by Peter Cates

Palace Records

Grieg 2nd Peer Gynt Suite and Liszt 1st Piano Concerto; Kurt Baumann conducting the Viennese Symphonic Orchestra; Palace PST-610, 12-inch stereo LP released mid-1950s.

Palace was one of many record labels that came and went during the 1950s. The jacket had a list price of $4.98 which was the usual retail price for stereo releases on major labels – RCA, Columbia, Capitol , Atlantic, MGM, Decca etc. – and which listed the real names of artists, not pseudonyms such as the non-existent Kurt Baumann and the so-called Viennese Symphonic Orchestra, which were often the practices of the dime store record labels.

However, despite the lack of information on the conductor, the orchestra and, with respect to the Liszt Concerto, the pianist (not even a fake name), the performances of both works were very exciting and the recorded sound quite good.

Taj Mahal

Taj Mahal

Taj Mahal – Recycling the Blues and Other Related Stuff; Columbia KC 31605, t12-inch stereo LP, recorded 1972.

Still living at 82, Henry St. Claire Fredericks Jr., better known by the stage name of Taj Mahal, is a multi-talented instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, etc., who could be labeled a blues singer but such a categorization would be a mistake.

Mahal has always been inspired by world music from Hawaii, the South Pacific and Caribbean, India, Africa and elsewhere as well as jazz and gospel, having been exposed to these influences from an early age by his parents owning a shortwave radio, Mahal’s mother singing in the church choir and both of them hosting friends who were jazz singers and musicians, including the great Ella Fitzgerald.

The title of this 1972 album, Recycling the Blues and Other Related Stuff, hints at these eclectic influences while song titles – Ricochet, A Free Song (Rise Up Children Shake the Devil Out of Your Soul), Cakewalk into Town, Sweet Home Chicago – hint at something more positive than the usual focus of the blues on mere misery and despair.

Among the several instruments Mahal has mastered are the piano, banjo, organ, steel guitar and harmonica.

Backup singers on this album include the Pointer Sisters.

Traditional bluesmen who plied the genre without Mahal’s multi-cultural interests have included the gifted B.B. King, John Lee Hooker, Robert Johnson, Bessie Smith, Albert King and Muddy Waters. However, back during the ‘70s when I worked in Boston record stores, I noticed that the records of these blues artists were more frequently bought by whites whereas the soul albums of the Ohio Players, Al Green, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, the Supremes, Temptations, Earth Wind and Fire, Four Tops and Ojays were purchased by African-Americans.

I inquired of an African-American colleague the reason; she replied that the blues artists were considered Uncle Toms by younger people whereas the contemporary soul singers were upbeat, assertive and even confrontational against the racism and other social injustices that unfortunately continue to exist a half century later.

by Peter Cates

Louise Dickinson Rich

Louise Dickinson Rich

The Coast of Maine by Louise Dickinson Rich (1903-1991) was first published in 1956 and subsequently revised in 1962 and 1970. Dipping in it, I came across the following:

“Considering its present and past eminence as a seaport, which always connotes-perhaps unfairly – sailors celebrating shore leave by bending the festive elbow, I think it is a little odd that Rockland, over a hundred years ago, organized the first Total Abstinence Society in America. I’m not talking about temperance now, but complete abstinence, an unheard-of thing at the time.”

“The tourist trade had its inception around 1870, when Bar Harbor, which was then little more than a collection of fishing shacks, was ‘discovered ‘, along with the other now well-known resort towns of the coast.”

Finally Kennebunk has a Unitarian Church containing a bell in its steeple that was cast by Paul Revere.

Rich’s book has numerous other anecdotes about past and, as of 1970, present Maine along with a number of striking black and white photographs by Samuel Chamberlain. For me personally, it lends itself better to browsing than cover to cover reading.

Sir Laurence Olivier

Sir Laurence Olivier

Sir Laurence Olivier (1907-1989) wrote in his autobiography Confessions of an Actor, published in 1982, of being asked to fire British actress Dame Edith Evans from a production he had directed in which she had the leading role because she was messing up her movements on stage, not remembering her lines and generally looking spaced out.

