A Requiem for Martina Arroyo

The distinguished soprano Martina Arroyo has died at age 90 in her lifelong home city of New York, also the site of her many triumphs at the Metropolitan Opera.

Arroyo was famed for her portrayals of Verdi heroines (above she is seen as Elvira in his Ernani), but this memorial post focuses not on the Italian repertory but on the much different and very French Requiem by Gabriel Fauré. She is heard in the touching "Pie Jesu."

Matt Schudel's obituary in the Washington Post [gift link] describes Arroyo's debut - in Verdi, of course: "Her breakthrough came at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 1965, when she took on the lead role in Aida at the last minute after an ailing soprano [Birgit Nilsson] dropped out. She received a standing ovation and was praised by New York Times music critic Raymond Ericson for having 'one of the most gorgeous voices before the public today.'"

Schudel outlines her career: "Arroyo first rose to prominence in Europe, performing in the world premiere of Karlheinz Stockhausen's Momente in 1962 and as a regular leading soprano at the Zurich Opera between 1963 and 1965. She was then one of the Metropolitan Opera's leading sopranos between 1965 and 1978. During those years at the Metropolitan Opera, she was also a regular presence at the world's opera houses, performing on the stages of La Scala, Covent Garden, the Opéra National de Paris, the Teatro Colón, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Vienna State Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and the San Francisco Opera. She is best known for her performances of the Italian spinto repertoire, and in particular, her portrayals of Verdi and Puccini heroines, but she also appeared in world premieres in concert and opera throughout her career."

The recording of Fauré's Requiem was early in her career, made just four years after her Met debut. We hear the Musica Aeterna Orchestra and Chorus directed by Frederic Waldman. Fittingly, it was a New York ensemble directed by Waldman, the former director of the Juilliard Opera Theater. Musica Aeterna made a large number of recordings for American Decca, this one included.

Frederic Waldman

Philip Hart reviewed the recording in High Fidelity as follows: "Fauré's Requiem, one of the gentlest musical settings of the Mass for the Dead, here receives a recording that is lucid in texture and devotional in mood. Its atmosphere is less that of a concert performance than of a private service in a church, the organ being prominently audible wherever the score calls for it.

"Martina Arroyo is splendid in the 'Pie Jesu,' singing with a vocal clarity and stylistic sensitivity."

Hermann Prey

David Hall in Stereo Review also was impressed by the performances: "Martina Arroyo is in lovely vocal form in the famous soprano solo 'Pie Jesu,' and Hermann Prey sings with warmth and manliness in the Offertory and 'Libera me.' The organ part is effectively balanced and contrasted against the dark-hued orchestral timbre, and the recording itself is endowed with a warm concert-hall ambiance."

The recording and performances are indeed quite good, and a fitting remembrance of Martina Arroyo and all involved.

LINK

Victor Young at the Movies, Part 2

As I mentioned in the first installment of this series, in the 1950s Victor Young recorded several LPs that collected theme music from films, including his own work. In general, these short pieces came out first as singles, then were gathered into album form.

The first post featured Young's Hollywood Rhapsodies LP, along with several albums of his film music in newly refurbished editions. Today we add his Cinema Rhapsodies, which features films that are better known than the obscurities covered in the first volume. 

As a bonus, I've remastered Paul Weston's superb LP of themes from Jennifer Jones films, and augmented it with four additional songs.

Finally, my long-neglected singles blog has a new collection of 13 vocal versions of themes that appear instrumentally on either the Young or Weston LPs.

Cinema Rhapsodies

Cinema Rhapsodies contains 12 songs that Young and orchestra recorded in sessions from February to May 1953, all themes from recent films.

Zsa Zsa as Toulouse-Lautrec
never painted her

The first is one of the best known melodies of the group - "The Theme from Moulin Rouge (Where Is Your Heart)." This is a sweeping theme by  Georges Auric (whose music for Bonjour Tristesse is also well worth hearing). The single by Percy Faith, with its impassioned vocal by Felicia Sanders, was a big hit. (It's in the singles collection on my other blog).

