by Peter Cates

(See Part 4 here.)

Continuing with memories – the heat of very early morning during July 1973, in Boston, Massachusetts, was at bestial blast furnace levels. I remember walking from 23 Wyatt Street, in Somerville, at least a mile down to Central Squar, in Cambridge, to catch the Red Line air-conditioned subway to Washington Street, in Boston, for two days worth of morning classes in how to write up sales slips, cash out customers, approve checks with two pieces of legal identification and push the cranks on those dinosaur cash registers.

Before I moved to Boston, I was taught to believe that 95 percent of grown-ups would listen to reason. After I moved there, that belief was obsolete.

At first I was selling 45s with three other colleagues behind a booth with two registers, as those top 40 discs were the biggest, non-stop sources of revenue. The record department was divided into three areas – the pop music LPs and 45s, classical and cassettes, only the LPs in open browsers with racks on the outer walls of new releases.

One area that attracted my interest was the watchful eyes of department store detectives on potential shoplifters, either through closed circuit cameras by the second floor office they worked from near the entrance from the street to the record department or through pretending to be customers.

One of the detectives was a popular radio disc jockey and talk show host during the day and arresting shoplifters on the evening shift. Unlike some of the other detectives who effected auras of mien even to regular store employees – one rather insolent character admitted, “I don’t trust anybody, especially you sales clerks!” – the disc jockey had a very pleasant personality.

A somewhat hilarious incident in which a shoplifter who may have been spotted on previous occasions but still had to challenge the law – the disc jockey was pretending to be a blind man with a walking stick and a couple of albums poking his way to the sales counter.

When the thief with albums underneath his winter coat was making a beeline for the exit, our ‘blind man’ made a quick gesture with his arm to a couple of other detectives and they grabbed the thief on the street.

More next time.

by Peter Cates

Living in the Cambridge suburb of Somerville, I quickly discovered how much easier it was to walk a mile without noticing it on city streets than in the countryside of East Vassalboro. And I quickly discovered the joys and ease of walking to Harvard Square, from 23 Wyatt Street, in Somerville.

The center piece of Harvard Square, for me as a record collector, was the Harvard Coop, a department store with a second floor record department second only to the Jordan Marsh Annex one where I worked. And the Coop would stock imported LPs that the buyers at Jordan Marsh didn’t bother with.

I had become interested in the recordings of a British pianist Solomon whose combination of elegance, fluent technique and musical instincts with Beethoven and Mozart were unique. The Coop had a two-disc reissue of him performing three Mozart Piano Concertos on Germany’s da capo label, records that had been out of print for at least 20 years. I forked over $15 for that set and lived on hot dogs and canned beans for a week.

I had become acquainted with the Coop’s classical record buyer Helga when she dropped by Jordan Marsh’s classical record section while waiting for her husband to get off work (He was in charge of the camera department.). Evidently she was impressed enough with what I knew about classical records to call me three days later with a job offer, one I turned down as it would have only added $5 to my weekly salary and, having been employed by Jordan only two months, I decided it was not a good idea to jump ship.

I had heard of the Coop’s extraordinary record and book departments since my boarding school days at Kent’s Hill from the glee club director/algebra teacher Lee Walcott. My first visit there was when Gorham State College’s art appreciation class took a Greyhound bus trip to Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts in April 1970.

During lunch hour a classmate and myself split a $2 cab fare to Cambridge where I was immediately thrilled by the selection and bought two LPs – the original Broadway cast recording from 1949 of Lerner and Loewe’s Paint Your Wagon on RCA Victor and a budget-priced Philips World Series coupling of Debussy’s La Mer and Nocturnes performed by the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam directed by Eduard Van Beinum.

Paint Your Wagon had such classic Great American Songbook gems as They Call the Wind Maria, I Talk to the Trees, and I Was Born Under a Wandering Star (Lerner and Loewe would eventually compose Brigadoon, My Fair Lady, Camelot and the soundtrack for Gigi).

In December 1971, my good friend and Shakespeare professor Stan Vincent drove me and two classmates down to a Loeb Theater production of Othello. Before the show, we visited the Coop where I bought the George Szell/Cleveland Orchestra Mahler 4th, one or two other records whose titles escape me and some Christmas presents.

