Efrem Kurtz at the NY Philharmonic

The conductor Efrem Kurtz had a productive relationship with the New York Philharmonic throughout the 1940s, leading pops concerts at Lewisohn Stadium and recording principally light material with the ensemble.

Today we have two LPs worth of the studio results - enjoyable readings of Kabalevsky's The Comedians and of the ballet suite Mlle. Angot, based on a Lecocq opera, plus a new transfer of the ballet suite Les Sylphides from Chopin's music along with Villa-Lobos' tone poem Uirapurú. (The latter album appeared here several years ago.)

Kabalevsky's The Comedians

The Russian composer Dmitry Kabalevsky (1904-87) produced nothing more popular than his orchestral suite The Comedians, which was adapted from incidental music for the children's play The Inventor and the Buffoons by Mark Daniel. That work somehow involved Johannes Gutenberg.

It's helpful to remember that context, for the score is often castigated for being simplistic.Here, for example, is The Gramophone's verdict:

[I]t is bright, extrovert, rather crude music, with plenty of obvious rhythmic foundation ... I can only shake my head sadly at the results of making composers write according to the presumed taste of the masses. From his other works we know Kabalevsky to be a highly talented composer, with something worthwhile to say and an attractive way of saying it; this Suite, for all its superficial attraction, does nothing more than tickle the ears of the groundlings.

The writer did allow that it isn't as vulgar as Khatchaturian's Gayane - if you want to see for yourself, Kurtz also recorded that suite, and it has appeared here along with renditions from Fabien Sevitzky, Nikolai Golovanov and Artur Rodziński. There's also a separate post where Gayane's "Sabre Dance" is taken on by everyone from the Andrews Sisters to Mickey Katz.

Dmitry Kabalevsky

Kabalevsky himself had a similar "hit" in the "Galop" from The Comedians. This first entered my consciousness as a youngster watching the Ed Sullivan variety show on television. Ed had a penchant for jugglers and similar vaudeville acts, who would often be accompanied by the Galop. It also was used as theme music by some programs.

Lecocq - Mlle. Angot Suite

Charles Lecocq

The Comedians recording dates from 1947; the same recording date in Carnegie Hall produced a ballet suite called Mlle. Angot, taken from music from an comic opera by the 19th century French composer Charles Lecocq (1832-1918).

Lecocq is little remembered this days, but back then he was a composer who rivalled Jacques Offenbach in popularity. His La Fille de Madame Angot was quite a success after its 1872 debut. In the early 1940s, Léonide Massine decided to base a ballet on the piece. Mlle. Angot premiered in New York in 1943, with the music chosen by Kurtz and arranged by Richard Mohaupt. A suite from that music is what is on this LP.

Margot Fonteyn as Mam'zelle Angot in the 1947 production

Massine decided to redo the ballet for a 1947 production in London. That version was called Mam'zelle Angot and had new arrangements by Gordon Jacob. (That second version is available on the blog in a 1956 recording led by Robert Irving. There, it is coupled with music from Glazunov that Irving arranged for the ballet Birthday Offering. This good early stereo disc is newly remastered.)

LINK to The Comedians and Mlle. Angot

Chopin - Les Sylphides

Frédéric Chopin wrote very little orchestral music, confining himself to a handful of concerted works for piano in his relative youth. Since then, we have had 200 years of critics deriding his orchestrations. I for one love those works and much prefer them to latter-day orchestrations of his piano works - which of course is what we have here with the ballet score for Les Sylphides.

The ballet was the inspiration of Michel Fokine, who himself had been inspired by Alexander Glazunov's orchestral suite Chopiniana, based on Chopin's piano works. A ballet with that title appeared in 1909. For his ballet, Fokine convinced Glazunov to add a Waltz to his selections; the choreographer then decided to include more numbers that were orchestrated by Maurice Keller.

From the first London performance, 1911

In 1909, Diaghilev produced a new version called Les Sylphides in Paris, throwing out all the 1907 charts with the exception of Glazunov's waltz arrangement, adding new arrangements by Anatoly Lyadov, Sergei Taneyev, Nikolai Tcherepnin and Igor Stravinsky.

Alexander Gretchaninov

These reshufflings set off a fashion for reorchestrating the various dances, and versions by Maurice Ravel, Benjamin Britten, Roy Douglas, Gordon Jacob, and Leroy Anderson/Peter Bodge have had their day. Kurtz' version has arrangements by the Russian-born American émigré Alexander Gretchaninov. Those seem to have been written specifically for this recording, although that is nowhere mentioned on the record.

