by Peter Cates

Maria Duenas

Lalo: Symphonie Espagnole – violinist Maria Duenas with Mihhail Gerts conducting the Estonian National Orchestra, 2019 concert video on YouTube.

Spanish violinist Maria Duenas, now 22, has already landed a recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon and won several first prizes at violin competitions around the world since the age of 17. She has cited her favorite violinists, Jascha Heifetz, Yehudi Menuhin and David Oistrakh, as the inspiration for developing her own style expressing concern about too many other violinists sounding too much alike, a sentiment I agree with.

Some time ago, I viewed a YouTube of her performing Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto and found it engaging enough to sit through the entire performance yet not particularly moving.

Still, for some mysterious reason, I got curious enough to view this performance of the Symphonie Espagnole by French composer Edouard Lalo (1823-1892) as this very captivating showpiece has grown on me more and more in recent years. (When Tchaikovsky got access to the manuscript in 1878 and played through it on the piano, he was inspired enough to compose his own Violin Concerto.).

Again and most unfortunately Duenas’s playing of this piece did not leave me wanting more. She phrased the notes and bars nicely enough (She omitted movements three and four of a five movement piece; the jump from the jubilant opening two movements to the jubilant Finale without the contrasting calm lyricism of three and four was jarring) and conveyed endearing stage presence but the overall interpretation didn’t take fire.

A plus here, however, was watching the focused musicians who gave their all, unlike so many players in more well known orchestras who seem to be merely going through the motions in the umpteenth performance of a given piece. The Estonian National Orchestra is another example of the excitement and commitment to be seen among the symphony orchestras now gaining fame in the post Iron Curtain eastern Europe, others being the Radio Orchestras of Bucharest, Ljubljana, Bratislava etc.

As for Miss Duenas, I feel that, because of her expressed commitment to developing her own style, she may remain a violinist worth watching.

My favorite recordings of the Lalo Symphonie Espagnole are the two collaborations of Isaac Stern with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra on Columbia Masterworks LPs from 1955 and 1965 and presumably available also on YouTube. Stern is not otherwise among my top five or even ten favorite violinists but he really had this music thoroughly nailed down while Ormandy was always a masterful accompanist in Concertos.

Both of the above LPs also contain eloquent performances of the Bruch Violin Concerto.

Kansas City Confidential

A most entertaining 1952 Film Noir classic, imbued with 1950s time warp atmosphere, intelligence, lack of predictability and fascinating character development is Kansas City Confi­dential starring John Payne as the protagonist and Jack Elam and Lee Van Cleef as two armored truck robbers. All three actors did superb work in their roles and conveyed formidable presence.

Casino Dance Orchestra

Casino Dance Orchestra – Wonderful One; Good-Night. Perfect 14117, ten-inch 78, recorded circa 1923-24.

The Casino Dance Orchestra was a pseudonym for several dance orchestras making records during the 1920s. Whoever the musicians on this shellac were, they were very gifted ones.

The two selections – the particularly exquisite Wonderful One composed by the well-known dance band leader Paul Whiteman and his chief arranger Ferde Grofe, most renowned for his own Grand Canyon Suite; and the throwaway yet charming Good-Night on side two – were given performances in which the saxophones, trombones and muted trumpets blended beautifully while the banjo and piano provided pulsating rhythms.

One of the best discs to be heard from the dime store Perfect label.

by Peter Cates

Edith Wharton

A paragraph from chapter one of the 1920 classic novel The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton (1862-1937), depicts the late arrival at the opera of a rich, spoiled central character, Newland Archer:

“When Newland Archer opened the door at the back of the club box the curtain had just gone up on the garden scene. There was no reason why the young man should not have come earlier, for he had dined at seven, alone with his mother and sister, and had lingered afterward over a cigar in the Gothic library with glazed black-walnut bookcases and finial-topped chairs which was the only room in the house where Mrs. Archer allowed smoking. But, in the first place, New York was a metropolis, and perfectly aware that in metropolises it was ‘not the thing’ to arrive early at the opera; and what was or was not ‘the thing’ played a part as important in Newland Archer’s New York as the inscrutable totem terrors that had ruled the destinies of his forefathers thousands of years ago.”

Wharton so powerfully dramatized these “totem terrors” in the “high society” of this novel and in the life of a farmer in the bleak rural Massachusetts of the shorter novelette Ethan Frome.

Benjamin Britten

Benjamin Britten: Albert Herring (1947 comic opera); vocalists Christopher Gillette, Josephine Barstow, Felicity Palmer, Robert Lloyd, Gerald Finley etc.; Steuart Bedford conducting the Northern Sinfonia. Collins Classics 70422, recorded August 11-15, 1996, two compact discs.