The four of us bought an inexpensive dinner at the Wursthaus German restaurant, a nutritious eatery which I would frequently patronize later during my three years of residence in the baked bean capital.

The Othello production I remember as good but, for some inexplicable reason, not great. Strolling around Brattle Street was, however, a very evocative experience – I remember when talking about the trip to a Gorham friend, she replied, “Doesn’t it make you wish you were rich?”

More next week.

Linguistics

Henry Mencken

In his The American Language, the constantly hilarious Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956) knew like nobody in recorded history how to discuss the otherwise boring (for me, not for Mencken) subject of linguistics. One underlying issue was the hostility of the English to us Americans in how we speak. This hostility is sneakily given a belly tickling twist when Mencken quotes a fellow American scholar:

“This dichotomy runs through most British writing on American speech….on the one hand the Americans are denounced for introducing corruptions into the language, and on the other hand those very expressions are eagerly claimed as of British origin to show that the British deserve the credit for them.”

Such “corruptions” of the language include “to locate, to operate, to antagonize, transportation, commutation, proposition.” A British semantics expert labels them as “hideous to the eye, offensive to the ear, meaningless to the brain.”

Mencken mentions the months of battles over mere word usage between “American patriots on one side and Englishmen and Anglomaniacs on the other.”

by Peter Cates

Looking back

After I received my Bachelor of Science degree in English in May 1973, from the University of Southern Maine, I was now qualified to teach that subject at the secondary high school level. Soon I would discover that job openings were scarce in Maine so I worked as a menial laborer on Dad’s construction crew while still living at home.

Leisure activities:

Reading 20th century novels by Thomas Mann, Marcel Proust and Knut Hamsun, with the occasional nod to John Steinbeck, Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday.

An unsuccessful attempt to study a cheap paperback translation of the Book of I Ching because a very lovely woman friend recommended it highly – I later found out that it was not only a favorite of the hippie counter culture but also Gestapo Chief Heinrich Himmler.

Listening to records.

Going out to Waterville’s legendary night clubs to drink beer and hear loud live rock bands. Those night clubs included the still existing Chez Paree, on Water Street, the You Know Whose Pub, on the Concourse, and the no longer existing Black Cat Tavern, on Kennedy Memorial Drive, and the Factory, a basement dive next door to the Hotel Emma.

One event was a Beach Boys concert at Colby College (At that time, my favorite album of them was Surf’s Up while I considered earlier ones such as Pet Sounds, Beach Boys Live and Surfin’ Safari overrated.). I remember the stage being surrounded by security guards, whose parameters were then destroyed when the group immediately invited everybody to move closer.

Memorable records from that summer included the original Broadway musical A Little Night Music from Stephen Sondheim; Pierre Boulez conducting the New York Philharmonic in Bela Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra; Sundown Lady from former Brazil 66 lead singer Lani Hall; Bruno Walter’s powerful recording from the 1940s of the Mahler 4th Symphony on the inexpensive reissue label Odyssey; the premium priced LP of Mahler’s Songs of a Wayfarer and Kindertotenlieder movingly sung by baritone Hermann Prey; the pop rock collage Wings by Latin-American composer Michel Columbier with contributions from Bill Medley of Righteous Brothers fame, Paul Williams and the above-mentioned Lani Hall; and the brilliantly eloquent Fritz Reiner conducting the Chicago Symphony in Ravel’s Alborado del Gracioso, Valse Nobles and Sentimentales and the Pavane for a Dead Princess.

(All the above music is accessible on YouTube).

Around late June, I came down with a week-long case of the summer flu and could barely move. The misery was compounded by a heat wave, only alleviated by my sick room being located on the shady side of the house. I then had a lot of time to think about what I really wanted to do with my life and decided that I was not exactly ready to settle down to village life.

I called the above-mentioned woman friend who happened to live in Boston and asked if I could stay in her apartment for a few days while looking for a job, preferably in a record store. I hopped a Greyhound and, within three days, landed a job in the record department at the downtown Jordan Marsh department store, thinking at the time that I was the first East Vassalboro Cates to work there, only to find out from Grammie Cates that Grampy had worked in the book department 67 years earlier (Having graduated from Haverford College, in Haverford, Pennsylvania, where South China’s own Rufus Jones was teaching philosophy, Grampy had decided that he too wasn’t yet ready to settle down to village life.).