The New Records liked this Kurtz LP: "A really fine recording with modern reproduction of Les Sylphides is a welcome item, and should enjoy a healthy sale... The ballet is an enchanting bit of romantic fluff danced to some of Chopin's most familiar music, lushly orchestrated."

Villa-Lobos - Uirapurú

Heitor Villa-Lobos

If you search long and hard on the Les Sylphides cover above, you will see that the LP also includes the tone poem Uirapurú by the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos. It was recorded on the same day in 1949 as the Chopin ballet. Kurtz must have thought intensively about what music would be least likely to be companionable with the Chopin. He apparently dismissed the idea of Ives or Varèse and hit upon the notion of switching locales from the Parisian salons to the Brazilian jungles.

An uirapurú - the "king of love"?

I much enjoy Uirapurú - it's like early Stravinsky in Brazil. But let me give you the overheated view of The New Records:

Uirapurú, composed in 1917, tells the story of the legendary enchanted bird, Uirapurú, whom the Indians of Brazil considered the "King of Love." A beautiful Indian maiden shoots him through the heart with a bow and arrow, transforming him into a handsome youth. Later an ugly old Indian, playing a nose flute, who had previously been beaten by the natives, returns and shoots the youth, who turns again into the beautiful bird which flies away singing its haunting song. This symphonic poem employs a number of native percussion instruments. It marvelously recreates the feeling of a magical Brazilian jungle with its bizarre colors, its impenetrable mystery and its savage poetry.

In other words, this was considered to be prime exotica 75 years ago - "bizarre," "impenetrable" and "savage." Leaving this nonsense aside, it is hugely enjoyable and I recommend it to you as an elixir after the weak tea of Chopin orchestrations.

LINK to Les Sylphides and Uirapurú

From the Back Room: 'Silk Stockings'

This post presents the music from the 1957 film Silk Stockings; which had previous lives as a story, film (Ninotchka), and 1955 Broadway musical with songs by Cole Porter.

The tale begins with a story idea by screenwriter Melchior Lengyel that was turned into a 1939 film starring Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas. (Earlier, in his native Hungary, Lengyel wrote a story called "The Miraculous Mandarin" that was the basis of a Béla Bartók ballet - with music that could hardly be more different from Cole Porter.)

Film to stage to film

The 1955 Broadway musical of Ninotchka adopted the name Silk Stockings, for it was those along with the charms of Don Ameche that caused Russian apparatchik Ninotchka (Hildegard Knef) to abandon her homeland for the decadent West (in this case, Paris).

It's a thin and stereotypical premise for a story, but the 1939 film and the 1955 Broadway production did well. The thinking is that the stage musical was buoyed by its cast album, even though the show was nowhere near as popular as Damn Yankees of the same year.

Fred and Cyd

The film abounds with cardboard Russians, starting with Charisse's single-minded functionary who is somehow also gorgeous and a miraculous dancer. She is accompanied by three Russian commissars, who are dense stooges. They all are attempting to bring back Russian composer Peter Ilyitch Boroff, who wants to switch from writing "Ode to a Tractor" to doing film scores for Fred Astaire's producer character.

Enough with the painful exposition: what about the score? It was Porter's last for the stage, and certainly not his best - although it does have a few gems and other interesting items.

Cyd Charisse - no longer an apparatchik

The first song of note is "Paris Loves Lovers" - an appropriately lilting song from Astaire, with a tuneless obbligato by Charisse in the second chorus. It does feature one of Porter's many double-entendres - "the urge to merge with a splurge".

Fred and Janis Paige in breathtaking Cinemascope

Next is "Stereophonic Sound," which concerns the technical gimmicks that are needed to lure people to the movie theater - "You gotta have glorious Technicolor, breathtaking Cinemascope and stereophonic sound!" The song was not written for the screen; it was in the Broadway score. Unlike the rest of this program, which is from the mono LP, I took this number from the film track because it was in stereo. Fred is partnered by Janis Paige - the prospective star of his film - for this number.

"It's Chemical Reaction, That's All" leads into the hit from the score - the gorgeous "All of You," which in the film continues through a rapturous dance with Fred and Cyd. The excellent scoring here is by Conrad Salinger. Additional orchestrators who worked on the film included Skip Martin and Bob Franklyn.

The other popular number from the score is "Without Love," another lovely ballad, this one with decidedly sexist lyrics.

Fred rocks out

The final song of note is "The Ritz Roll and Rock," which Astaire requested from Porter specifically for the film, apparently so he could seem "with it."