English composer Benjamin Britten scored this opera in 1946; its plot is based on a short story by Guy de Maupassant in which villagers celebrate its annual May Day by awarding a cash prize to a village maiden who has remained modest and virtuous in her demeanor and reputation.

The problem is that no worthy candidate is to be found among the young women that particular year so the committee chooses an eligible young store clerk Albert Herring as their honoree for his decorum and moral purity.

Britten’s music has a light-hearted charm and poignance while the performance and recording are splendid. For beginners, though, I would recommend the composer’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, a beautifully colorful showpiece which displays every instrument in the solo virtuoso spotlight; the four sections of strings, woodwinds, brass and percussion; and at the beginning and end, the full orchestra in all its glory. As a basis for development, Britten chose a passage from English composer Henry Purcell (1659-1695) and worked it with phenomenal imagination.

Afterwards, the listener could move on to the very atmospheric Four Sea Interludes from his opera masterpiece Peter Grimes and then his eloquent War Requiem.

Britten was also a very gifted conductor and left recordings of each work.

Finally I have recordings of Britten conducting Mozart’s Piano Concertos 20 and 27 with Sir Clifford Curzon, Schumann’s Scenes from Faust, Haydn’s 95th Symphony and the Mahler 4th.

Unfortunately, on a personal note, Britten had a tendency to abruptly cut off friendships of long standing due to some real or imagined slight and those former friends were referred to as “Britten’s corpses.”

Will Trent

I have been enjoying the first season of ABC’s series Will Trent which has a detective who has the brilliance of Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot but who is dyslexic.

Frankie Laine

Frankie Laine – The Day Isn’t Long Enough; Isle of Capri – Harry Zeller conducting with pianist Carl Fischer. Mercury 5685, recorded June, 1951, seven inch 45.

In the Beginning; Old Shoes – Paul Weston conducting. Columbia 4-40878, recorded November, 1954, seven inch 45.

For me, the greatest strength of Frankie Laine (1913-2007) was his ability to sing in the style of the great blues vocalists, such as Jimmy Rushing, Billie Holiday, Eddy Howard and Johnny Mercer, whatever the musical category of the particular song- gospel, folk, jazz, pop.

Francesco Paolo LoVecchio was born in Chicago’s Little Italy to Sicilian parents. The family had connections to organized crime, his father serving as Al Capone’s barber while his grandfather was murdered by rival gangsters.

Francesco changed his name to Frankie Laine when he got a job in 1938 as vocalist with a New York City radio station. He numbered Caruso, Bessie Smith and Al Jolson among his favorite singers.

By 1949, when his own records for Mercury (Mitch Miller signed Laine to the label) were best sellers, Jolson (1886-1950), already a fan, told Laine that he would be putting all the other singers out of business.
Both 45s are classy examples of Frankie Laine’s phrasing, timing, delivery and ability to communicate beauty and inner meaning to the listener.

With respect to Laine’s Columbia recordings, when Mitch Miller moved to that label, he took Laine with him.

I interviewed Mitch at Houston’s Lancaster Hotel in 1992 where he told me of his parents’s belief that “You’re not a success unless you bring other people along with you.” He lived by that principle with the success he brought as a producer to such pop artists as Frankie Laine, Tony Bennett, Patti Page, Doris Day, Vic Damone, Guy Mitchell, Percy Faith, the Four Lads, the Brothers Four, Jerry Vale and Johnny Mathis.

by Peter Cates

Ralph Meeker

Ralph Meeker (1920-1988) was labeled perhaps a bit misleadingly as a character actor; on film and television, he did portray men on both sides of the law but he didn’t have the characterizing artistry of a Rod Steiger or Sir Lawrence Olivier.

What Meeker did have was a tough, almost explosive masculine screen presence. Examples would be the smiling rattlesnake outlaw he portrayed on the late 1950s Disney series Texas John Slaughter, the coldly focused detective in the 1955 Kiss Me Deadly who smashes a rare opera 78 in pieces to get information from a reluctant witness and the kidnapper who gets sent to prison in Big House USA, also from 1955, and escapes with four deadly cell mates, portrayed with consummate persuasion by Broderick Crawford, William Talman, Lon Chaney Jr. and Charles Bronson.

Meeker was also a motorcycle cop in the 1953 Code Two, whose slightly rebellious attitude during police basic training is pulverized by a drill instructor convincingly brought to life by actor Keenan Wynn.

The 1955 season one of Alfred Hitchcock Presents began with an episode Revenge, one of a few directed by Hitchcock himself and starring Meeker and Vera Miles as a married couple who has relocated from back East and set up temporary living quarters in a trailer park community on the otherwise still unspoiled Pacific Coast.

We find out that the wife is under doctor’s orders to take it easy for a few months after having suffered a nervous breakdown, that the husband has taken an engineering job at a nearby plant but that otherwise he does most of the cooking and other domestic chores so that his wife can relax as much as possible.