The next song also was a huge hit - "Ruby" from 1952's Ruby Gentry. The film is an elaborate Southern potboiler with Jennifer Jones' Ruby at the center. The theme, by the veteran composer Heinz Roemheld, was a success for Les Baxter and for Young himself. Unusually, it featured the harmonica, played by George Fields both on the soundtrack and Young's version. (Baxter's recording can be found here.) If you're like me and have heard the mouth organ warble on this number once too often, Ray Charles' vocal version can be found in the collection on the singles blog.

A third popular success was "Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo," Bronisław Kaper's simple but memorable tune from 1953's Lili, with Leslie Caron (and Zsa-Zsa too). Her (Caron's) charming version can be found here. The singles blog has the Dinah Shore hit single.

Forever Female was an aging-actress comedy, this time with Ginger Rogers as the subject. Young wrote the music for it, and here provides us with the theme melody, "Change of Heart."

One of the most interesting songs on the LP is "Anna" from the film of the same name, whose title character was played by Silvana Magnano. The song is an example of Brazilian baião music, which had become popular there. The music is by by Armando Trovajoli (credited as Roman Vatro). The new collection on my other blog has the soundtrack vocal, credited to Magnano but actually sung by Flo Sandon's, a Brazilian singer who spelled her name in the possessive for some reason. It's a terrific and influential recording.

"The Call of the Far-Away Hills" is from the famous 1953 Western Shane with Alan Ladd. Young was the credited composer for the film, although he (or director George Stevens) employed quite a bit of source material. "The Call of the Far-Away Hills" is Young's work.

Limelight was in some ways a typical Charles Chaplin project, in that he wrote, directed and starred in the film, and wrote the music as well. "Terry's Theme" (Terry was played by Claire Bloom), is one of his most noted compositions.

David Raksin wrote two of my personal favorite film themes - the haunting "Laura" and the gorgeous "Theme from The Bad and the Beautiful," which is sometimes called "Love Is for the Very Young." Dory Langdon Previn wrote words for the tune for June Christy to sing in her 1960 album Off Beat. That vocal can be found on my singles blog.

Young's "Wintertime of Love" is from the war film Thunderbirds with John Derek and such favorites as Ward Bond, Barton MacLane and Slim Pickens.

Mischa Spoliansky wrote the lovely "Melba Waltz" for the film Melba, a biopic with Patrice Munsel as Dame Nellie. I posted the soundtrack LP ages ago, and revisited the sound a few years back. (Here's a link to the original post.)

The Young LP concludes with two of this own compositions. First is "Alone at Last" from Something to Live For, a melodrama about an ad man and an actress struggling with alcoholism.

The final number is "Moonlight Serenade" from The Star, another tale of an aging actress, this one played by Bette Davis. Young seemed to make a sub-specialty of these films; not sure how he lost out on Sunset Boulevard to Franz Waxman.

LINK to Cinema Rhapsodies

Paul Weston - Music for Jennifer

Paul Weston's 1954 Music for Jennifer is a beautiful collection of eight songs from the films of Jennifer Jones. "Love Letters" from the film of that name, "Ruby" (from Ruby Gentry), and "Autumn in Rome" from Indiscretion of an American Wife all appear in vocal versions in the new collection on my other blog. Also, the fine soundtrack recording of Alessandro Cicognini's music for Indiscretion is now available in newly redone and much improved sound here.

The Music for Jennifer LP was later reissued as a 12-inch album, Sound Stage - Hi-Fi Music from Hollywood, with four additional tracks - "Tara's Theme" from Gone with the Wind, and the themes from A Streetcar Named Desire, Quo Vadis and For Whom the Bell Tolls. Those recordings had been previously issued as singles and as the EP depicted at right. The four songs are newly included as a bonus with the Music for Jennifer collection.

LINK to Music for Jennifer - Tara's Theme EP

Stephen Kovacevich Plays Mozart

Stephen Kovacevich, one of the finest pianists of the recent past, died a few days ago at the age of 86.

