piano piece in 1899 and scored for orchestra in 1910. When somebody asked Ravel why he picked the title, he replied that, ‘he liked the sound of the words and put them there.’ He also insisted on very slow tempos yet, when hearing a plodding rendition, admonished the performer that ‘it was not a dead pavane for a princess.’ Steinberg, as did other conductors like Charles Munch, Fritz Reiner, Andre Cluytens etc., observed these slow tempos with very sublime results, particularly the writing of the harp and woodwinds.

La Valse’s world premiere in December, 1920, drew the comment by one individual as ‘people dancing on a volcano.’ Ravel blended the rhythms of Johann Strauss Jr.’s Viennese Waltzes and, no relation, Richard Strauss’s opera, Der Rosenkavalier, into a piece of virtuosity uniquely his own and Steinberg’s recording is very exciting.

A CD set of most of Steinberg’s Capitol recordings was released in 2011 and copies may be still available through Internet sources.

William Steinberg was much loved by his colleagues and had quite the sense of humor. He granted interviews if the subject was one of interest, “for instance, myself.”

George Enescu

by Peter Cates

George Enescu

This past August 19 was the 138th anniversary of the birth of the great Romanian composer , violinist, conductor and teacher, George Enescu (1881-1955), whose musical legacy is still drawing ever-increasing attention and appreciation. The number of his compositions is very large and ranges through most classical forms. His own recordings as a violinist and conductor are easily accessed via YouTube, CD transfers and other sources.

Recently, I have been listening to YouTubes of him conducting his 2nd Romanian Rhapsody, itself more lyrical and less brash than the first; and participating in his Octet for Strings with eight colleagues, both of them recorded and released in the U.S. on very cheap Remington LPs. He recorded his 3rd Violin Sonata, one of very haunting beauty, with Romanian pianist, Dinu Lipatti, who died very young of leukemia, at the age of 33, in the very early 1950s.

The Sears Roebuck label, Silvertone, released a red vinyl 78 of him conducting a vibrant Debussy Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.

Yehudi Menuhin

He was admitted to the Vienna Conservatory of Music when he was seven and met Brahms during those early years, who was his idol. His own students included the violinists Yehudi Menuhin, with whom he recorded the Bach Double Violin Concerto; Christian Ferras; Arthur Grumiaux; Ida Haendel; Uto Ughi and Joan Field.

I also highly recommend a listen to the YouTube of his opera, Oedipide, based on Sophocle’s Oedipus Rex, the mythical King, who, according to satirist Tom Lehrer, just “loved his mother!”

Chubby Checker

by Peter Cates

Meyer Davis plays the Twist

Cameo 1014, vinyl LP, recorded 1960.

Meyer Davis

Band leader, Meyer Davis (1895-1976) ran a multi-million dollar empire of dance music several decades for coming-out parties, and seasonal galas hosted by the folks living in West Palm Beach, Newport, the Bahamas, Houston’s River Oaks, Greenwich, Paris, and the Mediterranean Coast, and for whom money meant a rich full life to too many of them.

At 18, Davis had enrolled in law school while earning $90 a week leading a group of musicians at evening gatherings. His talent and business skills proved a better career choice than becoming a lawyer. His bands played at seven presidential inaugural balls right up to JFK, and they performed for the English nobility, including King George V.

This album of music for Cameo-Parkway – the same Philadelphia label that produced Chubby Checker’s original hit record, The Twist, – provided spiky, captivating renditions of that song, Mack the Knife, Rock Around the Clock, I Could Have Danced All Night and other selections. Davis utilized the most brilliant musicians, creating a record that mirrored high society get-togethers during the early 1960s very evocatively.

Hobbies included playing chamber music with his brother-in-law, the great conductor Pierre Monteux, and collecting first editions of Lord Byron’s books and other memorabilia with his wife.

Lorimer Chapel at Colby College.

by Peter Cates

The Atlantic Music Festival

Presented annually at Colby College

Since 2008, our local, world-renowned Colby College has been hosting the Atlantic Music Festival for the month of July. The festival brings composers, instrumentalists and vocalists together to make music and perform concerts free of charge to the public.

Because of my abysmal laziness and stupidity, even though I knew about the AMF, I had not attended any of its previous concerts until the season’s final two this past Friday and Saturday at the College’s Lorimer Chapel. I now stand duly admonished because of what I had been missing the last 11 years.

Friday’s program consisted of chamber music that involved the four groups in most every orchestra – strings, woodwinds, brass and percussion. Complete pieces and select movements from works of Karel Husa, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Gabriel Faure, Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, Charles Gounod, Sigurd Berge, Johan Halvorsen, Mikhail Glinka, and composers in the festival received splendid renditions.

Ones that stood out were Faure’s 1st Violin Sonata, Ravel’s Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano, and Violin and Cello Sonata, Debussy’s Sonata for Harp, Viola and Flute, Gounod’s Petite Symphonie for 2 Oboes, Clarinets, Bassoons, and French Horns and 1 Flute, Mozart’s K.493 Piano Quartet, and one major discovery, Glinka’s Grande Sextet.

The Festival Symphony concert on Saturday was led by the very gifted Dean Whiteside, a conductor to reckon with later, along with other participants, and we heard riveting performances of Verdi’s Nabucco Overture, the Dvorak 8th Symphony and an extraordinary Violin Concerto composed by the festival’s director, Solbong Kim, in its world premiere. The soloist was Sojin Kim, no relation.

Attendance at future July festivals couldn’t be more highly recommended!

by Peter Cates

The Desert Song

Mario Lanza, Judith Raskin etc.; RCA Victor LSC-2440, LP, recorded 1959.

Mario Lanza

Mario Lanza (1921-1959) was one of the finest tenors who ever lived, when it came to beauty, tone, powerful one-on-one communication and love of singing. I have a number of his recordings covering opera arias, popular songs from the ‘40s and ‘50s, Broadway show tunes, Christmas carols etc.; but I have most often enjoyed his singing of the two operettas, Rudolf Friml’s The Vagabond King and Sigmund Romberg’s The Desert Song, both of them taped shortly before his sudden death from a blood clot on October 7, 1959, and with the late soprano, Judith Raskin (1928-1984).

Sigmund Romberg’s operetta was based upon the book by Oscar Hammerstein II, Otto Harbach, and Frank Mandel. Its first performance in New York was November 30, 1926, at the Casino Theater on Broadway and 39th Street, after successes in Wilmington, Delaware, and Boston.

Judith Raskin

Lanza and Raskin’s duets in the title song and One Good Boy Gone Wrong resonate with the great duet recordings of Nicolai Gedda and Mireille Freni in La Boheme, Jussi Bjoreling and Victoria de los Angeles in Madame Butterfly, Angela Gheorghiu and Jonas Kaufmann in the Tosca Love Duet, Sarah Vaughan and Billy Eckstine’s Passing Strangers, Frank and Nancy Sinatra’s Something Stupid, Frank Sinatra and Dinah Shore’s My Romance and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Maria Stader’s in Mozart’s Magic Flute, The solos of Lanza’s One Alone and Raskin’s Romance are some of many reasons life is worth living.

Selections from the album can be heard on YouTube.

Before his death, he was approached by RCA Italiana to record a few operas. Unfortunately, fate intervened. His widow, Betty, died of a drug overdose in early 1960. three of their four children since then; two sons, Marc and Damon, from heart issues, and a daughter, Colleen, after being hit by a driver while crossing the street and dying two weeks later in a coma.