Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

by Peter Cates

In last week’s column, I wrote about the pianist Glenn Gould and mentioned his classical hit record, the 1955 Bach Goldberg Variations for Columbia Records but failed to mention another million seller, his 1981 remake of the same work, of which many of his fans, including myself, also consider basic to any collection.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Born and raised in Portland, Maine, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) was arguably the most well-known American poet of the 19th century. Many one-room schoolhouse children memorized such poems as Paul Revere’s Ride and Psalm of Life, a learning experience that is, unfortunately, not part of most curriculums these days.

Longfellow had a gift for evoking the sense of wonder behind everyday life. Its reality could be boring, routine-ish, sad, almost unbearable, yet, if a person had an open mind and heart, life had its silver linings and rainbows.

One of his contemporaries stated, when the poet was still living, “There is something so tender, so gentle, in the nature of Mr. Longfellow that his poems imbibe it bountifully and it brings them home to the heart, not the mind alone, and what the heart loves and admires will linger long before time can obliterate it.”

One of his poems, A Passing Thought, is a nice example of his tender, gentle nature in dealing with life’s challenges :

“O what a glory doth this world put on
For him who, with a fervent heart goes forth
Under the bright and glorious sky and looks
On duties well performed and days well spent!
For him the wind, ay, and the yellow leaves
Shall have a voice and give him eloquent teachings.
He shall so hear the solemn hymn, that Death
Has lifted up for all, that he shall go
To his long-resting-place without a tear.”

The Longfellow House is a well-known tourist attraction, in Portland, Maine.

by Peter Cates

Budapest String Quartet

Op. 59, No. 3
Budapest String Quartet, Columbia MM-510, 4 12-inch 78s, recorded September 15, 1941.

The Budapest String Quartet began in 1917 when Budapest, Hungary, was a major center for classical music education with composers Bela Bartok and Zoltan Kodaly and violinist Jeno Hubay and others. Four unemployed instrumentalists founded it and gave its debut concert in December of that year.

Previous personnel issues, finances and other such obstacles of living confounded the group. The life stories of every member in the lengthy Wikipedia article make fascinating reading.

After years of just barely escaping destruction at the hands of evil governments in war-torn Europe, the quartet members were finally able to settle in the United States and achieve much success with their concerts, recordings and teaching that would last for the remaining years until they disbanded as a group in 1967. They had already recorded discs for RCA Victor since 1932 but left that company in 1940 to record for Columbia Masterworks with greater success in worldwide fame, record sales and spreading chamber music gospel.”

The Budapest String Quartet for its last three decades consisted of first violinist Josef Roisman, 1900-1974; second violinist Alexander Schneider, 1908-1993; his older brother, cellist Mischa Schneider, 1904-1985; and violist Boris Kroyt, 1897-1969.

The Beethoven String Quartet listed above, like the composer’s other works, has a concentration of power, beauty, harmonic development, and rhythm and, above all, a range of human emotion that is unique . The string players were in peak form in this 1941 78 set and I have listened to it often in recent days,

A large number of other performances are available to hear on YouTube and elsewhere and free for auditioning.

The sixth season of Black List just became available on Netflix. I have already watched three episodes in a row.

Maurice Ravel

by Peter Cates

Ravel

Bolero, Pavane for a Dead Princess, and La Valse

William Steinberg conducting the Pittsburg Symphony; Capitol SP 8475, stereo lp, recorded October 29, 1958, at Pittsburgh’s Syrian Mosque.

One of the most gifted conductors to have emerged in the last century, William Steinberg (1899-1978), led the Pittsburgh Symphony from 1952 to 1976 , until he resigned because of heart problems. During his lifetime, he was music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic before Pittsburgh and the Boston Symphony from 1969-72, while juggling his time with Pittsburgh. And he had guest engagements with most of the distinguished orchestras and opera houses as well. His Wiki biography provides a number of interesting details about the Maestro’s career.

He recorded a sizable amount of repertoire for Capitol records from the beginning of his tenure in Pittsburgh until he left that label in 1960. Among his recordings is the above program of French composer, Maurice Ravel, 1874-1937, consisting of three works – Bolero, Pavane for a Dead Princess and La Valse.