Meeker displays an endearing tenderness as the husband. As he leaves for the day, his wife promises a surprise dessert that evening.

Inevitably, Hitchcock being Hitchcock, the plot thickens. The husband returns home to find out that the wife has been violently raped (due to 1950s censorship, the word is assaulted) during a home invasion by a salesman.

Events proceed to where the couple is driving around the surrounding area, the wife sees a man walking on the street and yells, “That’s him!” The husband sneaks into the stranger’s hotel room and murders him with a wrench.

As they drive away, the – well, I won’t reveal the ending.

CSI: New York

I recently started watching the 2004 opening season of CSI: New York starring Gary Sinise as the lead investigator in the forensics unit of the Man­hattan Po­lice Depart­ment. My most memorable experiences of Sinise’s acting were in Ransom as a psychotic kidnapper and in Snake Eyes as the assassin of a Secretary of Defense . He conveyed a brutal ruthlessness in both roles.

In the TV series, Sinise started off with a strong presence but then has been getting more stiff and boring in subsequent episodes.

* * * * * *

Mozart: Magic Flute – La Dove Prende; Emma Eames, soprano and Emilio de Gogorza, baritone. Victor Red Seal 89003.
A very charmingly sung duet as sung by Eames and Gogorza who were married for over 25 years and resided much of the year in Bath, Maine.

Rossini: Stabat Mater – Cujus Animam; Evan Williams, tenor. Victor Red Seal 74093. Evan Williams sang a truly spirited performance of this very joyous aria from Rossini’s Oratorio. He passed away in 1919 from an infected boil at the age of 52. Williams, Enrico Caruso and John McCormack were considered Victor’s three most popular tenors during the World War I years.

Strauss: Blue Danube Waltz; soprano Frieda Hempel. Victor Red Seal 88540. The world’s most famous waltz gets a nice but not exactly earth shaking vocal performance.

Handel: Il Pensieroso- Sweet Bird, That Shunn’st the Noise of Folly; soprano Nellie Melba. Victor Red Seal 88068. Australian soprano Nellie Melba left many splendid shellacs and this one from a rarely heard opera of George Frederick Handel is sung with beauty and expressive dexterity.

Gluck: Orfeo and Euridice – On My Faith Relying; soprano Joanna Gadski and contralto Louise Homer. Victrola Red Seal 89041.

Both Gadski and Homer were huge successes at the Metropolitan Opera of the pre-World War I years. Gadski was most acclaimed in the operas of Mozart and Wagner while Homer sang the male role of Orfeo, as contraltos Rise Stevens and Marilyn Horne would 50 years later.

I have enjoyed their various other Victor shellacs but, strangely, this one didn’t quite get off the ground both in performance and the very dimly recorded sound.

All five of the above Red Seals came from the pre-electric microphone years and can be heard via YouTube.

by Peter Cates

Khachaturian

Khachaturian: Gayaneh Ballet Excerpts; Piano Concerto; and Masquerade Suite – Jiri Belohlavek conducting the Brno State Philharmonic Orchestra, in Gayaneh, and Masquerade; pianist Mirka Pokorna with Vladimir Valek conducting the Prague Symphony Orchestra in the Piano Concerto. Supraphon SU 3107-2011, recorded between 1972 and 1980, CD.

Aram Khachaturian (1903-1978) composed some of the most colorful, captivating music in these Ballets and the Piano Concerto. The exotic rhythms and atmospheric poetry give a unique beauty to a composer who was deeply rooted in his Armenian background, his most popular piece being the Gayaneh Sabre Dance which has been used innumerable times as background for chase or fighting scenes in cartoons and for TV commercials.

Certain moody passages of the Ballets remind me of the soundtrack music that Bernard Herrmann composed for Alfred Hitchcock thrillers, such as North by Northwest, Vertigo and Psycho.

A special favorite here is the Piano Concerto with a dramatic power and beauty of its own. Pianist Mirka Pokorna negotiated its difficulties with flair while conveying its beauty and delicacy with an exquisite touch. Her Czech Republic colleagues also did superb work.

A friend from Prague told me of being inspired to take up the piano at the age of nine after hearing Pokorna in a concert and visiting with her afterwards.

Nat King Cole

Nat King Cole –  Unforgettable; Capitol T-357, released in 1954, twelve inch LP.

Pianist/singer Nat King Cole (1919-1965) once stated that he sang the way he felt and that was that. After leading a jazz trio for the better part of the ‘40s, he gradually transitioned to pop singing around 1950.

His 1954 LP Unforgettable gathers a dozen songs that are gems already, a few of them best sellers as singles.

Among the hits, the title song; Answer Me, My Love; Too Young; Red Sails in the Sunset; Pretend; and the irreplaceable Mona Lisa, which was first released as a B side.