To be continued next week.

by Peter Cates

Anne-Sophie Mutter

Vivaldi 4 Seasons and Tartini’s Devil’s Trill Sonata. Anne-Sophie Mutter, violinist and conductor of the Trondheim Soloists. Recorded 1999. Deutsche Grammophon 2894632592, compact disc.

Anne-Sophie Mutter

Anne-Sophie Mutter collaborated with Maestro Herbert von Karajan (1908-1988) and the Berlin Philharmonic on a very good record of the Mozart Violin Concertos 3 and 5, also on Deutsche Grammophon, back in 1977 when she was only 14 years old. And her playing was not merely that of a child prodigy flash in the pan but of a mature artist and musician, that record still making for worthwhile listening. Finally, to me personally, anything conducted by Karajan is worth hearing and owning.

The above 1999 CD has Anne-Sophie both playing and conducting six string instrumentalists and a harpsichordist in truly galvanizing performances of Antonio Vivaldi’s most well-known composition and the fiendishly difficult, aptly named Devil’s Trill Sonata of Giuseppe Tartini.

From 2002 to 2006, Mutter was the fifth wife of the late Andre Previn (1929-2019).

Pablo Casals

Conversations with Casals, by J. Ma. Corredor, translated from the French by Andre Mangeot. Published 1956 by Dutton Paperbacks.

Pablo Casals

Cellist Pablo Casals (1876-1973) married his third wife Marta Martinez in 1957 when he was 80, she 20. To those who commented about the age discrepancy, he replied, “I look at it like this. If she dies, she dies.”

He made numerous records as both cellist and conductor between the acoustic early 1900s and just a couple of years before his death in 1973 at the age of 97, setting new standards for the cello as a solo instrument. His most well known recordings include the 1930s Bach Cello Suites and Dvorak Cello Concerto, itself done with the Czech Philharmonic led by George Szell, in Prague, in 1937, just before the Nazi takeover. I also own a really good World War I acoustic Columbia shellac of him playing Camille Saint-Saens The Swan from Carnival of the Animals and several very early 1950s Columbia Masterworks LPs of him conducting music of Bach that were recorded at his summer music festivals in the mountain villages of Prades and Perpignan.

Casals appeared in a 1958 documentary film Windjammer depicting the voyage of a sailboat in its voyage from Oslo, Norway, to various ports including Portsmouth, New Hampshire. For a number of years during the 78s era, he was part of an all star trio recording chamber music of Beethoven, Schubert etc., with violinist Jacques Thibaud (1880-1953, who perished in a plane crash) and the phenomenal legendary French pianist Alfred Cortot (1878-1962).

Casals was involved in later years with the Puerto Rico and Marlboro Vermont summer music festivals.

In Conversations, author and long time friend Corredor talks with Casals about composers, performance and life experiences. One question is as follows:

“I read somewhere that when you first went to America, some impresarios were rather shocked to see a young performer nearly bald, for it was very much the fashion for musical virtuosos to wear long hair in those days!”

Casals: “Yes, one of these impresarios actually told me that he would raise my fee considerably if I agreed to wear a wig during the concerts. ”

A rumor spread during those youthful years that some impresario publicly announced that Casals was prematurely bald because he gave a lock of hair as a souvenir to all of his girlfriends attending the concerts.

Walter Goehr

Maestro Walter Goehr (1903-1960) recorded prolifically for the Concert Hall label of the early 1950s and its subsidiary inexpensive mail order Musical Masterpiece Society. His LPs of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony and Hebrides Overture, the Beethoven Pastoral and 9th Symphonies, the Grieg Piano Concerto with Grant Johannesen, the Schu­mann A minor and Chopin 1st Concertos with Mewton-Wood and Bach Violin Concertos with Riccardo Odnoposoff are of high merit.

During the 1930s and ‘40s, Goehr was one of EMI’s busiest house conductors in London and his work with instrumentalists and singers appeared on numerous 78s in the U.S.