Carol Richards

Let me note in closing that Charisse's singing voice for the film was by the talented Carol Richards, who dubbed several of her films.

André Previn was the conductor and music supervisor. The sound is very good.

CORRECTED LINK

Unusual Grainger from Neville Dilkes

About a year ago I posted a few LPs by the recently deceased conductor Neville Dilkes. All of them comprised music by English composers. Today we broaden the perspective a bit by featuring an LP of compositions by the Australian Percy Grainger (1882-1961).

These 1977-78 recordings are notable because they include three lesser-known but fascinating works - the "'In a Nutshell' Suite," the "Danish Folk-Music Suite" and "The Immovable 'Do.'" Two familiar pieces leaven the mixture - "Molly on the Shore" and the "Irish Tune from County Derry" (aka the "Londonderry Air" and "Danny Boy").

Neville Dilkes

Here is what Malcolm MacDonald of The Gramophone had to say about the music:

"In a Nutshell" is an early work, yet the Grainger sound is there already: lively, colourful settings of simple, compulsive tunes, with often glittering scoring to help propel the tunes to the music's end. I had never heard this suite before, and feel it to be a most enjoyable newcomer to the catalogues. The "Danish Folk-Music Suite" was equally unfamiliar, but here was relative disappointment: it seemed less interesting than the other work, more four-square, less well scored.

The fill-ups of "Molly on the Shore" and the "Londonderry Air" arrangements are familiar enough, and do not need their highly enjoyable qualities praised here. Yet the "Immovable 'Do'" does; the title referring to the note C which one day got stuck on Grainger's harmonium, and around which continuous sound, like Purcell before him, he wove this highly agreeable piece. Like everything else on this largely exploratory disc this piece is beautifully played by the English Sinfonia, and well recorded by HMV.

Ad in The Gramophone, May 1979

I would simply echo what MacDonald had to say, while averring that the Danish Suite is not as dire as he made it out to be.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Dilkes formed the English Sinfonia as the Midlands Sinfonia in 1961, eventually locating it in Nottingham, although the ensemble played throughout the Midlands. The Sinfonia is still is existence, although it now performs in Chesham, near London.

I have one more recording by this underrated conductor to come.

LINK

From the Back Room: Jeannie McKeon

Jeannie McKeon was a radio vocalist who made a number of records for the Black & White label in about 1946. She later turned up on a 1955 RCA Camden EP with Jack Haskell, which is where I learned of her.

That EP - one of the many in the "Today's Hits" budget line - appeared on my singles blog last year. I liked Jeannie's singing, so I looked into her earlier recordings. I found 10 of her 12 Black & White label recordings on Internet Archive and cleaned them up for this post.

About Jeannie McKeon

As is often the case with obscure vocalists, the available information is scant. We do know that she was born Alice Collins in 1916, likely in Lewiston, Maine, where she died in 2003. She was married to Wilfrid Lessard.

Jeannie McKeon and Roy Bargy

She graduated from the University of Maine with a chemistry degree and moved on to the New England Conservatory. Eventually she ended up with a featured spot on radio's Stage Door Canteen, and a show of her own in the 1940s. She then appeared on the Green Light Review with music director Roy Bargy, once Paul Whiteman's pianist.

Roy leads the accompaniments for the bulk of this program.

Yesterdays

Eight of the 10 McKeon sides in today's program come from her 1947 album "Yesterdays," named for a Kern-Harbach standard that leads off the album. The 78 was backed by "It Had to Be You," the Isham Jones-Gus Kahn song.

Victor Young and Sam Lewis wrote the memorable Depression anthem "Street of Dreams" in 1933. Its mate is the much more upbeat "I Can't Believe You're in Love with Me" by Clarence Gaskill and Jimmy McHugh.

Martin and Blane's "The Boy Next Door" was still a relatively new song, having been written for 1944's Meet Me in St. Louis. The backing was another fine Jones-Kahn tune, "Swinging Down the Lane."

Two Gershwin songs complete the program - "Embraceable You" and "Love Walked In."

Bonus Songs

Beside the album, McKeon recorded a few other numbers for Black & White, two of which are included in this set.

One is a favorite of mine, "You Keep Coming Back Like a Song." Jeannie's skillful version was a cover of Bing Crosby's recording. He had introduced the Irving Berlin classic in 1946's Blue Skies.

The backing was "I May Be Wrong (But I Think You're Wonderful)," which Henry Sullivan and Harry Ruskin wrote for the 1929 revue Murray Anderson's Almanac.

