by Peter Cates

Aaron Copland

Aaron Copland – Music for the Theatre Suite; Howard Hanson conducting the Eastman-Rochester Symphony Orchestra; Victor Red Seal M-744, three 12-inch 78s, recorded 1940.

Aaron Copland

Aaron Copland (1900-1990) completed his Music for the Theatre in 1925 during the summer months at New Hamp­shire’s Mac­Dowell Colony for the Arts. It is a beautifully introspective work with lovely passages for each section of the orchestra.

Howard Hanson (1896-1981) was Director of the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester from 1924 to 1964, a noted composer himself and an outstanding conductor of 20th century American music. This 1940 recording, for my taste, is even better performance-wise than the 1960s stereo recording of Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic, despite that younger conductor’s close friendship with Copland, because of Bernstein’s over-emotional approach and lack of sensitivity to this music’s quieter moments.

The Hanson 78s can be heard at Archive.org on the Internet.

Gloria Lynne

Gloria Lynne – He Needs Me; Everest LPBR-5128, 12-inch LP, recorded 1961.

Singer Gloria Lynne (1929-2013) emerged during the 1950s and ’60s when other fine African-American vocalists such as Dinah Washington, Della Reese, Sarah Vaughan, Nancy Wilson, Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick were achieving much deserved success in jazz and pop music. Lynne had a uniquely lyrical delicacy to her voice similar to that of Nancy Wilson.

Her renditions of I Thought About You, The Lamp is Low, If You Love Me and others on this 1961 Everest album conveyed this quality nicely, with the superb arrangements of Jimmy Jones and his Orchestra.

Two Sibelius 78s:

Finlandia – Artur Rodzinski conducting the Cleveland Orchestra; Columbia Masterworks 11178, 12-inch 78, recorded 1940.

Swan of Tuonela – Leopold Stokowski conducting the Phildelphia Orchestra; Victor Red Seal 7380, 12-inch 78, recorded 1937.

Finland’s still justifiably greatest composer Jean Sibelius (1865-1957), according to the great Maestro Eugene Ormandy who visited with him during an early 1950s concert tour of the Philadelphia Orchestra in Scandinavia, had shelves of records and a top notch phonograph in his living room.

Castine Maine’s David Hall commented in a 1967 Stereo Review piece that the music of the Finn in its celebration of the rocky coast, woods and meadows reminded him of the Penobscot Bay area encompassing Deer Isle, Blue Hill and, of course, Hall’s own favorite village. I once asked if he and the composer ever met; the reply: “I once had the opportunity but chickened out!”

Artur Rodzinski conducted a joyously bristling performance of Finlandia which has become Finland’s own national anthem equivalent of the Star Spangled Banner. In the late ‘50s, Ormandy recorded Finlandia with his Philadelphians and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir which has been my own favorite for more than 60 years.

In 1936, Leopold Stokowski invited Eugene Ormandy to be his co-conductor in Philadelphia, as he admired what Ormandy was achieving with the Minneapolis Symphony . In 1938, Stokowski resigned.

The 1937 Victor shellac featuring Stoky’s interpretive magic in Sibelius’s Swan of Tuonela is well worth hearing via YouTube, especially for the hauntingly eloquent English horn.

Stokowski later rerecorded the Swan with a studio orchestra for Victor and hired Mitch Miller, then one of the finest players of both the oboe and English horn in the country and later more famous for the Sing Along LPs on Columbia Records.

Some more about Sibelius:

The composer told violinist Yehudi Menuhin that Bela Bartok was his favorite 20th century composer.

When German pianist Wilhelm Kempff visited Sibelius, he played the Hammerklavier Sonata which was the composer’s favorite Beethoven piece.

Enrico Caruso

Enrico Caruso

The widow of legendary tenor Enrico Caruso (1873-1921), Dorothy Caruso published a biography of her husband in 1945, titled simply Enrico Caruso His Life and Death.

Although a native New Yorker, she lived much of her adult life in France and Italy. During the late 1930s, she did humanitarian relief work in the Maritime Alps feeding and clothing impoverished families.

