by Peter Cates

Conversations about Bernstein
William Westbrook Burton, editor
Oxford Univ. Press, 1995, 198 pages.

Conversations is a volume of interviews with various individuals who knew and worked with the composer, conductor, pianist, author, TV personality extraordinaire, Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990), who was arguably the most famous man involved in classical music during the last 60 years. I have read bios by David Ewen, Joan Peyser, and Schuyler Chapin, each of whom has provided their own pieces of the fascinating puzzle comprising this genius.

As composer, he gave us the Broadway masterwork, West Side Story and other works, including at least 4 more musicals, assorted pieces for the theater and cinema and classical writings consisting of three symphonies, etc. As conductor of the New York Philharmonic from 1958-1969 and guesting with other orchestras, he recorded dozens of performances covering the well known repertoire and interesting, generally unknown pieces. As pianist, he did exciting records of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue; the Mozart Piano Concertos 15, 17, 18, and 25; and the Beethoven 1st, while conducting from the keyboard. As author, he wrote the insightful Infinite Variety of Music. And finally as TV personality, he produced the Young People’s Concerts.

The book features talks with composers Lucas Foss and David Diamond, record producer Paul Myers, the late anti-Bernstein New York Times critic Harold C. Schonberg, and performers such as cellist Slava Rostropovich and singers Christa Ludwig and Frederica von Stade, all of whom share valuable insights.

But the crowning, most searingly eloquent and fascinatingly memorable interview was with singer Carol Lawrence, the Maria of the original Broadway production of West Side Story, which opened in 1957. According to her, Bernstein was very agreeable and supportive to work with but he ceded most responsibility for the staging to the brilliant perfectionist choreographer Jerome Robbins, who was one blankety-blank SOB for all of the cast to work with, especially Lawrence. He singled her out for the bulk of his scathing, judgmental, around- the-clock pitchers of acid. But, as with any production he worked on, he achieved the most phenomenal results, laying the groundwork as much as the composer Leonard Bernstein and lyricist Stephen Sondheim for the musical’s unimpeachably classic status!

One song in the show, the hit I Feel Pretty, was originally marked for destruction by “Jerry” Robbins but was left in and made its own contribution to the show’s success, as conveyed now in Lawrence’s own account:

“But the most wonderful part, told to me afterwards, was that after the show, as Oscar Hammerstein was walking up the aisle, he came over to Jerry and Lenny, who were at the top, watching from the back row and said: ‘Congratulations to both of you. This is an incredible milestone in the theatre.’ And he raved and raved about every aspect of the show. And then, turning to Jerry, he said: ‘But my favorite moment in the entire show came with the spontaneity of I Feel Pretty. I don’t know how you did it, but you encapsulated the joy of a young woman in love. And you are to be congratulated.’ And Jerry said, ‘Thank you.’ “

by Peter Cates

The number of record collectors who listen to the dusty old 78s are few when one considers the general population but, if gathered in a convention hall from around the world, could fill it. The dealers hawking them on Ebay, popsike and other venues plus the Facebook pages testify to the interest, even, unbelievably, among young people born after Bush 41 assumed office!

Anyways time to end this banal introductory paragraph! I possess several thousand shellacs ranging from Woody Hermon and Caruso to the original Carousel and imported Telefunkens, Polydors and Deutsche Grammophons and love my sitdown sessions, interrupted every three to five minutes by getting up to change the disc. I play them on a Magnavox console I bought for ten bucks at an Augusta yard sale at least 11 years ago – this gift has kept on giving in the old-fashioned sense, like cars that were traded in mainly because their owners were tired of looking at them!

I would like to offer hopefully succinct comments on a few I own:

A record from 1940, on the Masterpiece label, has sides five and six featuring two-thirds of the slow movement of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony performed quite nicely by an unnamed orchestra. The New York Post spearheaded a series of record sets in the late ‘30s that contained Symphonies and other classical pieces that sold for a buck per set, instead of one or more dollars per record like Victor, Decca, Columbia, etc., but did not name the performers. Yet, because players and others, who were directly involved, talked, the story goes that there was a series of midnight recording sessions at Carnegie Hall with hand-picked free-lancers and conductors such as Eugene Ormandy, Fritz Reiner, Artur Rodzinski and Fritz Stiedry: names would be assigned to different works as more useful snitchings occurred. Thus, Ormandy was revealed as responsible for the Schubert!