Feeling incapable of firing a much admired colleague and friend, Olivier strolled to the actress’s dressing room “to bluster it out with Edith”:

“As I was doling out the bubbling greetings of an old colleague, I caught sight of a pair of unworn eyelashes beside her makeup tray and burst out, ‘Edith, dear, why on earth didn’t you wear those?’ ‘Well, dear,’ she said, ‘I didn’t want to think of it as a performance!’

Preparing to drop “the bloody but necessary axe” if Edith still messed up, Olivier was much relieved when the actress delivered a much better “performance”, approaching her role as a “performance” and wearing the necessary eyelashes, and Olivier kept her on for the play’s entire run.

Olivier himself delivered a very memorable performance as the sadistic Nazi dentist Szell working on Dustin Hoffman’s teeth in the 1976 Marathon Man.

Dame Edith Evan

Other memorable roles were the earlier film classics Wuthering Heights, the suspenseful Rebecca directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Richard the Third with actress Claire Bloom and the Boys from Brazil as the Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal opposite Gregory Peck as another Nazi doctor.

Olivier’s second ex-wife, Vivian Leigh, (1913-1967) performed exceptionally as Scarlet O’Hara in 1939’s Gone with the Wind with Clark Gable’s Rhett Butler and Olivia de Haviland’s lovely Melanie Hamilton.

Olivier’s third wife and widow Joan Plowright, still living at 95, delivered a sterling performance in the 2005 Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont.

Olivier speaks of the challenges for memorizing lines when one is past 60: “When the brain is at its clearest, probably in the early morning, is the best time for learning; when you’re young, late at night is all right – well, any time’s all right for anything when golden youth is yours.”

Johanna Fiedler

by Peter Cates

Johanna Fiedler

In the Introduction to her 1994 memoir, Arthur Fiedler: Papa, the Pops, and Me, the late Johanna Fiedler (1944-2011) writes the following about being in New York City and watching the live CBS TV presentation of her father conducting the Boston Pops at the 1976 Bicentennial 4th of July concert at the Charles River Esplanade Shell:

“From the overhead shots taken by panning cameras on the roofs of neighboring apartment buildings, I could tell this was the largest crowd I had ever seen. People filled the Espla­nade and the adjacent highway, crammed boats on the Charles River Basin, and stretched back as far as the television cameras were able to show. Later I found out that the crowd had been just as dense on the Cambridge side of the river, where the music must have been almost inaudible. The Guinness Book of Records was to list this as the largest mass of people ever to attend a classical music performance. “

Arthur Fiedler

Arthur Fiedler’s Boston Pops records sold in the millions. My earliest memories as a classical record collector in seventh grade are the 12-inch Red Seal 78s gifted to me by kind relatives and friends of Jacob Gade’s Jalousie with Manuel de Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance on the reverse side; of Ponchielli’s Dance of the Hours (itself the melody for Allan Sherman’s infamous early 1960s best selling record Hello Fadda, Hello Madda/Camp Granada); a spirited late 1940s 78 set of the Offenbach/Rosenthal Gaite Parisienne Ballet with its own Can Can; and hearing on the radio the Pops own semi-classical arrangement, with sweetly graceful strings, of the Beatles’ I Want to Hold Your Hand, for me the first enjoyable rendition of one of their songs, as during junior high I detested rock music, especially the Beatles, the Beach Boys and Elvis Presley.

With 13th birthday money, I bought a 1964 Boston Pops album (RCA Victor LM-2745) simply titled Music America Loves Best, and containing spirited performances of Rossini’s William Tell Overture, Handel’s Largo, Grieg’s The Last Spring, Wagner’s Prelude to Act 3 of Lohengrin, Johann Strauss’s Acceleration Waltz, and the Brahms’ 6th Hungarian Dance, at Al Corey’s Music Center, in Waterville.

It had a full spread cover photo of Fiedler sitting on a park bench with his baton against a green background. I played that record to death.

Fiedler seemed to be a slightly gruff but likable character and conveyed this persona in his public appearances over almost 50 years. However, like so many artists, he was a very complicated man.