Al Sack led the band for these two songs.

Hope you enjoy this brief program from a forgotten singer.

LINK

Two Views of Piston's Second Symphony

Walter Piston

Friend and longtime supporter David Federman asked me if I had the American Recording Society's release of the Symphony No. 2 by Walter Piston. As it happens, I do, and that fine disk is the basis of today's post. To it, I've added a 1970 recording of the symphony by the Boston Symphony under Michael Tilson Thomas, which is coupled with a strong performance of William Schuman's Violin Concerto with Paul Zukofsky as soloist.

The ARS Recording

The American Recording Society was a grant-funded operation of the early 1950s that promoted the composers of this country.

ARS-1 was given over to the second symphony of Walter Piston, a most talented composer who was associated with Harvard for many years.

Conducting is the American expatriate Dean Dixon, who went on to helm quite a few ARS releases.

Dean Dixon

As was the standard practice with ARS, the orchestra was only identified as the "American Recording Society Orchestra." However, it was generally understood that the music was taped in Vienna. Discographies sometimes identify the ensemble as the Vienna Symphony, but I think it's likely that the forces were assembled on a freelance basis from the musicians of the city's various orchestras.

ARS could hardly have made a better choice to lead off its releases. Piston's symphony, written in 1943, is a powerful, gorgeous work with a particularly affecting slow movement. The Viennese forces do sound somewhat thin in the strings, but play with a high degree of commitment in this impressive performance from 1951.

In her liner notes to the recording, Sheila Keats described the work as follows: "The Symphony is notable for its clarity and lyric warmth; direct in expression, it reveals an uncomplicated texture and structure which grow easily and inevitably out of the clearly delineated melodic materials. As one has come to expect from a composer of Piston's contrapuntal gifts, it is a primarily linear work."

LINK to ARS recording

The DG Recording

The ARS was the first recording of the Piston symphony. It waited 19 years for its second, which was to be among the first discs led by wunderkind Michael Tilson Thomas, then the assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony.

DG must have been excited to have him - the sleeve note devotes nearly as much space to him than to either of the compositions on the LP.

Michael Tilson Thomas

Here is what the critic Alfred Frankenstein of High Fidelity had to say about the disc:

Two boy wonders of recent years team up here to provide a second time around for two American works of thirty years ago. The Piston comes off marvelously well, the Schuman rather less so.

People tend to dismiss Walter Piston as another academic composer, but his Second Symphony, written in 1942, proves that one can be a Harvard professor and a great creator of music as well. The symphony has everything, in generous measure, that its tradition requires: themes that appeal to the ear and command the respect of the mind, forms of the utmost clarity and logic, and a sense of drama in the building of proportions that confers dignity on rhetoric. This, in short, is a symphony to place alongside those of Ives and Vaughan Williams - the foremost works of their kind this century has produced.

William Schuman's Violin Concerto, composed in 1947 but revised in 1959, is in two large movements, each subdivided into several short sections. The slow sections are extremely effective, lyrical, and beautiful, but the fast sections often come embarrassingly close to the violin concertos of Prokofiev - and over and beyond that they contain a lot of mere fiddling. Zukofsky fiddles magnificently, to be sure, but one expects more musical justification for technical display than is offered here, especially from a composer of Schuman's stature.

William Schuman

Paul Zukofsky

I am rather more kindly disposed to the Schuman than was Frankenstein. Lester Trimble of Stereo Review summed up its appeal: "William Schuman's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra is a magnificent work, with some of the most compelling and deeply affecting music, particularly in its slow, philosophical sections, that I have heard in any contemporary piece, by a composer of whatever nationality... Young Paul Zukofsky's performance of the Schuman solo-violin part is first-rate, too. His tone, as always, is a bit wiry, but his technique is spectacularly agile, and in this performance he finds access to more than his usual warmth."

Comparing the two performances of the Piston symphony, the Dixon recording is more strongly characterized than the Boston reading - although the latter's slow movement is beautifully handled. The sound of the ARS disc is reasonably good. The Boston recording is of course much better.

LINK to DG recording

From the Back Room: Anita Ellis in the 40s, Vol. 3

Here is the long-delayed third part of my compilation of Anita Ellis' recordings from the 1940s. This final post covers her Standard Transcriptions from the period - 24 songs in all.

These were taken from an old bootleg with the usual technical issues - in this case several of the numbers were seriously sharp, which I've addressed, along with doing my best to otherwise improve the at times hinky sound.