A native of Los Angeles, he spent most of his career in England. As you will note from the cover above, Kovacevich was known as Stephen Bishop in the early part of his career, Bishop being the name of his mother's second husband. But people began confusing him with a pop musician of the same name, so he added his birth name and became billed as Stephen Bishop-Kovacevich. Later, he shortened it to Stephen Kovacevich.

Stephen Kovacevich

The pianist did not record a great deal of Mozart in his career, but among the discs he did complete is today's coupling of the Piano Concerto No. 21, K. 467, and the Concerto No. 25, K. 503, two of the composer's greatest works. The Mozart sessions were in 1972, when the soloist was 31. The conductor was Colin Davis (pre-knighthood), with whom Kovacevich also recorded sets of the Beethoven, Brahms and Bartók concertos. The orchestra was the London Symphony, which Davis would later lead for many years. At the time of the Mozart sessions, he was the principal conductor of the Royal Opera.

Colin Davis and Stephen Kovacevich

This disc was well received by at least some reviewers. Richard Freed wrote in Stereo Review, "Stephen Bishop has not, I believe, been represented on discs in any previous Mozart performances, although, of course, Colin Davis, his conductor in Nos. 21 and 25, is justly renowned for his. They make an ideal team, combining a strength, brilliance, effervescent wit, stylistic understanding, and give-and-take that make this particular recording one of the most enjoyable Mozart concerto interpretations I have heard in many years."

That's a good summation of the performances' strengths, although other reviewers felt something was lacking. Here's Paul Henry Lang in High Fidelity: "Both [concertos] are large-scale works, festive, proud. and virtuosic, and both have exceptionally pensive, affecting, and profound slow movements ... In the heavenly slow movement of K. 467, clearly echoing southern Italian church music with its garlands of bittersweet suspensions, every measure seems to carry the superscription 'cantabile,' but Bishop does not sing ..."

There is something to what Lang writes. In 1967, the Andante of K. 467 was used in the film Elvira Madigan, leading to the music becoming very popular for the reasons Lang cited. But Kovacevich does not see the music that way, being more interested in the qualities that Freed cited in his review.

On balance, this is quite a good record. Kovacevich was a fluid pianist with a lovely tone, well caught in this recording from London's Watford Town Hall. Freed summed up: "I consider the present disc something quite special. The orchestral contribution is marvelously precise and tonally clear, one of the best balanced performances to be heard; the recorded sound is exceptionally good."

Actually, the recording is a little light in the bass and close to the strings, but is otherwise pleasing. Kovacevich's piano is well caught.

I typically link to the New York Times obituary for prominent musicians, but it has not yet commemorated Kovacevich's death. Earlier this week, however, it did find space for a long obituary for the inventor of a wah-wah pedal.

LINK

A Late Addition to Buster's Haunted Playlist

My friend Mel sent me a new (well ... 67 years old) addition to the Haunted Playlist I posted a few days ago. It's in the form of "The Witch Song," as performed on a 1959 LP by the John La Salle Quartet, a vocal group who made a few records and whose most notable member was Marlene Ver Planck, who went on to record many good LPs. The La Salle group have a lot of fun with "The Witch Song."

The tune is by the venerable songwriter J. Fred Coots, who otherwise confined himself to another holiday as the author of "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town." 

Here a link to the song itself, for those who downloaded the original playlist. I've updated the original post to include the tune as well.

LINK to "The Witch Song"

Buster's Haunted Playlist

I am not a fan of Halloween. I haven't been in a costume since I was 10 and there are no animatronic skeletons on my front lawn. I don't try to scare the neighborhood children (other than with my looks).

Accordingly, my record collection does not include any Halloween records, except for a copy of "The Monster Mash," and I don't even know where that is.

So when I decided to do a Halloween post, I had to turn to another source for records - and the collection of the Internet Archive, depleted though it may be, was the likeliest place to look. And it did come through with a varied group of 18 items, which I am introducing in this post.