In her book, Johanna writes of her father as loving, moody, fun-filled, harsh, generous, miserly, attentive, and indifferent; and of his own harrowing insecurities as his fame and wealth increased.

Examples:

She tells of her father, when she was a little girl, giving her one on one time cuddling with her while they both watched boxing matches on his bedroom TV. But when she was a teenager and dressed nicely for her parents, he’d put her down with comments such as “She looks like a French prostitute or…a piece of cheese.”

The parents constantly fought among themselves and with Johanna, while, as an adult, she was estranged from both of them for months.

Her father’s insecurities stemmed partly from the resentments of the classical music world at the success of the Pops concerts and records. And, as he grew older, he had paralyzing fears about losing his mental and physical health.

Again, Johanna writes:

“‘Poor Pierre Monteux [the conductor who founded a summer school in Hancock, Maine, for teaching conducting],’ Papa said in 1970. ‘Near the end, he could hardly get on the stand, and his legs were frozen during a concert.’ Only a year or two later, my father began having trouble with his own legs, the fate he had been predicting for himself for years. His walking and balance got so bad that he could barely lift his feet off the floor, and we had to install a stair elevator at Hyslop Road [the address of the Fiedler family home in Brookline, Massachusetts.].”

As a personal account of growing up under a famous parent, this book is highly recommended.

I recently heard a 1970s cassette anthology, American Salute, in which Fiedler and the Boston Pops do staples ranging from Aaron Copland’s Hoedown from Rodeo, William Schuman’s arrangement of the Revolutionary War hymn Chester and the title selection American Salute, by Morton Gould, to pop songs by Jimmy Webb – By the Time I Get to Phoenix and Galveston; the more traditional Down in the Valley and Deep in the Heart of Texas; TV themes from Bonanza, Maverick, Have Gun Will Travel, and Gunsmoke; guitarist Chet Atkins playing Tennessee Waltz; Saint Louis Blues, etc. These were all culled from previous Boston Pops LPs and done with the consistently spirited musicianship Fiedler was justly renowned for.

Finally one Arthur Fiedler album I absolutely cherish among the many here at the house is a late 1940s RCA Victor collection of four Overtures by 19th century French composer Daniel-Francoise Auber (1782-1871).

And YouTube abounds with Fiedler recordings, the PBS Evening at Pops episodes and more.

Arturo Michelangeli

by Peter Cates

Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli

Pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli (1920-1995) had, like Vladimir Horowitz and Sviatoslav Richter , a superhuman lightning speed virtuosity at the keyboard that brought much deserved fame. Unlike Horowitz and Richter who left several different performances of certain pieces that varied in style and tempo, Michelangeli would record, for example, the same Mozart or Grieg Piano Concerto and the tempos and timing would be precisely the same.

However, like Horowitz and Richter, Michelangeli brought a heartfelt musicianship and labor of love to his playing; also, like his two colleagues, he frequently programmed a handful of favorite pieces as opposed to a vast repertoire of other pianists.

A 1965 record (London CS 6446), and one of a tiny handful of studio records he left, featured a program of Sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757), Baldassarre Galuppi (1706-1785) and Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827).

With all due respect to the earlier composers and their own contributions to the keyboard literature, I have always found the chosen Beethoven Sonata #32 the most deeply personal of the 32 that he composed for the instrument. So much human emotion ranging from agony to ecstasy with moments of frivolity, whimsicality, jumping for joy, melancholy, is conveyed in its 20 minute length.

Technically speaking it is a knuckle buster while demanding a pianist who can communicate its range of emotions. Michelangeli met these challenges with a powerful performance.

During his career, Michelangeli earned several million dollars but may have suffered from manic depression, possibly revealed in a statement he made to his secretary:

“You see, so much applause, so much public. Then, in half an hour, you feel alone more than before.”

I majored in English and graduated in 1973 from the University of Southern Maine with a B.S. degree , roughly 62 hours of literature classes and only the required hours of other subject areas- 18 hours of history as a minor, as little as possible of science and math and not a single course in economics, sociology, philosophy or foreign languages .

