by Peter Cates

Classical Journey

Volume 4:France;
Laserlight 79 669, cassette, released 1991.

France

Some of the best of France’s shorter classical works are to be found here – Offenbach La Vie Parissienne, the always riveting Auber Fra Diavolo Overture, Herold Zampa Overture, Boieldieu The Lady in White Overture – quite engaging and new to me, Meyerbeer Coronation March, Delibes Coppelia excerpts, Massenet Meditation, Berlioz Dance of the Sylphs, Chabrier Joyeuse Marche, and the Saint-Saens Danse Macabre.

Conductors Pinchas Steinberg, Tamas Pal, Caspar Richter, Heinz Fricke, Andras Korodi, Adam Fischer, and Rouslan Raychev are not exactly household names, but they are very good. Orchestras are Berlin Radio Symphony, Hungarian State Orchestra, Cologne Radio, Budapest Symphony and Philharmonic Orchestras, and Plovdiv Philharmonic. The lineup of talent and repertoire are very well-matched and the cassette and cd should be very inexpensive. I like this a lot and will keep my copy!

James Coburn

The Loved One

Starring Jonathan Winters, Rod Steiger, James Coburn, Tab Hunter, Dana Andrews, Paul Williams, etc.

Jonathan Winters

Rod Steiger

The 1965 film, The Loved One, is a very funny satire on the funeral industry. Jonathan Winters plays a dual role as the Divinely Rev. Wilbur Glenworthy and his hapless endearing brother Harry; Rod Steiger as the mortician, Mr. Joyboy; and such seasoned stars as Milton Berle, Robert Morse, Robert Morley, Liberache as the casket salesman, Tab Hunter, James Coburn, Lionel Stander, Dana Andrews, Paul Williams etc., are in peak form. There is a five-minute sketch of Liberache’s salesmanship that conveys maximum humor in a minimum of time.

by Peter Cates

Laura Nyro

Laura Nyro

Smile, Columbia AL 33912 LP ,1975.

The late Laura Nyro was one very gifted singer, songwriter and pianist. A number of songs, Stoney End, Stoned Soul Picnic, Wedding Bell Blues, etc. have been covered by such artists as Barbra Streisand and the Fifth Dimension.

The 1975 Smile is a sterling example of the searing beauty and power of her on-going themes – life in the Bronx. Sexy Mama, Children of the Junks, Money, I am the Blues, Stormy Love, The Cat-song, Midnite Blues, and the title song mirror the drug addictions, needs to survive, and the moments of joy and love that preoccupy and sustain us. An album highly recommended.

Yannick Nezet-Seguin

Yannick Nezet-Seguin

The Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra Collection
Deutsche Grammophon 4835345, 6 CDs, live concerts 2008-2018.

Presently the music director of the Metropolitan Opera and other orchestras, Yannick Nezet-Seguin conducts the Rotterdam Philhar­monic in works by Beethoven, Shosta­kovich, Mahler, Tchaikov­sky, Bruckner etc. The performances are good, especially the Bruckner 8th Symphony, and would fit the needs of anyone wanting a set of choice basic repertoire.

A couple of Remington Records colorful album jackets

by Peter Cates

Georges Bizet

Bizet

Carmen excerpts
Remington RLP-199-15, mono LP, recorded in 1950.

Remington records was started in 1950 and stayed in business until 1957. The records themselves often had noisy surfaces; they also had very beautiful and colorful album covers, which makes them often collectible and also very expensive on different Internet sites. Finally, they had a catalog featuring both standard and unusual repertoire, artists familiar to classical record connoisseurs, and its share of pseudonyms or phony names.

The opera excerpts are beautifully sung, so many of the melodies – examples such as the Toreador Song, Habanera, etc. – appearing in everything from TV shows to ads. The names of the singers and conductor are unfortunately nowhere to be found, even on the Sound Fountain website, which otherwise contains so much fascinating info on the label and lots of photos of its album covers, including this release. Just type in the following on Google: Remington records, Jean Allain – Bizet Carmen and/or soundfountain.com, which is listed under Remington records on the Google site!

Musically, every Remington record on my shelves has something interesting, despite its faults otherwise.

by Peter Cates

Sarah Vaughan

Sings the Mancini Songbook
Mercury, 61009, stereo LP, recorded 1965.

Sarah Vaughan

Billy Eckstine

This very fine album, a bringing together of one of the finest singers and composers in American music history, was a collaboration that never got the attention it truly deserved. Singer Sarah Vaughan (1924-1990) brought thorough professionalism, exquisite taste, and vibrant heart and soul to her vocal art; if she made a bad record, I don’t know of it. Her early jazz sides during the mid-forties, some Columbia singles with arranger Percy Faith released after 1950, the mid-’50s Roulette LPs and ten years of Mercury vinyl beginning in 1957 that had duets with Billy Eckstine, and other entries too numerous to mention add up to a priceless legacy. After 1980, two personal favorites were the South Pacific CBS CD with Kiri Te Kanawa and Mandy Patinkin and the extraordinary Mystery of Man, a song cycle recorded in Germany and based on the poetry of a young man who later became Pope John Paul II.

Percy Faith

Henry Mancini

Henry Mancini produced a large, largely superb body of work noted for its own special beauties – soundtracks for Peter Gunn, Mr. Lucky, the Pink Panther, Romeo and Juliet, Charades, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, etc. forever; jazz and mood music arrangements; and the songs – Moon River, Dear Heart, Days of Wine and Roses, just three of the dozen songs on this week’s album, one most highly recommended.

Several selections can be heard on YouTube!

by Peter Cates

Felix Mendelssohn

This week I am focusing on the recordings of the Violin Concerto of Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847), conceived in 1838 and completed and first performed by the composer’s concertmaster, Ferdinand David, of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, where Mendelssohn was music director from 1835 to 1847. David also proved invaluable with his advice on many as­pects of scoring.

The Concerto has been performed and recorded innumerable times. This week, I would like to briefly comment on recordings that have given much pleasure over the decades and particularly emphasize the work’s rich catalog of different individual violinists who have their own styles, yet have conveyed the beauties of the Concerto itself.

Ferdinand David

Several historic recordings are worth searching out. Fritz Kreisler recorded a Victor 78 set back in the ‘30s, with the very competent Sir Landon Ronald, that was warmly expressive in its aristocratic framework. During the same decade, Joseph Szigeti gave a reading with the most exquisite bowing and phrasing, with Sir Thomas Beecham’s elegant, vibrant conducting of his own carefully formed and meticulously rehearsed London Philharmonic, then at its peak as possibly the finest recording orchestra in the world and creating a catalog of pristine Columbia

Fritz Kreisler

Mischa Elman did an RCA Victor album in the mid-’40s with the Chicago Symphony, under the Belgian conductor, Desire Defauw, in a style best described as that of tasteful reserve and nicely matching Defauw’s own interpretive worldview . Within a couple of years, Beecham’s elegant, vibrant conducting, provided for Szigeti more than ten years earlier, would rev up his recording with the then newly-formed Royal Philharmonic into a riveting collaboration with the dashing Jascha Heifetz, also an RCA Victor release.

To be continued next week!

(Read part 2 here.)