In December 1960, after conducting Handel’s Messiah, Walter Goehr died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 57.

Most all of the above selections are accessible on YouTube.

by Peter Cates

George Gershwin

Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris. Jesus Maria Sanroma, pianist in Rhapsody; William Steinberg conducting the Pittsburgh Symphony. Everest records, 12-inch LP, recorded late 1950s. Concerto in F. Oscar Levant, pianist; Andre Kostelanetz conducting the New York Philharmonic. Columbia Masterworks, 12-inch LP, recorded 1946. Barber: Violin Concerto – Louis Kaufman, violin; Walter Goehr conducting a studio orchestra. Copland: Piano Concerto – Leo Smit, pianist; Aaron Copland conducting the Radio Rome Symphony Orchestra. Musical Masterpiece Society MMS-105, ten-inch LP, recorded early 1950s.

George Gershwin

The three 20th century American classical composers who appear most frequently on concert programs and recordings are George Gershwin (1898-1937), Aaron Copland (1900-1990) and Samuel Barber (1910-1981). Gershwin’s Rhapsody, since its 1924 world premiere at Carnegie Hall, the 1925 Concerto in F – my personal favorite of the three – and the 1927 An American in Paris are given performances by the above musicians that are among the better ones in a very crowded catalog.

William Steinberg (1899-1978) and the Pittsburgh players did a few recordings for the Everest label between their contracts with Capitol Records and the newly-formed Command label. And Steinberg was one of the giants among conductors of the last century whose interpretations of composers from Mozart to Richard Strauss had much power and beauty without being flashy or sensationalized, while pianist Sanroma had over 20 years of experience with the Rhapsody and a previous 1930s recording under Arthur Fiedler.

One detail, however, remains in my memory. Public television broadcast a Beethoven 7th Symphony concert by the Maestro in which he waved his hands like a totally intoxicated drunk. But that concert was a very good one.

The Gershwin Rhapsody and American in Paris had a more delicate, tender beauty than usual in Steinberg’s performances, as opposed to the more boisterous renditions of Leonard Bernstein with the New York Philharmonic and Fiedler/Boston Pops. Whereas the Concerto in F, as it was interpreted by Gershwin’s very good friends, Oscar Levant and Andre Kostelanetz with a fantastically responsive New York Philharmonic, had just the right jubilant swaggering rhythms in the first and third movements and atmospheric poetry in its second movement adagi , exquisitely evoking the Manhattan of the 1920s that was a very part of Gershwin’s own heart and soul.

Samuel Barber is perhaps best known for his Adagio for Strings, composed in the late ‘30s and used in the 1980s war film Platoon. His 1939 Violin Concerto is a genuine beauty with haunting melody. Violinist Louis Kaufman and Maestro Walter Goehr achieved a very good collaboration.

Kaufman’s records, before their 1990s CD reissues, were very pricey collector’s items.

Aaron Copland was perhaps most famous for his 1940s ballets Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid and Rodeo, along with his Hollywood soundtracks for Our Town and The Red Pony. His use of folk melodies and hymns evoked the American landscape of New England village life, the Appalachian Mountains and the Old West.

During the 1920s, the composer was experimenting with jazz rhythms similar to Gershwin and the Piano Concerto is a highly colorful example. One musician commented that when Copland premiered an earlier piece, he’d be ready to commit murder in a few years.

A good friend pianist Leo Smit performed with unique conviction under Copland’s leadership of the Italian orchestra.

Walter Goehr

Maestro Walter Goehr (1903-1960) recorded prolifically for the Concert Hall label of the early 1950s and its subsidiary inexpensive mail order Musical Masterpiece Society. His LPs of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony and Hebrides Overture, the Beethoven Pastoral and 9th Symphonies, the Grieg Piano Concerto with Grant Johannesen, the Schumann A minor and Chopin 1st Concertos with Mewton-Wood and Bach Violin Concertos with Riccardo Odnoposoff are of high merit.

During the 1930s and ‘40s, Goehr was one of EMI’s busiest house conductors in London and his work with instrumentalists and singers appeared on numerous 78s in the U.S.

In December 1960, after conducting Handel’s Messiah, Walter Goehr died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 57.

Most all of the above selections are accessible on YouTube.