I was a very narrow minded jerk when it came to any interest in a well-rounded education.

One course I enjoyed was Shakespeare with Dr. Stan Vincent and the plays I remembered most vividly were Richard the Third, A Winter’s Tale, the Tempest, King Lear, Othello, the especially vicious Titus Andronicus and the singular masterpiece Hamlet.

Hamlet is a character totally imagined, created and given words and situations with others by the brain cells of Shakespeare according to the early 19th century essayist William Hazlitt.

More importantly, as Hazlitt wrote, Hamlet’s “speeches and sayings…are as real as our own thoughts. It is WE who are Hamlet…It is the one of Shakespeare’s plays that we think of the oftenness because it abounds most in striking reflections on human life.”

And Hamlet’s most striking statement – “To be or not to be – that is the question!” strikes right at the heart of life just as much in the 21st century as it did in the 16th through 20th centuries. And being needs to lead to action, a truth just as important as the one from Socrates more than 2,000 years ago – “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

Hamlet remains a play well worth reading and re-reading for its masterful Elizabethan poetry and prose, its range of characters, treacheries and situations and its abiding sense of reality.

by Peter Cates

Franz Liszt

One of the very first classical records to give pleasure to me during seventh grade was a 12-inch 78 (Columbia Masterworks 12437) of the Second Hungarian Rhapsody, by Franz Liszt (1811-1886), as performed by Eugene Ormandy (1899-1985) with the Phildelphia Orchestra and recorded April 18, 1946.

Franz Liszt

Lasting just under 10 minutes, the piece is divided into two parts, the first being a slowly paced and haunting atmospheric scoring for strings while the second accelerates into an explosively jubilant dance for full orchestra. Ormandy, being justly renowned for bringing the rich string sound, that his predecessor Leopold Stokowski (1882-1975) had already achieved there, to an even greater sustained level, conducted a very exciting performance which can be heard on YouTube.

Ormandy would later re-record the Rhapsody but this earlier one still stands out.

Ormandy also recorded the Liszt tone poem Les Preludes at least twice. Again a 78 set is my favorite for its extra adrenaline and was released on Victor , M-453. It is a very colorful show piece in which Philadelphia’s strings, woodwinds, brass and percussion display their virtuosity (In 1943, Ormandy and the Orchestra would record for Columbia for 25 years before returning to RCA Victor in 1968.).

Liszt composed two Piano Concertos and the Totentanz also for piano and orchestra. In 1960, Ormandy collaborated with pianist Philippe Entremont, himself still living at 90. Ormandy has also left a recording of another Liszt tone poem, Mephisto Waltz.

During his youth, Liszt himself was a legendary virtuoso touring Europe with mobs of screaming women fans; in 1837, he was involved in an affair with Countess Marie D’Agoult and she gave birth to a daughter Cosima who would later marry composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883).

Eugene Ormandy

While still living the flamboyant life of a touring celebrity, Liszt, according to the writer Samuel Chotzinoff, “made the quixotic decision to quit the concert stage and accept the post of musical director in the small town of Weimar [Germany], at a salary of a thousand dollars a year, there to devote his time to composing, conducting and teaching the piano without pay.”

For the remaining 38 years of his life, Franz Liszt was unstintingly generous with his time and money to the mentoring of younger composers and musicians. He would eventually practice a religious asceticism, dressed in a priestly cassock and becoming the Abbe Liszt.

Other very good interpreters of Liszt’s music include pianists Artur Rubinstein, Alfred Brendel, Van Cliburn, Sviatoslav Richter, Lazar Berman, George Bolet, Claudio Arrau, Annie Fischer, Walter Gieseking, and Martha Argerich; and conductors Leonard Bernstein, Fritz Reiner, Herbert von Karajan, Selmar Meyrowitz, Alceo Galliera, Antal Dorati, Jascha Horenstein, Sir Thomas Beecham, Anatole Fistoulari and Sir Georg Solti, etc.

A story is told of Schumann and Brahms visiting Liszt, of Liszt playing his own Piano Sonata for the two guests and of Brahms falling asleep. Liszt was not happy.