by Peter Cates

John D. MacDonald

A Deadly Shade of Gold.
Fawcett paperback, 1965, 287 pages.

Novelist John MacDonald (1916-1986) produced over 70 pulsating examples of the suspense genre. They included the classic thriller Cape Fear which was transformed into the 1962 film starring Robert Mitchum as the villain Max Cady and the 1991 remake with Robert DeNiro portraying the same psychotic fiend. Both actors outdid themselves in one of the most persuasive depictions of evil on the big screen, maybe at the same level as Lee Marvin, Clu Gulager and Ronald Reagan in 1961’s The Killers.

Deadly Shade is one of the 22 novels in MacDonald’s Travis McGee series; McGee is the riveting combination of beachcomber/salvage expert whose particular salvaging involves too many up close and personal encounters with the most dangerous people. Its plot centers on an old friend of McGee’s dropping in one day with a problem and very quickly later found cold-bloodedly murdered. The story is off and running in MacDonald’s unique manner, the only consistent annoyance being his insipid handling of love scenes. A very recommended reading experience!

Mozart

Duo for solo violin and viola, K423; Sinfonia Concertante K364- David Oistrakh, violist and son Igor, violinist, with Kyril Kondrashin conducting the Moscow Philharmonic in K364, London stereo LP, CS 6377, recorded during the 1960s.

Two of Mozart’s beautiful compositions involving viola and violin are performed by father and son Oistrakh in a very fine collaboration with Kyril Kondrashin and the Moscow Philharm­onic with interesting liner notes by the late record producer Erik Smith. Also available on a CD.

 

 

by Peter Cates

NCIS

Current Netflix 15th season

This program featuring naval intelligence stories is one that keeps on giving. I am convinced some viewers watch it for the facial expressions of Mark Harmon alone. The balance of humor and suspense is another factor. The addition of Maria Bello as special agent Jack is a third factor. The series is one special in ways beyond description. Try the first five episodes of the 15th season. They are entertaining.

Andre Cluytens

The Complete Concerto and Orchestral Recordings
Erato. 65 CDs.

The conductor Andre Cluytens (1905-1967) was one very gifted individual. I have been collecting his recordings for about 20 years. They are the gift that keeps on giving as far as I am concerned. Beethoven Concertos with Solomon and Oistrakh. Debussy, Ravel, Franck, Bizet, Gounod, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rossini, etc…

The best approach would be to sample the various YouTubes and decide if he is for you. There are videos as well.

Dark Eyes

Dark Eyes is the 1987 film of Nikita Mikhalkov. Francis Lai’s soundtrack is a mixture of Mozart, Strauss, Rossini, Lehar and Francis Lai himself, most famous as the composer of A Man and a Woman. It is a mix most suitable for pleasant ambiance at dinner parties and very listenable. The soundtrack is on the DRG label, a cassette with the catalog number SBLC 12592. The actor Marcello Mastroianni.

Liszt

Piano Concerto No. 2; Sonata in B minor.

The Concerto has Walter Susskind conducting the Philhar­monia Orchestra and the Angel lp is from the ‘50s – Angel 35031. Again this Polish pianist, Witold Malcuzynski, knew how to make the kind of music making that wore well, much like the conductor Andre Cluytens. His Liszt recordings had the combination of musicality and virtuosity that elevated my fondness for this composer, the 2nd Concerto and Sonata being cases in point.

YouTube is a good place to sample these selections mentioned above.

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 group consisted of Hamburg Philharmonic musicians.

Miller created Somerset because of the huge demand and success of of other labels’ low priced LPs. He then scouted for talent among a variety of superb musicians – conductors Sir Adrian Boult, Horst Stein, Hugo Rignold, singing group the Ray Charles Singers etc. His arguably most well known 101 Strings, recorded a pile of albums that sold millions and are still popular.

Film composers Riz Ortolani (1926-2014, Yellow Rolls Royce) and Michel Legrand (1932, Umbrellas) have left sizable legacies. Their music on this record is imbued with charm and carefree gaiety. Interestingly, Ortolani plagiarized a passage from Alexander Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances for one of the Yellow RR tunes. While I generally like Le­grand’s music better for its consistently beautiful qualities, I was eager to hear Ortolani’s excerpts because of my previous lack of any familiarity with him. What I heard was okay but with a few bland moments.

All in all though, the record can be heartily recommended to film music connoisseurs and any other interested collectors.

It has been out of print for many years yet copies are listed for sale on Amazon.

 

 

 

 

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 cello and its musical depths. A live performance of Beethoven’s very beautiful Archduke Trio, with his very dear friends and phenomenal players in their own right- pianist Mieczyslaw Horszowski (1892-1993) and violinist Sandor Vegh (1912-1997), is moderately paced but phrased with some of the most soulful detail I have ever heard!

Cellist Pierre Fournier (1906-1986) developed a more suave, elegant style that became his endearing trademark for more than 40 years, as opposed to Casals’ soulful depths. The 1955 record of the Brahms’ 2 Cello Sonatas, with pianist Wilhelm Backhaus (1884-1969), captures the wonderful wide-ranging beauty of dignity, passion, joy and reserve in both works.

At an early performance of the 1st Sonata, Brahms played so loud that the cellist , himself an amateur, complained about not hearing his own instrument. “Lucky for you, too,” roared Brahms as he pounded away at the keyboard.

I met Janos Starker (1924-2014) in 1983 when he performed the Elgar Cello Concerto with the Houston Symphony under Sir Alexander Gibson. He exuded a most compelling aura of confidence and performed the work with ease and eloquence. Afterwards in the green room, he was the embodiment of cordiality and good humor when sharing a story of his days as principal cellist in the Chicago Symphony under the legendary Fritz Reiner.

His playing was characterized by a slashing, biting intensity that threw one into the heart of the music. Thus, his recordings of the charming 18th century Concerto in B-flat Major of Luigi Boccherini and the very exciting 1915 Sonata for Unaccompanied Cello further enrich this week’s set of historic recordings, all of which are posted from YouTube on my own Facebook page!

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 and Charles Munch conducting the Boston Symphony, a performance that was slightly tamer than the earlier Beecham but an excellent example of the RCA Victor Living Stereo process during the mid and late fifties into the early sixties.

Jumping ahead to the early ‘80s of digital sound, violinist Uto Ughi and the very underrated Georges Pretre conducting the London Symphony recorded a larger than life, grandly romantic performance for RCA that was so communicative I listened to it several times in a week. Jean Jacques Kantarow recorded a Denon cd in the early 2000s, featuring a smaller scaled, reserved approach, perhaps more suitable for Bach and Vivaldi but delectable in its musical charm; Emmanuel Krivine and the Nether­lands Chamber Orchestra provided superb accompaniment.

Due to limited time and space and an overwhelming multitude of violinsts and their contributions to the catalogs, I could not cover very worthwhile interpretations by Milstein, Stern, Oistrakh, Martzy, Perleman, etc., but I recommend that those who love this music follow their own instincts in picking violinists, scrolling through numerous YouTubes as a start.