Unlike most posts here, I have no information about who is leading the band, or when the sessions took place. (Transcriptions are poorly documented.) Many of the songs date from 1945-48, however. 

That said, the first few numbers are older. The Gershwins wrote "They Can't Take That Away from Me" for Fred Astaire to sing in the 1937 film Shall We Dance.

"More Than You Know" is from 1929. The Vincent Youmans tune has words by Billy Rose and Edward Eliscu. It comes from the 1929 musical Great Day. This material is just right for Anita's sincere, passionate singing.

Anita herself was responsible for introducing the next song. The famous "Put the Blame on Mame" comes from the 1946 film Gilda, where Ellis dubbed Rita Hayworth's singing voice. The songwriters were Allan Roberts and Doris Fisher.

Calypsos became popular in the late 1940s following the success of "Rum and Coca-Cola." (The complex story of that song is here.) That bouncy tune was a hit for the Andrews Sisters, and they followed it up in 1948 with "The Money Song" composed by Jack Williams and Harold William. It is surely the worst song in this set.

From the same year was the wonderful "My Darling, My Darling," which Frank Loesser wrote for Where's Charley? Doretta Morrow and Byron Palmer sang it on Broadway. Ellis is completely involved here.

Ralph Blane wrote "Girls Were Made to Take Care of Boys" circa 1948, with the first recording by Jo Stafford and Gordon MacRae. Billie Holiday also recorded it at the time.

"(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons" comes from 1945. The writers were Deek Watson and Pat Best of the Ink Spots, but the first recording was by Deek's new group the Brown Dots.

"Oh! But I Do" is a 1946 classic by Arthur Schwartz and Leo Robin from the film The Time, The Place and The Girl. A great song in an equally great performance.

Next, Anita reached back to 1931 for "I Don't Know Why (I Just Do)" by Fred Ahlert and Roy Turk.

The 1947 film The Shocking Miss Pilgrim introduced a posthumous song from George Gershwin, the much underrated "For You, for Me, for Evermore." Dick Haymes' soundtrack and commercial versions can be found in this post.

"The Whole World is Singing My Song," written by Mann Curtis and Vic Mizzy, was a 1946 hit for Doris Day with Les Brown's band.

Another hit from that year was "A Sunday Kind of Love," by Fran Warren with Claude Thornhill. The writers were Barbara Belle, Anita Leonard, Louis Prima and Stan Rhodes.

Jerome Kern penned "In Love in Vain" for the 1945 film Centennial Summer, with lyrics by Leo Robin. As with State Fair, Louanne Hogan dubbed Jeanne Crain's singing voice. William Eythe's singing voice was David Street.

"Atlanta, G.A." is forgotten today, but was a hit in 1946 for Sammy Kaye, with a Billy Williams vocal. The songwriters were Sunny Skylar and Artie Shaftel.

The next song was a success in England before coming to the US in 1946. "I'll Close My Eyes" was the work of Billy Reid and Buddy Kaye.

The second song from 1946's Gilda to be dubbed by Anita was "Amado Mio." As with "Put the Blame on Mame," the songwriters were Allan Roberts and Doris Fisher. These are not the soundtrack versions, rather transcriptions recorded for radio syndication.

The marvelous "Come Rain or Come Shine" is from the excellent score for the 1946 show St. Louis Woman by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer. Anita's version is intense and inward.

Jimmy Monaco and Mack Gordon wrote "I Can't Begin to Tell You" for the 1945 film The Dolly Sisters, where the vocalists were Betty Grable and John Payne.

The next four songs were revivals of older numbers, starting with the English import "A Garden in the Rain," which bandleader Carroll Gibbons and lyricist James Dyrenforth wrote in 1928.

Gertrude Lawrence introduced "Someone to Watch Over Me" in one of the Gershwins' best shows, Oh, Kay! of 1926. Ellis does wonders with the extended verse.

Another English oldie - "If You Were the Only Girl (In the World)" - is from 1916 and the West End revue The Bing Boys Are Here. The authors were Nay Ayer and Clifford Grey.

Hoagy Carmichael's "Star Dust" dates from 1927; Mitchell Parish added lyrics in 1929. You can hear both the first instrumental version (by Hoagy) and the first vocal version (by Isham Jones) here.

"Somewhere in the Night" is one of the few relatively obscure songs here, but it's a good one. The music is by Josef Myrow and the words by Mack Gordon, writing for the 1946 film Three Little Girls in Blue. Vivian Blaine was the first to sing the piece.