In the conclusion to her husband’s biography, Mrs. Caruso wrote:

“When I returned to this country [in 1942] I found that Enrico was not forgotten but living as if he had never died. Twenty-five years is a long time [the couple eloped in 1917] but my memory of him is as clear as if he had left me an hour ago. With every word I wrote he walked into the room. The more I wrote, the more clear those years became.

“I never reread his letters after his death. I never looked at them until I began the book and realized that they were the best illustration of his thought. Because he was such a silent man and thought before he spoke, I think I have remembered everything he said.”

Caruso’s unfailingly down to earth personality is conveyed in an exchange with his good friend John McCormack. When the Irish tenor greeted him with “How’s the world’s greatest tenor this morning?”, Caruso replied, “I didn’t know you were now a baritone.”

With his earnings, Caruso was a secret pal to many. A cleaning lady at the Met Opera was overheard telling a friend that her husband had fallen off a scaffolding and she didn’t know how she would be able to support their family with several children. She found a wad of hundred dollar bills in her winter coat.

by Peter Cates

Johannes Brahms

Brahms Symphony 1 – Hermann Scherchen conducting the Vienna State Opera Orchestra; Classaphonic-CL-68. 12 inch lp, recorded mid to late 50s.

Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms was already sketching a First Symphony in 1853 as his friend Robert Schumann was praising the then young composer as the great new hope in music who would provide “yet more wondrous glimpses into the mysteries of the world of the spirit.” The sketches eventually grew into the magnificent First Piano Concerto in 1857.

Another 19 years elapsed when Brahms presented his First Symphony in its 1876 World Premiere in a rural town in Germany where several friends were eagerly awaiting its performance.

The Symphony met with resounding success and has been performed and recorded countless times since then, being still a favorite with audiences. Having already admitted in earlier columns that Brahms has been my favorite composer for decades, I am certainly biased in finding things to enjoy in this recording, as with batches of other Brahms 1sts in my collection, whether good, bad or indifferent.

Hermann Scherchen conducted a performance that was uniquely captivating for its foreboding grandeur in the opening movement, its sweet sentiment in the second movement, the dancing, slightly melancholy delicacy in the 3rd movement and the jubilation in the concluding 4th movement. Scherchen also speeded up tempos even more quickly than Leonard Bernstein and Eugen Jochum on their justly acclaimed recordings towards the end of the 4th Finale- he could be perverse with tempos and phrasing- but this recording ended up being such a pleasure that I have played it at least 4 times since yesterday.

John Josselyn

John Josselyn

The adventurous English aristocrat John Josselyn (1608-1675) traveled to New England twice, 1638 and 1663, and his massively detailed An Account of Two Voyages to New-England provided ground breaking research on animals, plants and native American life.

An example – he wrote interestingly about the homes in tribal villages, as conveyed in the following sentence:

“Their houses which they call Wigwams, are built with Poles pitched into the ground of a round form for most part, sometimes square, they bind down the tops of their poles, leaving a hole for smoke to go out at, the rest they cover with the bark of trees, and line the inside of their Wigwams with mats made of rushes painted with several colors, one good post they set up in the middle that reaches to the hole in the top, with a staff across before it at a convenient height, they knock in a pin on which they hang their Kettle, beneath that they set up a broad stone for a back which keepeth the post from burning; round by the walls they spread their mats and skins where the men sleep whilst the women dress their victuals, they have commonly two doors, one opening to the South, the other to the North, and according as the wind sits, they close up one door with bark and hang a Dears skin or the like before the other.”

Josselyn also told tall tales about seeing pre-historic creatures such as sea lions and serpents and spotting a mermaid or two. In addition, he portrayed the harsh deadly New England landscape and climate as heaven on earth.

There is an anecdote where he started chewing a wasp’s nest, thinking it was a pineapple. His face became so swollen and disfigured that his friends recognized him only by his clothes.