Bolero was composed for the ballet dancer Ida Rubinstein, after she commissioned Ravel when he returned from a successful tour of the United States during the mid-to-late ‘20s. Its debut on November 22, 1928, elicited nasty comments from certain ‘thinkers,’ but also became an overnight sensation and has remained a much-recorded classic. It is still dismissed as bombastic trash by a number of listeners but, for myself and others, a perennially captivating work for its fascinating build-up of dynamics from the barely audible pianissimi of the snare drum, plucking strings and flute to the rip-roaring conclusion at the same unvarying tempo. Steinberg pulled off these challenges with exactitude and achieved exquisite phrasing of the melodic line from the strings and woodwinds. Other very good recordings include those of conductors Anton Nanut and Paul Paray.

Pavane for a Dead Princess was first written as a piano piece in 1899 and scored for orchestra in 1910. When somebody asked Ravel why he picked the title, he replied that, ‘he liked the sound of the words and put them there.’ He also insisted on very slow tempos yet, when hearing a plodding rendition, admonished the performer that ‘it was not a dead pavane for a princess.’ Steinberg, as did other conductors like Charles Munch, Fritz Reiner, Andre Cluytens etc., observed these slow tempos with very sublime results, particularly the writing of the harp and woodwinds.

La Valse’s world premiere in December, 1920, drew the comment by one individual as ‘people dancing on a volcano.’ Ravel blended the rhythms of Johann Strauss Jr.’s Viennese Waltzes and, no relation, Richard Strauss’s opera, Der Rosenkavalier, into a piece of virtuosity uniquely his own and Steinberg’s recording is very exciting.

A CD set of most of Steinberg’s Capitol recordings was released in 2011 and copies may be still available through Internet sources.

William Steinberg was much loved by his colleagues and had quite the sense of humor. He granted interviews if the subject was one of interest, “for instance, myself.”

George Enescu

by Peter Cates

George Enescu

This past August 19 was the 138th anniversary of the birth of the great Romanian composer , violinist, conductor and teacher, George Enescu (1881-1955), whose musical legacy is still drawing ever-increasing attention and appreciation. The number of his compositions is very large and ranges through most classical forms. His own recordings as a violinist and conductor are easily accessed via YouTube, CD transfers and other sources.

Recently, I have been listening to YouTubes of him conducting his 2nd Romanian Rhapsody, itself more lyrical and less brash than the first; and participating in his Octet for Strings with eight colleagues, both of them recorded and released in the U.S. on very cheap Remington LPs. He recorded his 3rd Violin Sonata, one of very haunting beauty, with Romanian pianist, Dinu Lipatti, who died very young of leukemia, at the age of 33, in the very early 1950s.

The Sears Roebuck label, Silvertone, released a red vinyl 78 of him conducting a vibrant Debussy Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.

Yehudi Menuhin

He was admitted to the Vienna Conservatory of Music when he was seven and met Brahms during those early years, who was his idol. His own students included the violinists Yehudi Menuhin, with whom he recorded the Bach Double Violin Concerto; Christian Ferras; Arthur Grumiaux; Ida Haendel; Uto Ughi and Joan Field.

I also highly recommend a listen to the YouTube of his opera, Oedipide, based on Sophocle’s Oedipus Rex, the mythical King, who, according to satirist Tom Lehrer, just “loved his mother!”

Chubby Checker

by Peter Cates

Meyer Davis plays the Twist

Cameo 1014, vinyl LP, recorded 1960.

Meyer Davis

Band leader, Meyer Davis (1895-1976) ran a multi-million dollar empire of dance music several decades for coming-out parties, and seasonal galas hosted by the folks living in West Palm Beach, Newport, the Bahamas, Houston’s River Oaks, Greenwich, Paris, and the Mediterranean Coast, and for whom money meant a rich full life to too many of them.

At 18, Davis had enrolled in law school while earning $90 a week leading a group of musicians at evening gatherings. His talent and business skills proved a better career choice than becoming a lawyer. His bands played at seven presidential inaugural balls right up to JFK, and they performed for the English nobility, including King George V.

This album of music for Cameo-Parkway – the same Philadelphia label that produced Chubby Checker’s original hit record, The Twist, – provided spiky, captivating renditions of that song, Mack the Knife, Rock Around the Clock, I Could Have Danced All Night and other selections. Davis utilized the most brilliant musicians, creating a record that mirrored high society get-togethers during the early 1960s very evocatively.

Hobbies included playing chamber music with his brother-in-law, the great conductor Pierre Monteux, and collecting first editions of Lord Byron’s books and other memorabilia with his wife.