My first encounter with this LP was at the age of 6 or 7 when I heard a copy of it owned by my grandmother Annabelle Cates (1888-1974); not only was she fond of King Cole’s singing but also that of Ray Charles.

The other six selections, Portrait of Jenny; What’ll I Do; Lost April; the vivacious Hajji Baba; the immensely lovely Great American Songbook classic I Love You for Sentimental Reasons; and finally Make Her Mine, King Cole made his own.

Due to his chain smoking for years of Kool menthols, Nat King Cole died of lung cancer in January 1965, at the very young age of 45.

This deservedly classic album can be heard via YouTube.

William Hazlitt

English essayist William Hazlitt (1778-1830) wrote the following in his On Going a Journey:

“One of the pleasantest in the world is going a journey; but I like to go by myself. I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors, nature is company enough for me. I am then never less alone than when alone.

‘The fields his study, nature was his book.’

I cannot see the wit of walking and talking at the same time. When I am in the country I wish to vegetate like the country. I am not for criticizing hedgerows and black cattle. I go out of town in order to forget the town and all that is in it.”

Although Hazlitt is considered an important figure in 19th century English romanticism and celebrated its spirit, he brought a restraint to its more excessive qualities and his writings on literature and social behavior attracted much attention due to his ability to combine enthusiasm with discernment.

by Peter Cates

Samuel de Champlain

In his fascinatingly detailed Voyages, Samuel de Champlain (1567-1635) wrote of traveling up the Penobscot River in the following entry for September 5th, 1604:

“The same day we passed also near to an island about four or five leagues long. From this island to the main land on the north, the distance is less than a hundred paces. It is very high, and notched in places, so that there is the appearance to one at sea, as of seven or eight mountains extending along near each other. The summit of most of them is destitute of trees, as there are only rocks on them. The woods consists of pines, firs, and birches only. I named it Isle des Monts Deserts.”

As a younger man growing up in France, Champlain was an accomplished military officer for five years during the various bestial religious wars that King Henry IV was constantly waging. In return for his faithful service, the King supported Champlain’s interest in traveling to North America to explore and report on the region; he journeyed upwards of 30 times across the Atlantic.

David Oistrakh

David Oistrakh Plays the World’s Greatest Violin Concertos – Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky; Murray Hill S27606, three LPs.

David Oistrakh (1908-1974) was the most frequently recorded violinist to emerge from the former Soviet Union. Before his first trip to the United States in 1955, he was lionized by record collectors via the many Melodiya tapes released on dime store LPs from such labels as Vox, Period, Hall of Fame, Colosseum etcs. The fidelity and record surfaces were often grainy but the wondrously heartfelt playing and stunning virtuosity stood him in the same class as Jascha Heifetz, Isaac Stern, Nathan Milstein and Zino Francescatti.

The Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky Concertos were each recorded several times by Oistrakh. The above recordings were derived from Melodiya with Alexander Gauk conducting the Moscow State Symphony in the Beethoven; Kiril Kondrashin and the Symphony Orchestra of Radio Moscow in Brahms; Kondrashin again and the National Philharmonic in Mendelssohn; and Samuel Samosud leading the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra in Tchaikovsky. All four performances have been previously released several times on other labels.

Murray Hill Records was a boon for budget-minded record collectors including myself. While attending the University of Southern Maine at Gorham over 50 years ago, a friend who was manager of the campus bookstore drew my attention to several of the label’s multi-disc albums and those of others including Vox, Everest, Concert-Disc, and Westminster Gold.

She graciously allowed me to store a large number of those records on layaway; by purchasing one or two weekly, I was finally able to acquire all of them within six months.

David Oistrakh was also a gifted violist and collaborated with his violinist son Igor (1931-2021) in the Mozart K. 364 Sinfonia Cocertante for both instruments. Finally, he achieved a very justified reputation as a conductor and his recordings of the Tchaikovsky Pathetique Symphony, Grieg’s Piano Concerto with his good friend Sviatoslav Richter and the Mahler 4th Symphony are superb examples.

During World War II, Oistrakh performed the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, in Leningrad, while it was bombarded and starved by the Nazi armies during the 900-day siege and did concerts for Soviet troops on the hazardous front lines.

In 1964, Oistrakh suffered a heart attack, was told by the doctors to take it easy but ignored their advice, continuing to perform, conduct and teach non-stop. In October 1974, he was conducting the Brahms Symphonies with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam when he died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 66.

Many Oistrakh performances can be accessed through YouTube.

One of my absolute favorite Oistrakh recordings is the one he did on a Columbia Masterworks LP of the Sibelius Violin Concerto in 1960 with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra – the note by note teamwork of soloist, conductor and responsive orchestra musicians still leaves me breathless.