There is nothing here as popular as Bobby (Boris) Pickett and His Crypt-Kicker Five, but we do have Orville Newby and His Saddle Serenaders plus Ina Rae Hutton and Her Melodears (not on the same record). Also Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, someone called Freddie Wolf - "Popular Swing Organist," several production music records from England that are supposed to be scary but are mostly bland, and "Witch Doctor" not by Ross Bagdasarian but by the Four Freshmen (well, one of them anyway).

As usual with these collections, the items are presented in chronological order.

The New Mayfair Dance Orchestra, with Ray Noble in the suit

We start off in Old Blighty with a characteristically goofy record called "The Haunted House" by the New Mayfair Dance Orchestra, which I believe was under the direction of Ray Noble at this time (1931). The record begins with a bonkers and nearly incomprehensible scene between an Oblivious Englishman type (probably Noble) playing the host of the haunted house warning a squeaky-voiced guest that his room has a ghost. It then proceeds to the lively tune.

We move ahead to 1934 and another big band of the time, Ina Rae Hutton and Her Melodears, who give us "Witch Doctor." I probably don't need to add that this is not the same song as the Ross Bagdasarian item of the 50s.

Ten years later, clarinetist Hank D'Amico assembled a starry sextet to record "Shy Little Witch from Greenwich." In the band were luminaries Frankie Newton (who wrote the tune), Don Byas and Cozy Cole.

Neither of these instrumentals have much to do with Halloween, but in the great tradition of my friend Ernie and his Christmas records, I cast a big net.

In 1946, the Majestic label came out with a children's album that presented familiar classical themes as kiddie songs. From this set we have Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King" from Peer Gynt transformed into "On October 31," helpfully subtitled "Halloween Song" so there is no confusion. Bob Hannon is the vocalist.

In 1947 bassist Chubby Jackson assembled a band to record "The Happy Monster" for M-G-M. This particular monster must have developed an affinity for bop, 'cause that's what Chubby and crew offer us. The star soloists are Conte Candoli and Billy Bauer. 

Luis Russell

Veteran big band leader Luis Russell issued "Luke the Spook" that same year. The label notes that this one is "Dedicated to Luke the Spook" with no indication of who that might be. No one in the band was named Luke.

"Eerie Night" from about 1948 is the first of our production music selections, and it is appropriately eerie without overdoing it. This is from the "London Promenade Orchestra," a recording unit.

Wayne Raney

Country singer/harmonica player/bandleader Wayne Raney made many recordings for the King label. His splendid "Jole Blon's Ghost" was a 1948 issue. It's a play on "Jole Blon" ("Pretty Blonde" in Cajun), a traditional tune that had been a hit for fiddler Harry Choates in 1946.

Freddie Wolf - "Popular Swing Organist" is next. I have no information on him, although there are three "Freddie Wolfs" in Discogs - a Danish drummer, another drummer (probably the same cat, er, wolf), and a heavy metal artist, if there is such a thing. No "Popular Swing Organists," so Freddie could not have been that popular. He is pretty good, though, and his "Witch Doctors Swing" (is there an apostrophe missing?) is fun. It's from 1950.

From about the same time, we have "Atomic Monster" from Major, an American production label. It's well recorded, but the monster sounds more anemic than atomic.

Orville Newby

Another fun item is "Ghost Town Boogie," which Orville Newby and His Saddle Serenaders put out in 1950. It's a obscure Western Swing gem.

Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey recorded "My Friend the Ghost" for Bell Records in 1954, but it also was issued on the kiddie label Golden Records. This is the Bell version - the kiddie pressing left out the bridge where vocalist Gordon Polk sings about drinking with the ghost. He (Gordon, not the ghost) was the brother of the better-known Lucy Ann Polk.

"Hallowe'en Hop" (I like the archaic spelling of the holiday) comes to us from the publishers Boosey & Hawkes and their production music label. The New Concert Orchestra and conductor Paul Hamilton are the listed artists, but those were probably pseudonyms. 

The prolific writer/comic/TV host/actor/musician Steve Allen worked with Ira Lee to come up with "The Rockin' Ghost" in 1956. The title picks up on the new fad of rock 'n' roll, but with Archie Bleyer, his chorus and orchestra responsible for the recording, there is no rockin' to be heard on this Cadence release. It is nicely done, however.