Josselyn’s second visit in 1663 lasted several years until he eventually returned to England where he first wrote New-England Rareties Discovered in 1672 and An Account two years later.

In 1675 John Josselyn died at the age of 67, fulfilling a French proverb he lived by – “Travail where thou canst, but dye where thou oughtest, that is, in thine own Countrey.”

D.L. Miller

A few years ago, I wrote about the 99 cent Somerset/Stereo Fidelity LPs created by the Pennsylvania businessman D.L. Miller back in 1957. In addition to the classical recording sessions he brokered with such orchestras as the London and Hamburg Philharmonics, Miller created an immense and very profitable catalog of LPs by the 101 Strings which were inevitably transferred to cassettes and CDs. Three particular titles- With Love from London, Symphony for Lovers and Gypsy Campfires – were part of my parents otherwise small record collection.

Nelson Riddle conducted the 101 Strings in one of their finest recordings, one I’ve played numerous times.

Miller sold the label to an English businessman who changed its name to Alshire. A cassette release, The Best of 101 Strings (Alshire, ALSC-5373), features a dozen rhythmically pulsating arrangements of such pop staples as Moon River, I Left My Heart In San Francisco, The Way We Were, Lara’s Theme from Doctor Zhivago, etc.

* * * * * *

I highly recommend the recently streamed film Conclave, which depicts the secret proceedings at Vatican City as the Cardinals are choosing a new Pope. Ralph Fiennes heads a superb cast as the chief moderator of the proceedings.

by Peter Cates

Kurt Masur

Brahms 4 Symphonies, Tragic Overture, Academic Festival Overture, Haydn Variations, Schicksalslied; Kurt Masur, New York Philharmonic; Teldec 0630-13565-2, four cds, recorded between 1991 and 1996.

Kurt Masur

Kurt Masur (1927-2015) was forced as a teenager to fight in the German army when the Nazi government was feeling increasingly desperate on both sides after the 1944 D-Day invasion and the Battle of Stalingrad. He was one of 150 boys in his unit, of which only 27 survived.

Living in East Germany after World War II, Masur’s first important post was Music Director of the Dresden Philharmonic starting in 1957 and then in 1970 he moved upward to a crown jewel, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra which was established by composer/conductor Felix Mendelssohn in 1844 and became second only to the Berlin Philharmonic in its musical and technical excellence. Masur started building his own reputation in the United States as a uniquely outstanding interpreter of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms via his recordings on such labels as Vanguard, Musical Heritage Society and Philips.

I first became interested in his conducting when his first set of the Brahms 4 Symphonies with the Leipzig was released on Philips during the late ‘70s, bought it in 1979 and was very impressed with his very poetic and understated approach to this music. The growling intensity of the First Symphony was toned down perhaps a bit too much but its lyrical beauties emerged; the gentle lyricism of the Second, the joyous abundance of the Third and the combination of wistful sentiment and visionary power in the Fourth contributed to a cycle that stood out against several very good sets by other conductors – Toscanini, Walter, Klemperer, Giulini, Bernstein, Ozawa, Solti, Bohm, Steinberg, Szell, Jochum etcs.

Other very good Masur records include a sublime Beethoven Violin Concerto with Salvatore Accardo and remakes of the same composer’s Eroica and 5th Symphonies from the early 1990s.

In 1989, Masur gave his public support to a huge demonstration against the East German government at a risk to his freedom. Along with his guest conducting of the Boston, Chicago, and Dallas symphonies and other American orchestras starting around 1980, he came to the favorable attention of the New York Philharmonic Board of Directors when it was searching for a replacement to Zubin Mehta and he became Music Director of the Orchestra from 1991 to 2002.

The above set of Brahms Symphony remakes is yet another outstanding example of Masur’s outstanding musicality with this composer, this time with the bracing enthusiasm of the New York Philharmonic at its best. One outstanding example is its playing of the First Symphony, a performance that roared with eloquence and excitement.

