by Peter Cates

Paul Baumgartner

Piano Recital
recorded February 17, 1964; Ermitage-ERM 200-2 ADD, CD.

Paul Baumgartner

Swiss-born Paul Baumgartner (1903-1976) was most definitely below-the-radar, when compared to Rubinstein, Brendel, Ashkenazy or Horowitz, but he was highly revered by connoisseurs of really fine piano recordings. This CD preserves a live concert of the following works – Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata and An­dante Favori, the Brahms Opus 117 3 Intermezzi, Debussy’s 1st Images and Masques, Schubert’s 6th Moment Musical and Chopin’s 4th Ballade and 3rd Waltz of Op. 70.

Baumgartner’s artistry was splendid but of the quieter mode, rather than of cheap, virtuosic self-indulgence. Instead he used virtuosity, of which he possessed infinite amounts, scholarship, exquisitely honed dynamics, passion and soul-filled intelligence to convey the particular beauty of each selection in the program, whether it be the muscularity of Beethoven, the nobility and reserved sentiment of Brahms, the dew drops of Debussy, the lyricism of Schubert or the captivating, grace of Chopin. My favorite performance, by a tiny margin over the others, is of the lesser known but very engaging Beethoven Andante Favori in which Baumgartner pours out his soul in each note, one of the most moving performances I have heard in a long time!

Most, if not all, of this recital is accessible via individual yts !

Cold Justice

featuring Kelly Siegler and Yolanda McClary; produced by Dick Wolf; premiered 2013, each episode one hour, accessible via Netflix

Kelly Siegler

For the last two or three weeks, I have been viewing one or two episodes of this investigative program most evenings and am on the second season. It follows former Hous­ton prosecutor Kelly Siegler and her colleague, retired Las Vegas homicide investigator Yolanda McClary, as they travel around the country investigating cold cases of murder that are languishing in local police department files. According to the pronouncements at the beginning of each episode, a murder is committed in the US about every 36 minutes and there are over 200,000 unsolved homicides since 1980.

Yolanda McClary

What I find most engaging and endearing about the show is the absence of melodramatics, especially eerie music and the use of actors in staged re-enactments. Also, the 2 women’s warm personalities; their very caring interactions with families of the victims; their very personable working relationships with colleagues; and finally their comprehensive knowledge of investigative science contribute immeasurably to the well paced unfolding of each story.

Not to mention the remarkable advances in DNA processing just in the last ten years. These innovations alone led to the apprehension of a rapist/murderer of a young 25 year old Pocatello, Idaho, woman; ten years earlier, his hand print had been found on the outside of the victim’s back door. But, his priors were a few burglaries, he had no known connection to the victim and he left no other implicating marks, while the police had two other major suspects and scratched him off their list! With new techniques, the investigators were able to find new, more incriminating DNA within the existing DNA and to figure out the hand print came from within the house rather than outside!

by Peter Cates

Beethoven: Symphony No. 7

Paul Kletzki conducting the Czech Philharmonic; Quintessence PMC-7216; stereo LP, 1983 reissue of 1967 Supraphon original LP.

Paul Kletzki

Paul Kletzki, who died in 1973, was one of six truly great conductors – the others being Jascha Horenstein, Karel Ancerl, Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt, Otto Klemperer and Istvan Kertesz. From what I have gleaned through listening to the recordings on my shelves, Kletzki had a knack for the rhythmic spirit in a work and sustaining this rhythm throughout a performance with slowish tempos that almost drag. His conducting of the 7th is both powerful and beautifully played as a result – in the wonderful climax of the first movement, he suddenly slows down the leisurely tempo to a crawl but the sustaining rhythms seethe with life. The record also contains a gripping performance of the exciting Leonore Overture #3.

Kletzki was studying in Berlin from the ‘20s to 1933 but wisely left due to his Jewish ancestry. He resided in Italy for a spell, then exited for the 1930s Soviet Union due to Mussolini’s growing closeness to Hitler. From the Soviet Union, he migrated to Switzerland where he lived out most of his life!

Meanwhile the Nazis murdered several members of Kletzki’s parents and a sister.

Wonderful Town

A musical by Leonard Bernstein, starring Rosalind Russell, etc.; Sony Broadway SK 48021, 1991 cd reissue from original Columbia Masterworks stereo lp recorded November 16, 1958.

Rosalind Russell

This is a recording of the 1958 TV production for CBS, not the 1953 original Broadway production, and is loaded with wonderful songs and performances, none of which became a hit, unlike the later 1957 West Side Story. The story centers around two sisters from Columbus, Ohio, who move to New York City to pursue their dreams- one a writer, the other an actress !