The Four Freshmen: Ken Albers, Ross Barbour,
Bob Flanigan, Don Barbour

I was surprised to come across Ross Barbour of the Four Freshmen moonlighting for the budget Tops label. He does quite a good job with "Witch Doctor," the Ross Bagdasarian opus issued under the name of David Seville in 1958. Discogs has this as the only title Barbour did for Tops.

We end with three numbers from another English production house: the Theme Music label from publishers Josef Weinberger Ltd. The 1960 selections are "Footsteps in the Night," "The Terror Strikes" and "The Creatures."

This may not be the best collection ever offered here, but it is fun. Hope you enjoy it.

Addendum: My friend Mel sent me a new (well ... 67 years old) addition to the Haunted Playlist I posted a few days ago. It's in the form of "The Witch Song," as performed on a 1959 LP by the John La Salle Quartet, a vocal group who made a few records and whose most notable member was Marlene Ver Planck, who went on to record many good LPs. The La Salle group have a lot of fun with "The Witch Song."

The tune is by the venerable songwriter J. Fred Coots, who otherwise confined himself to another holiday, writing "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town."

The link below takes you to a new file that includes "The Witch Song."

NEW LINK

The Music of 'Picnic'

William Holden and his torn shirt were the image by which Columbia Pictures promoted its 1955 drama Picnic, its adaptation of a William Inge play. Our interest today is less with ripped apparel and more with the music that accompanied this tale of a drifter (Holden) who manages to disrupt a small Kansas town in the space of a day.

The stranger who comes to town and changes things is a common plot device that in 1950s musicals alone can be found in The Pajama Game, which was on Broadway when this film came out, and in The Music Man, a few years in the future.

The ads seem to associate Kim Novak with the torn shirt but it actually was a jealous Rosalind Russell who did the deed. She was the second woman instantly besotted with Holden; the third was Novak's sister Susan Strasberg, who is peeking around the picnic basket in the poster above.

It must have been moonglow ...

This action took place at a town picnic and dance, which is where the film's most famous music cue is heard. The band plays "Moonglow," the beautiful Hudson-DeLange song from the 1930s, and as Holden and Novak dance, the soundtrack segues into George Duning's memorable theme from the film.

It's a bit of genius that was a chart hit in three different versions in 1956. First is the soundtrack version conducted by Morris Stoloff, which of course is on the LP. I actually prefer the George Cates record that came out on Decca's sister label Coral, because I enjoy Stan Wrightsman's piano playing and his interplay with the group's superb guitarist, who I suspect is George Van Eps. This version is included as a bonus track.

A second bonus is a vocal version of the theme, with words by Steve Allen. Performing are the McGuire Sisters, who are quite good. (Oddly, Allen himself issued a version of the song with wordless vocals.)

Addendum: reader Stephen mentioned the excellent Gisele MacKenzie record of "Moonglow - Theme from Picnic". It turns out that I posted that version years ago, on her RCA Victor LP Giselle. I've now refreshed the sound and reposted the album here.

George Duning

George Duning doesn't get the attention of contemporary innovators like Alex North or Elmer Bernstein, or such masters as Bernard Herrmann or Dimitri Tiomkin. But he produced good scores and has been featured on this blog many times.

Rosalind Russell and Arthur O'Connell

As for the story, Holden ends up with Novak, and Rosalind Russell ends up with Arthur O'Connell, a talented actor who made a career out of these supporting roles. He also was in the Broadway production.

The soundtrack's early stereo sound was dry and harsh, which I've adjusted.

LINK

Hanson's Romantic Symphony

I never do this, but my recent post of Howard Hanson's Columbia recordings has, as they say in the movie business, failed to find an audience.

So let me draw attention to the fact that the post includes Hanson's little-known 1952 recording of his popular Romantic Symphony (the Symphony No. 2). It's a thrilling performance in very good sound that I'm sure many of you would enjoy. It comes with Edward MacDowell's Piano Concerto No. 2, with soloist Jesús María Sanromá.

Here's the download:

LINK