Opinions of Masur’s leadership during his 11 years ranged from admiration for his total preparation at rehearsals and giving of himself to his reputation for a bad temper. Interestingly in his interviews, Masur came across as a sweet Teddy bear in which he would frequently say how the playing of the of the Philharmonic musicians made him “So happy!”

Unfortunately, Masur and the Philharmonic Manager Deborah Borda had a falling out and his contract was not renewed, a move which left the Maestro very bitter. In compensation, he was given the lifetime title of Music Director Emeritus .

In 1972, Masur sustained serious injuries in an automobile accident on Germany’s already treacherous Autobahn where speeds of up to 120 miles an hour are routine among the motorists. His wife, the second of three women he would marry, was killed, he was several months in recovery and the circumstances of the accident were under investigation for several years.

On a happier note, his third wife who survives him was originally a soprano whom he heard singing Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. When they tied the knot, she gave up her career to attend to his domestic needs. Their son Ken David became a conductor and is now Music Director of the Milwaukee Symphony.

After leaving, Masur had positions with the London Philharmonic, Orchestra National de France and the Israel Philharmonic, with whom he recorded a magnificent set of Mendelssohn’s oratorio, Elijah. In 2012, he announced that he was retiring from conducting due to Parkinson’s disease and died from it in 2015.

Michael Rennie

The Third Man

Just started an old 1960s TV series The Third Man, starring Michael Rennie as Harry Lime on YouTube. More details in a future column. A totally different Harry Lime from the evil one Orsen Welles portrayed in the 1949 film classic based on a script by Graham Greene, Rennie’s is a detective who is honest in his investigations of crime on the domestic and international scenes.

by Peter Cates

Just browsing

Recently I have been browsing through volumes of the Library of Universal Knowledge, published in 1880, not so much for information on any particular subject but for how it was discussed in 1880.

A few examples-

“Infant, in English law, means every male and female under the age of 21.”

“Augusta, the name of two considerable cities in the United States. 1. A. is the capital of Maine, situated on both banks of the river Kennebec, which is here crossed by a bridge 520 feet long. Its latitude is 44 degrees 19 minutes north., and longitude 69 degrees 50 minutes west. …. Up to A. the river is navigable for sloops from its mouth, a distance of 43 miles in a straight line; while a dam, constructed immediately above the city, enables steamboats to ply more than 20 miles above as far as Waterville. ”

2. Augusta is the second city in Georgia, on the Savannah, 231 miles from its mouth.”

“Augustulus, Romulus, the last emperor of the western portion of the Roman empire. His name was Augustus, but the diminutive title under which he is universally known was given him by the Romans on account of the essential littleness of his character.”

“Adultery – in some of the United States, Adultery is made criminal by special law; in some it is not so recognized; in some the act itself is not a crime; but open and continued Adultery is.” [Whatever this means – the English language might not have been as simple to understand in those good old days 145 years ago. ]

I noticed that Beethoven, Berlioz, Verdi and Wagner are listed but not Brahms.

“Waterville, a village of Maine, on the right bank of the Kennebec river, at Ticonic falls, 82 miles north north central from Portland. Around the falls are clustered saw-mills, plow, axe, hoe, and scythe factories, machine-shops, tanneries, etc. Waterville has a Baptist college, with 100 students, and a library of 15,500 volumes, an academy, etc. Population in 1876, 4,000.”

Luisa Tetrazzini

Luisa Tetrazzini – Swiss Echo Song; Victrola Red Seal 88311, recorded 1918, 12 inch one-sided acoustic shellac disc.

Luisa Tetrazzini

Soprano Luisa Tetrazzini (1871-1940) had the kind of vocal agility and beauty of tone and phrasing that left her listeners awestruck. I own a batch of her records and include her among my top favorite singers of very long ago with Caruso, McCormack, Evan Williams, Elsie Baker, Olive Kline, Amellita Galli-Curci, Nellie Melba (with whom Tetrazzini had a long-sustained feud.) and Rosa Ponselle.

The Swiss Echo Song is a silly trivial piece yet Tetrazzini transforms it into a precious gem by the phenomenal beauty and perfect pitch of her trills, top to bottom notes and phrasing.