Walton

Violin Concerto played by Dong-Suk Kang; and Cello Concerto, played by Tim Hugh; Paul Daniel conducting both works with the English Northern Philharmonia; Naxos 8.554325, CD, recorded 1997.

Dong-Suk Kang

These two expessively tart, spunky works of Sir William Walton (1902-1983) are given exciting performances by the talent featured here. Walton achieved success before World War II with such musical creations as the blisteringly exciting 1931 Bel shazzar’s Feast, the most colorful choral romp ever composed, and the graceful 1939 Violin Concerto commissioned by Jascha Heifetz; after the war, his music didn’t generate much excitement because of changing times. But his 1956 Cello Concerto, commissioned by cellist Grigor Piatigorsky, is also eloquent and beautifully performed.

by Peter Cates

Conversations about Bernstein
William Westbrook Burton, editor
Oxford Univ. Press, 1995, 198 pages.

Conversations is a volume of interviews with various individuals who knew and worked with the composer, conductor, pianist, author, TV personality extraordinaire, Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990), who was arguably the most famous man involved in classical music during the last 60 years. I have read bios by David Ewen, Joan Peyser, and Schuyler Chapin, each of whom has provided their own pieces of the fascinating puzzle comprising this genius.

As composer, he gave us the Broadway masterwork, West Side Story and other works, including at least 4 more musicals, assorted pieces for the theater and cinema and classical writings consisting of three symphonies, etc. As conductor of the New York Philharmonic from 1958-1969 and guesting with other orchestras, he recorded dozens of performances covering the well known repertoire and interesting, generally unknown pieces. As pianist, he did exciting records of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue; the Mozart Piano Concertos 15, 17, 18, and 25; and the Beethoven 1st, while conducting from the keyboard. As author, he wrote the insightful Infinite Variety of Music. And finally as TV personality, he produced the Young People’s Concerts.

The book features talks with composers Lucas Foss and David Diamond, record producer Paul Myers, the late anti-Bernstein New York Times critic Harold C. Schonberg, and performers such as cellist Slava Rostropovich and singers Christa Ludwig and Frederica von Stade, all of whom share valuable insights.

Leonard Bernstein

But the crowning, most searingly eloquent and fascinatingly memorable interview was with singer Carol Lawrence, the Maria of the original Broadway production of West Side Story, which opened in 1957. According to her, Bernstein was very agreeable and supportive to work with but he ceded most responsibility for the staging to the brilliant perfectionist choreographer Jerome Robbins, who was one blankety-blank SOB for all of the cast to work with, especially Lawrence. He singled her out for the bulk of his scathing, judgmental, around- the-clock pitchers of acid. But, as with any production he worked on, he achieved the most phenomenal results, laying the groundwork as much as the composer Leonard Bernstein and lyricist Stephen Sondheim for the musical’s unimpeachably classic status!

One song in the show, the hit I Feel Pretty, was originally marked for destruction by “Jerry” Robbins but was left in and made its own contribution to the show’s success, as conveyed now in Lawrence’s own account:

“But the most wonderful part, told to me afterwards, was that after the show, as Oscar Hammerstein was walking up the aisle, he came over to Jerry and Lenny, who were at the top, watching from the back row and said: ‘Congratulations to both of you. This is an incredible milestone in the theatre.’ And he raved and raved about every aspect of the show. And then, turning to Jerry, he said: ‘But my favorite moment in the entire show came with the spontaneity of I Feel Pretty. I don’t know how you did it, but you encapsulated the joy of a young woman in love. And you are to be congratulated.’ And Jerry said, ‘Thank you.’ “

by Peter Cates

The number of record collectors who listen to the dusty old 78s are few when one considers the general population but, if gathered in a convention hall from around the world, could fill it. The dealers hawking them on Ebay, popsike and other venues plus the Facebook pages testify to the interest, even, unbelievably, among young people born after Bush 41 assumed office!

Franz Schubert

Anyways time to end this banal introductory paragraph! I possess several thousand shellacs ranging from Woody Hermon and Caruso to the original Carousel and imported Telefunkens, Polydors and Deutsche Grammophons and love my sitdown sessions, interrupted every three to five minutes by getting up to change the disc. I play them on a Magnavox console I bought for ten bucks at an Augusta yard sale at least 11 years ago – this gift has kept on giving in the old-fashioned sense, like cars that were traded in mainly because their owners were tired of looking at them!