An acoustic Victor from the World War I years features the Arthur Pryor Band doing a lively, charming first half of Rossini’s William Tell Overture, itself a very favorite classic of mine. Unfortunately, it is the last half that contains Heigh Ho Silver. I have previously covered another Pryor breakable in these most edifying pages so I will refer the newly curious to an informative Wiki bio on the bandleader’s illustrious life.

Another acoustic from the same label and recording decade has one side devoted to the Victor Minstrel Company, a chorus/orchestra combo performing Alabama Minstrels, a feisty medley consisting of then current hit songs – Fly Fly Fly, My Rosie Rambler that is not to be confused with Nat King Cole’s Ramblin’ Rose of more than 40 years later, and Linda, definitely not the Buddy Clark hit of more than 30 years later! These quaint celebrations of life in the then pellagra, hookworm and lynching – infested Deep South utopia are similar to the 1930s Mills Brothers Decca hit 78, Is It True What They Say About Dixie? and, of course, the 1940s Al Jolsen record of George Gershwin’s Swanee River, itself unsurpassed to this day as a rendition of that song! Finally, Jolsen sang it blackface in the movies before these practices were politically corrected.

Side two contains, again, Pryor’s Band doing Old Heidelberg, A Trip Up the Rhine that incorporates the Sailor’s Chorus from Wagner’s sterling opera, The Flying Dutchman.

One more – a Columbia acoustic from the Columbia Operatic Sextette, a mixed group of fine voices, performs the Donizetti Lucia di Lammermoor sextette, What from Vengeance, and Verdi’s Rigoletto quartet, Beauteous Daughter.

I might be pushing TMI here but I am certain somebody out there would like to know that all of the above selections are 12-inch discs.

by Peter Cates

Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet

starring Ozzie, Harriet, David and Ricky Nelson; ABC network, 435 episodes between Oct. 3, 1952 – April 23, 1966.

The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet was one of the two or three longest running comedy shows in TV history. From 1944-54 – the last two years simultaneously on TV, it was a hugely successful radio program. In 1952, Ozzie (1906-1975) persuaded ABC to sign an unprecedented 10-year contract that paid the family, whether the show was cancelled or not, and then his perfectionist work ethic contributed to its rousing success on TV.

All four Nelsons played themselves but, otherwise, the stories had very little to do with their real lives, although, during the introduction, they stood in front of their actual house (the interior was painstakingly reproduced on the studio backlot where each episode was filmed). For me, the show’s enjoyment derived from the daily life family situations and the cleverly sketched humor naturally arising from those situations.

Examples included the following:

Don Defoe (1913-1993) played the intrusive but likable neighbor, Thorney, – perpetrator of mischief and misunderstandings. Later, Lyle Talbot (1902-1996) and Mary Jane Croft (1916-1993) portrayed Joe and Clara, whose involvement in back and forth antics between them and the Nelsons brought much comic relief.

Next, what fan could forget Rick’s giggling, bungling, free-loading friend, Wally Plumsted, who often provoked his long-suffering girlfriend, Ginger, who in turn so often referred to him as Fatso; both Skip Young (1930-1993) and Charlene Salerno (1938-1986) scored high points with their meticulously honed timing, delivery and vivid characterization – oddly, Salerno never appeared elsewhere on any TV show and film.

Finally, Ozzie himself could hold his own for unexpected, very funny facial expressions and movements. I lost track of the number of split seconds where he suddenly made a face at us viewers.

Harriet (1909-1994) was the sturdy assuring mother figure, David (1936-2011), the earnest good son and older brother, and Ricky (1940-1985) was endearing in his own constant desire to do what’s right, occasionally straying off the plantation with farcical moments of bad judgment. When he became a recording star, his father devoted the last five minutes of several episodes to him and his band performing a recent hit song.

Various video cassettes and DVDs have been released of episodes from the 14-year run but a complete set of all 435 episodes have been gathered and slated for DVD/Blue Ray release.

by Peter Cates

Cheers for Miss Bishop

starring Martha Scott, William Gargan, Edmund Gwenn, Sterling Holloway, Sidney Blackmer, etc.; directed by Tay Garnett; United Artists, 1941, 95 minutes, DVD.

I have seen and enjoyed this warm-hearted soap opera twice, if such a term can be employed. Martha Scott (1913-2003) portrays an English teacher, Ella Bishop, who serves for over 40 years at the college in her mid-western small town. William Gargan is a local businessman and loyal, lifelong friend, Sam, deeply in love with her forever but never having the gumption to declare it.

The story begins with Ella graduating from high school the year that the college opens. Both her character and academic work win over the president of the college, played by Edmund Gwenn with his consistent blend of understated class, to such an extent that, upon her college graduation and ambition to teach in one of the big cities, he immediately offers her a position.