Personality-wise, she was much loved by her colleagues but could throw a fit with agents, and recording producers, demanding exorbitant fees for her appearances on stage and in the studio. When it came to grudges or slights, Luisa never forgot or forgave.

One touching anecdote though – she and Caruso had the deepest personal affection for each other. When the tenor took ill during his last year (he died in 1921 at the age of 48), he sent her a note with the following words: “I am waiting for you with open arms, waiting every moment to salute you with a golden note.”

Unfortunately, Tetrazzini was never able to visit him.

by Peter Cates

MobLand

Pierce Brosnan

A new Paramount series MobLand depicts the activities of Conrad Harrigan, a gentlemanly head of a crime family in London and his calculating, slightly shrewish wife Maeve, both portrayed with consummate persuasion by Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren. The gentlemanly quality masks a ruthless cold-blooded evil and greed as he decides that fentanyl is far more profitable than heroin and guns.

Harrigan’s fixer, Harry da Souza, is constantly putting out fires, dealing with contentious cohorts, threatening potential witnesses and dealing with his own family issues at home, including agreeing to see a marriage counselor with his wife, Jan. Tom Hardy and Joanne Froggatt do superb work as the couple.

I have only seen the first of what will be a ten weekly episode series , and highly anticipate viewing the second which is available as of tonight, April 6.

Charlie Barnet

Charlie Barnet – The Heart You Stole from Me-F.T.; Murder at Peyton Hall-F.T. Bluebird 11292, ten inch 78, recorded 1942.

Charlie Barnet

The F.T. denotes fox trot.

Charlie Barnet (1913-1991) was one of the finest musicians to emerge during the Big Band Era of World War II. In 1989, I first discovered him through reading George T. Simon’s immensely interesting 1968 encyclopedic volume The Big Bands in which the author commended Barnet for the intelligence and very listenable musicality.

In short, Barnet was on the same high level as Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey, Glen Gray, Woody Herman, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Stan Kenton and a few others. A short time later, I purchased an RCA Bluebird cassette re-issue of roughly 20 sides from the original 78s. I played that tape numerous times, became familiar with his two lead singers Bob Carroll and Lena Horne and discovered what an oasis of beauty and excitement the Big Bands were.

The above two sides were typical of Barnet’s own quality control standards and can be accessed on YouTube along with numerous other sides of the bandleader.

Johnny Carson once mentioned on the Tonight Show a special fondness for Charlie Barnet’s Band.

George T. Simon was the much younger brother of Richard Simon (1891-1960), the co-founder of the publisher Simon and Schuster; and the uncle of pop singer Carly Simon. The author mentioned visiting Benny Goodman during the ‘60s at Goodman’s palatial Connecticut mansion. Because he was walking with a cane in recovery from surgery, Goodman insisted that Simon feel free to use his swimming pool at any time for its health benefits.

Simon’s journalistic connections were such that Frank Sinatra wrote the introduction to Simon’s book and recommended to would be readers that, if any family or friends wanted to borrow the book, to tell them to buy their own copy.

Sarah Vaughan

Sarah Vaughan – Sarah’s Golden Hits; Mercury, cassette.

Sarah Vaughan

Although Sarah Vaughan (1924-1990) was often labeled a jazz singer, she resented the label, loved all kinds of music, and brought elements of all kinds of music to her singing. Several musicians claimed that her vocal range was wide enough to where she could have been a successful opera singer like Leontyne Price.

Frank Sinatra contended that listening to her singing made him want to slit his wrists. (Much like when Fritz Kreisler first heard Jascha Heifetz, he and all other violinists might as well break their fiddles.)

This cassette includes a special favorite Broken Hearted Melody, Misty, Autumn in New York, Whatever Lola Wants, the perpetually charming Make Yourself Comfortable and seven other classics.

Sarah Vaughan passed away from lung cancer in early April 1990 just shortly after her 66th birthday. Her close friend Ella Fitzgerald was so grief stricken that she went into a lengthy period of mourning.