I would like to offer hopefully succinct comments on a few I own:

A record from 1940, on the Masterpiece label, has sides five and six featuring two-thirds of the slow movement of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony performed quite nicely by an unnamed orchestra. The New York Post spearheaded a series of record sets in the late ‘30s that contained Symphonies and other classical pieces that sold for a buck per set, instead of one or more dollars per record like Victor, Decca, Columbia, etc., but did not name the performers. Yet, because players and others, who were directly involved, talked, the story goes that there was a series of midnight recording sessions at Carnegie Hall with hand-picked free-lancers and conductors such as Eugene Ormandy, Fritz Reiner, Artur Rodzinski and Fritz Stiedry: names would be assigned to different works as more useful snitchings occurred. Thus, Ormandy was revealed as responsible for the Schubert!

An acoustic Victor from the World War I years features the Arthur Pryor Band doing a lively, charming first half of Rossini’s William Tell Overture, itself a very favorite classic of mine. Unfortunately, it is the last half that contains Heigh Ho Silver. I have previously covered another Pryor breakable in these most edifying pages so I will refer the newly curious to an informative Wiki bio on the bandleader’s illustrious life.

Arthur Pryor

Another acoustic from the same label and recording decade has one side devoted to the Victor Minstrel Company, a chorus/orchestra combo performing Alabama Minstrels, a feisty medley consisting of then current hit songs – Fly Fly Fly, My Rosie Rambler that is not to be confused with Nat King Cole’s Ramblin’ Rose of more than 40 years later, and Linda, definitely not the Buddy Clark hit of more than 30 years later! These quaint celebrations of life in the then pellagra, hookworm and lynching – infested Deep South utopia are similar to the 1930s Mills Brothers Decca hit 78, Is It True What They Say About Dixie? and, of course, the 1940s Al Jolsen record of George Gershwin’s Swanee River, itself unsurpassed to this day as a rendition of that song! Finally, Jolsen sang it blackface in the movies before these practices were politically corrected.

Side two contains, again, Pryor’s Band doing Old Heidelberg, A Trip Up the Rhine that incorporates the Sailor’s Chorus from Wagner’s sterling opera, The Flying Dutchman.

One more – a Columbia acoustic from the Columbia Operatic Sextette, a mixed group of fine voices, performs the Donizetti Lucia di Lammermoor sextette, What from Vengeance, and Verdi’s Rigoletto quartet, Beauteous Daughter.

I might be pushing TMI here but I am certain somebody out there would like to know that all of the above selections are 12-inch discs.

by Peter Cates

Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet

starring Ozzie, Harriet, David and Ricky Nelson; ABC network, 435 episodes between Oct. 3, 1952 – April 23, 1966.

The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet was one of the two or three longest running comedy shows in TV history. From 1944-54 – the last two years simultaneously on TV, it was a hugely successful radio program. In 1952, Ozzie (1906-1975) persuaded ABC to sign an unprecedented 10-year contract that paid the family, whether the show was cancelled or not, and then his perfectionist work ethic contributed to its rousing success on TV.

All four Nelsons played themselves but, otherwise, the stories had very little to do with their real lives, although, during the introduction, they stood in front of their actual house (the interior was painstakingly reproduced on the studio backlot where each episode was filmed). For me, the show’s enjoyment derived from the daily life family situations and the cleverly sketched humor naturally arising from those situations.

The Nelson Family, Front, Ozzie & Harriet; Back, David and Ricky

Examples included the following:

Don Defoe (1913-1993) played the intrusive but likable neighbor, Thorney, – perpetrator of mischief and misunderstandings. Later, Lyle Talbot (1902-1996) and Mary Jane Croft (1916-1993) portrayed Joe and Clara, whose involvement in back and forth antics between them and the Nelsons brought much comic relief.

Next, what fan could forget Rick’s giggling, bungling, free-loading friend, Wally Plumsted, who often provoked his long-suffering girlfriend, Ginger, who in turn so often referred to him as Fatso; both Skip Young (1930-1993) and Charlene Salerno (1938-1986) scored high points with their meticulously honed timing, delivery and vivid characterization – oddly, Salerno never appeared elsewhere on any TV show and film.

Finally, Ozzie himself could hold his own for unexpected, very funny facial expressions and movements. I lost track of the number of split seconds where he suddenly made a face at us viewers.

Harriet (1909-1994) was the sturdy assuring mother figure, David (1936-2011), the earnest good son and older brother, and Ricky (1940-1985) was endearing in his own constant desire to do what’s right, occasionally straying off the plantation with farcical moments of bad judgment. When he became a recording star, his father devoted the last five minutes of several episodes to him and his band performing a recent hit song.

Various video cassettes and DVDs have been released of episodes from the 14-year run but a complete set of all 435 episodes have been gathered and slated for DVD/Blue Ray release.