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 articles.

Born on April 10, 1934, in New York City and raised in Connecticut, he was a classmate of consumer advocate Ralph Nader. In 1955, he graduated from Harvard in the bottom third of his class and was hired as a reporter by newspapers in Mississippi and Tennessee, being the only one to cover the Nashville sit-ins. On a lighter note, I remember reading his liner notes for an LP of country pianist Floyd Cramer.

Beginning in the early ‘60s, Halberstam’s books on Vietnam, the media, big business and sports occupied him for over four decades. His gifts for story telling characterized the 1979 The Powers That Be, a riveting study of Time magazine’s Henry Luce, CBS’s William Paley and the Washington Post’s Phil Graham. The Post chapters contained one very good account of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s news investigation leading to the Watergate trial.

The Fifties is a massive-sized narrative panorama of a continually fascinating decade. Halberstam’s mastery of the character sketch shines in his portraits of Presidents Truman and Eisenhower; Red-baiting Wisconsin Democratic Senator Joseph McCarthy,”shrewd, insecure and defensive,” as tellingly and understatedly described by the author; mystery writer Mickey Spillane, creator of the vigilante lone detective Mike Hammer who went after Communists instead of gangsters and the politicians; the McDonald brothers, whose hamburger stand was transformed by Ray Kroc into a multi-billion dollar empire; Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Milton Berle, and Sid Caesar, who brought low-brow slapstick comedy to the mass television audiences, who clamored for more; nuclear scientist Edward Teller and his hydrogen bomb; Elvis Presley; sex researcher Alfred Kinsey and publisher Hugh Hefner, with their launching of the insidious sexual revolution; and a huge range of other personalities in as many spheres of influence who contributed so much to the decade’s perpetual interest. For me, the quiet seamstress Rosa Parks is arguably the central figure of monumental interest – her refusal to move to the back of the bus was a significant contribution to spurring the long-needed and awaited Civil Rights movement.

David Halberstam was killed in an automobile crash near San Francisco en route to interview football legend Y.A. Tittle for one of two books he had in preparation. He was 73 years old.

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 drew out a most delectable note while sustaining the happiest smile. This enjoyment quickly spread to band members and audiences alike.

His best qualities, ones that were sustained in a huge legacy of recordings and concerts throughout a more than 60-year career, were an infectious rhythmic beat, an enthusiastic team spirit and a long list of talented, inspired singers and instrumentalists- vocalists Jimmy Rushing, Big Joe Turner, Joe Williams, Helen Humes, and Thelma Carpenter; saxist Lester Young; guitarist Freddie Green; and Buck Clayton and Harry Sweets Edison on trumpet.

The above CD, a typically good one, contains eight selections, including such staples as Sweet Georgia Brown and Ja-Da.

In 1970, Basie collaborated with Frank Sinatra at a pair of benefit concerts. The singer would later comment: “I have a funny feeling that those two nights could have been my finest hour, really. It went so well; it was so thrilling and exciting.”

The pianist was honored at the 1981 Kennedy Center Awards program.

Count Basie succumbed to pancreatic cancer in 1984 at the age of 79.

Ravel

Orchestral Works
Andre Cluytens conducting the Paris Conservatory Orchestra; French Columbia, 2 LP set, recorded 1962-63.

As much as I cherish other gifted interpreters of Debussy and Ravel – examples being Monteux, Munch, Ansermet, Boulez, Abbado etc., – I return to Andre Cluytens (1905 -1967) most often. He conducted both composers with consistent elegance, power, beauty, clarity. And his meticulously prepared interpretations weren’t just bestowed on the French school. The Berlin Philharmonic Beethoven 9 Symphonies are now routinely considered among the top three or four sets, his collaboration with David Oistrakh in the same composer’s Violin Concerto is quite splendid and a set of Moussorgsky’s Boris Godunov with Christoff is a justified cornerstone among great recordings of Russian opera. Two personal, less mentioned favorites are a live Brahms 2nd Piano Concerto with Rubinstein and an exquisitely shaped Schumann Rhenish Symphony.

The above collection consists of the Mother Goose ballet, Valse Nobles et Sentimentales, Tombeau de Couperin, Menuet Antique, Alborada del Gracioso, Barque sue L’Ocean, and Pavane for a Dead Princess. Each piece is an inexhaustible masterwork, masterfully performed. And these recordings are available via several different CD editions.

by Peter Cates

Scandinavia

Laserlight, 79 675, cassette, released 1991.