She wins many hearts and minds with her passionate commitment to her work over the years but her heart is broken twice by suiters. Meanwhile, she raises a daughter born out of wedlock to a younger cousin dying during childbirth. Finally, upon retirement, she is honored at a surprise and massively attended alumni banquet that includes a number of former students who have attained world fame because of her inspiration to them.

Every member of the cast gave A-plus performances while the film, despite a rather predictable story, was shot and paced in such a vivid, agreeable manner, as has been the case of similar movies from the ‘40s, that viewers were, and still are, drawn in.

In 1960, William Gargan, had his larynx removed due to throat cancer, had to speak through a voicebox and became an activist for helping others who had experienced laryngectomies to learn to speak again.

Borodin: Prince Igor

Recitative and Air of Prince Galitsky
Feodor Chaliapin, bass, with orchestra; Victrola- 87361; ten-inch one-sided 78 shellac, recorded 1920.

Feodor Chaliapin (1873-1938) is arguably considered the finest bass singer who ever lived and gives an electrifying performance of the Borodin aria listed above. But he did not achieve his fame only through singing but also as an actor; he impressed the composer Rachmaninoff, with whom he had a long friendship, and many others with the painstaking detail with which he planned every line, movement and position in the roles he performed.

Finally, he was a notorious carouser who maintained two separate families with a wife and mistress.

Most of his many 78 records are available in CD form and for listening on YouTube.

Rachmaninoff

Symphonic Dances & Vocalise
Simon Rattle conducting the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra; Angel, DS 538019, recorded 10-23-1982 and 2-28-83, digital stereo LP.

Rachmaninoff completed his Symphonic Dances in October 1940, with the words, “I thank Thee, Lord!” and, due to poor health and constant fatigue, did little besides completing the final revision of his 4th Piano Concerto before his death during his 70th year in 1943. He would entrust the world premiere to the Philadelphia Orchestra, with whom he left recordings of his four concertos and the Paganini Rhapsody with himself at the keyboard, and still in print on CDs.

The Symphonic Dances make for exciting listening with their very colorful rhythms and captivating melodies. Sir Simon Rattle recorded very satisfactory performances of the Dances and the beautiful short Vocalise with its haunting passage for solo violin.

by Peter Cates

After the Ball

Joan Morris, soprano, with William Bolcom, piano. Nonesuch H-71304, stereo LP, recorded 1974.

Joan Morris and her husband, William Bolcom, have been serving up records and concerts for over 45 years since the early seventies, their specialty being popular songs and composers from the Civil War to the ‘50s Lieber and Stoller. One album spotlighted Henry Clay Work, who wrote My Grandfather’s Clock.

The above set collects classic and not so classic vaudeville hits – Meet Me in Saint Louis, I‘ve Got Rings on My Fingers, the title song, my special favorite Love’s Old Sweet Song and ten others – and Joan Morris gives her charming colorful soprano best with her husband’s skilled keyboard. Their approach is that of the Sunday afternoon drawing room or parlor at Aunt Blanche’s but it is one making for great listening, in small doses!

Stravinsky

Suite Italienne
Debussy: Sonata for Cello and Piano; Busoni: Kleine Suite, Op. 23; Foss: Capriccio for Cello and Piano – Gregor Piatigorsky, cello; Lukas Foss, piano; RCA Victor, LM-2293, mono LP, recorded 1958.

Gregor Piatigorsky (1903-1976) was a bear of a man in his physique as well as being one of the 20th century’s truly fine cellists and turning out recordings characterized by a special kind of electrifying intensity and sublime beauty. Two special favorites are his early ‘40s Dvorak Cello Concerto with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra and the two Brahms Cello Sonatas from the ‘70s with pianist Artur Rubinstein.

This week’s record contains the listed works by four quite gifted and interesting modern composers. However, my favorite piece is the just over 10 minute Debussy Cello Sonata, one of the most beautiful examples of quiet sweet subtlety, mystery and bursting rhythm ever written by anyone and performed in the most alive, exciting yet delicate manner by the cellist and his partner, composer/pianist Lucas Foss.

Living Marimbas

Tijuana Taxis
RCA Camden, CAS-961, stereo LP, recorded 1966.

This batch of ten ‘60s Latin-American tunes, including the two classics, Spanish Eyes and Spanish Harlem, is arranged and performed by a studio group of carefully handpicked instrumentalists under the noted pop conductor, Leo Addeo, in an understated manner that is pleasant but not moving.