The Laserlight label began releasing very inexpensive cassettes and CDs during the late ‘80s and focusing mainly on classical music.

Scandina­via, a musical grab bag centered on Norway, Sweden and Fin­land, contains the 2nd Peer Gynt Suite and two Elegiac Melodies of Norway’s Edvard Grieg and the Swan of Tuonela and Finlandia of Finland’s Jean Sibelius, along with three shorter pieces. The performers include the very gifted conductors, Janos Sandor, Yuri Ahronovitch, Herbert Kegel, Geoffrey Simon and Rouslan Raichev; pianist, Jeno Jando; and, for orchestras, the Hungarian State, Budapest Strings, Vienna Symphony, Philharmonia and Dresden and Plovdiv, Bulgaria, Philharmonics – all first class ensembles. A nice cassette for classical beginners.

Amazon prices begin at one cent for CDs while the cassette is not available for now.

The Rays

Silhouettes; Daddy Cool
Cameo 117, 45, recorded 1957.

The Rays were formed in 1955 and scored a #3 hit on the charts with the doo wop classic, Silhouettes, which sold 3 million copies. It has sustained its status as a captivating song and been covered by other artists. The side B is a throwaway.

Verdi

Otello
Sixten Ehrling conducting choir and orchestra with tenor Set Svanholm, soprano Aase Nordmo-Lovberg and baritone Sigurd Bjorling, etc.; Preiser 90754, three CDs, 1953-54 Stockholm Opera production, with extra cd of Verdi’s Don Carlo excerpts, with same forces from 1956.

This set will appeal to a surprisingly sizable number of those who collect historic opera broadcasts. The performance has a sterling cast with Svan­holm’s jealous Otello, Nordmo’s doomed Desdem­ona, and Bjor­ling’s treacherous Iago, while Verdi’s setting of the original Shake­speare play has made for one of the finest opera experiences in the genre’s history. Sixten Ehrling had a very unpleasant personality by most accounts but his conducting of most everything I have heard was very exciting, as was the case with the Don Carlo excerpts.

by Peter Cates

Bruckner

Symphony No. 8
Anton Nanut conducting the Ljublana Symphony Orchestra; Stradivari Classics, SCD-6059, CD, recorded 1980s.

If I had to pick only one conductor whose recordings I could take to a desert island, it would be Anton Nanut (1932-2017) . He conducted almost every piece of music as if it were the most beautiful and exciting music to be heard this side of heaven, equaling, if not surpassing, the most well known conductors of the last 100 years.

He was below the radar of listeners in the United States during the Iron Curtain years, pre-1989, as he transformed the orchestra in Ljublana, Slovenia, then a part of Yugoslavia, into a world class ensemble. Since the late ‘80s, his recordings began appearing mainly on cheapie labels while his frequent appearances in Japan and more sporadic ones in the U.S. increased his international reputation. Meanwhile, live concerts with Japanese orchestras have appeared on that country’s labels and are super expensive on Amazon- I do own a CD of a 2013 live concert featuring one very powerful and beautiful Brahms 4th Symphony among the batch of Brahms 4ths on my shelves and paid a few dollars more than the norm.

The 8th Symphony of Anton Bruckner (1824-1896) is a magnificently beautiful, soaring, exciting 76 minutes of music that displays the full range of the orchestra. Being a devout Catholic, Bruckner intended for his music to praise God, to evoke His full glory. Nanut delivered a gripping, deeply moving performance and I found a copy of the cd at the Waterville Bull Moose for 4 bucks after searching high and low on Amazon.

Several Nanut recordings can also be heard on YouTube.

Burt Bacharach

Plays His Hits
Kapp, KS-3577, stereo LP, released 1965.

Now 90, Burt Bacharach has been intertwined with so much of pop music’s infrastructure as a composer, pianist, arranger, conductor, etc. I would recommend a reading of his Wiki biography which is a super-lengthy chronicle of his hugely phenomenal musical achievements by themselves. The Dionne Warwick mega-hits; the musical Promises, Promises; and his collaborations with Carol Bayer Sager, Christopher Cross and Elvis Costello are still tips of the iceberg.

The LP posted above with chorus and orchestra is a suavely and vibrantly played assortment of 11 songs, over half of which have been recorded a zillion times and features such classics as Always Something There to Remind Me, Walk on By, Wives and Lovers, Blue on Blue, Don’t Go Breaking My Heart and Joel Grey doing vocal honors on What’s New Pussycat.

And most of it can be heard on Youtube!

The great conductor, Herbert von Karajan (1908-1989), recorded one beauty of a Dvorak New World Symphony for Deutsche Grammophon with the Berlin Philharmonic back in 1964, and it can be bought cheaply through Amazon as part of a mega box set of many CDs featuring this conductor’s legacy or as a single CD. He did at least four others but this is the only DG one with the Berlin Philharmonic. And this recording is on YouTube also!

by Peter Cates

Beethoven

Pastoral Symphony and Leonore Overture No. 3
Wilhelm Furtwangler conducting the Turin Radio Orchestra of Italy; Urania URN 22.227, CD, from a 1952 broadcast and issued 2002.

Wilhelm Furtwangler (1886-1954) was one conductor now considered by more collectors and listeners to classical recordings to be very close to the greatest who ever lived – despite a catalog of recordings that are often live broadcasts of just fair to average sound quality, a wayward conducting technique and a tendency to do certain pieces over and over; for example, there are 11 or more different performances of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony.

But there is an exalted inspiration that seeps into his conducting and stirs this listener. He will use very slow, lumbering tempos or speed them to a Richard Petty level to achieve these depths. Sometimes he misses this target and mixes good and bad qualities. Still, a friend who owns just about every lp, cassette and cd of him commented to me that even 5 minutes of inspired music-making will be 10 or 15 bucks well spent .

Because of Furtwangler’s decision to stay in Germany during the Hitler years of 1933-45, he stirred a lot of controversy. And because of limited space, I cannot go into detail. However, it should also be known that the conductor used his influence to help many individuals and their families to leave Germany for safe haven . Those curious should check out Google and other related sources.

These two Beethovens are available in numerous good modern editions by other conductors but this cd should please fans of the conductor and is cheaply priced and available through the online Berkshire Record Outlet where I found my copy.

Haydn

Symphonies 83, 84 and 88
Jane Glover conducting the London Mozart Players; Musical Heritage Society 322541A, cassette, recorded 1989.

Jane Glover has become one of the finest interpreters of lesser known baroque composers such as Cavalli, on whom she has expended much research, and of the later two geniuses of the 18th century classical period, Mozart and Haydn. These three works of the latter are among the most graceful, spirited symphonies to be found in the composer’s very extensive catalog. And Glover and her players deliver exceptional performances.

The Last Hurrah

starring Spencer Tracy, Basil Rathbone, John Carradine, Pat O’Brien, etc.; directed by John Ford; Columbia Pictures, dvd, 1958, 121 minutes.

Spencer Tracy delivers one of his typically first class performances as Frank Skeffington, the Irish-American mayor of an unnamed New England City who is running for a fifth term. The conflicts between him, because of his roguish but essentially decent populist style of leadership, and a couple of power blocs, especially the old blue blood wasps, lend much interest to the story line, which is both funny and moving. And the large superb cast, which includes the other above-mentioned names, has been called by one reviewer “the largest collection of scene-stealers in the history of cinema.”

The Cars

Since You’re Gone; Think It Over
Elektra/Asylum, E 47433, seven inch 45, recorded 1981.

The group, Cars, was formed in Boston, in 1976 – the same year I moved back to Maine after my three-year sojourn in Beantown. After listening to this 45, I found myself captivated by the pulsating arrangements, utilizing interesting percussion sounds, but was unimpressed by the namby pamby two songs which went nowhere!

Dvorak

9th Symphony From the New World
James Loughran conducting the London Philharmonic; Mendelssohn: The 4th, or Italian Symphony- Antonio Pedrotti conducting the Czech Philharmonic; Net Surfin’, VMK-1059, cd, Dvorak recorded 1997, Mendelssohn from 1951.

This CD features two very talented conductors not generally known to even the typical American concertgoer and their interpretations of very well known symphonies. The Scottish-born James Loughran, now 87 and still active as a conductor and teacher, did one of the loveliest, most satisfying recordings of the Dvorak New World.

The even more unknown but very gifted Italian, Antonio Pedrotti (1901-1975) left one gem of an Italian Symphony, a Mendel­ssohn staple that can work as quickly as a sleeping pill in the wrong hands; this Maestro imbued the piece with perkiness, elegance and sweet poetry in just the right proportions. The CD is very cheaply priced on Amazon.