The other obscurity is "You Can't See the Sun When You're Cryin'," the work of the estimable Allan Roberts and Doris Fisher. Vaughn Monroe among others recorded it in 1946.

Anita could not have been given much time to rehearse and record these numbers. Nonetheless throughout she displays her remarkable ability to summon strong emotions in a studio environment.

The previous volumes are still available - Vol. 1 and Vol. 2.

LINK

 

Fiedler Conducts Offenbach

If Arthur joined the can-can ... an AI fantasy

No, Arthur Fiedler did not join the Gaîté Parisienne chorus line, as far as I know. The above is what 60 seconds with Gemini will produce for you. When it came to Jacques Offenbach's most famous (and completely posthumous) creation, Fiedler did everything but the can-can. He recorded the ballet score three times in a little over 10 years during his belle époque with the Boston Pops.

Today we have his second recording, a stereo version made just a few months after RCA Victor began recording in the new format. That was in 1954, and the results sound just as fresh today as they did then.

A few years after this recording, Fiedler was back in the studio for a go at an collection called Offenbach in America, commemorating the composer's tour of this country just four years before his death in 1880. The resulting Pops LP also is part of today's program.

Jacques Offenbach

Gaîté Parisienne

As mentioned, Gaîté Parisienne would have been unknown to its composer. It's actually a ballet score from Offenbach's music commissioned by Leonid Massine for the Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo in the 1930s. The choreographer had asked the conductor Roger Désormière to assemble the score from Offenbach's music, but he was too busy. Désormière did manage to inveigle the reluctant Manuel Rosenthal to take on the job.

Rosenthal must have been glad he did because he later assembled two other works using Offenbach's music - Offenbachiana for orchestra, and La belle Hélène, a ballet based on the opera of that name.

Manuel Rosenthal

The LP's liner notes are given over to reminiscences by impresario Sol Hurok, so let me provide the sources of the ballet's 19 scenes - or rather let me let Wikipedia provide them:

1. Ouverture (from: La vie parisienne)

2. Allegro moderato (from: Mesdames de la Halle)

3. Polka (from: Le voyage dans la lune)

4. Ländler (from: Lieschen et Fritzchen)

5. Mazurka (from: Vert-Vert)

6. Valse (from: La vie parisienne)

7. Entrée du Brésilen (from: La vie parisienne)

8. Polka (from: La belle Hélène)

9. Valse (from: Orphée aux enfers)

10. Marche (from: Tromb-al-Cazar)

11. Valse (from: La belle Hélène)

12. Entrée du Brésilien (from: La vie parisienne)

13. Valse (from: Les contes d'Hoffmann)

14. Duel (from: Le voyage dans la lune)

15. Valse (from: La Périchole)

16. Prelude au Can-Can (from: Orphée aux enfers)

17. Can-Can Scene 1 (from: Orphée aux enfers, Robinson Crusoe)

18. Can-Can Scene 2 - Polka (from: Orphée aux enfers)

19. Can-Can Scene 3 (potpourri)

You also will find music from some of those works on the second LP below.

Leonid Massine in Gaîté Parisienne

Fielder's conducting style had proponents and detractors, but this work did suit his dynamic approach. J.F. Indcox had this to say in High Fidelity: "A sparkling new recording of the lively, frothy ballet suite Manuel Rosenthal arranged from Offenbach music. The performance, beautifully played, is bright, humorous and light-hearted, and confirms the impression gained from Fiedler's earlier recording of 1947 ... that the conductor has a real flair for this music."

There is a 1941 Ballet Russe film of the ballet on YouTube, with Efrem Kurtz conducting. He also led the premiere of the work.

The sound on this LP is strikingly good. It's amazing what the engineers did with the new stereo format.

LINK to Gaîté Parisienne

Offenbach in America

Offenbach comes across as quite the boulevardier in the cover illustration, and he had reason to be pleased. He came to America at the invitation of the International Exposition in Philadelphia and scheduled hugely successful appearances both there and in New York.

Now, did this LP present the music he conducted in America? Well, the liner notes say it is "the kind of program which Offenbach conducted at Gilmore's Gardens" in New York. I take that as a maybe.

Let me outline Fieldler's selections and then make a few comments about the unusual ones.

1. La belle Hélène: Overture
2. Les contes d'Hoffmann: Intermezzo 
3. Geneviève de Brabant: Galop
4. La Périchole: Selection
5. La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein: Overture 
6. Les Belles Américaines (waltz orchestrated by Robert Russell Bennett) 
7. Musette-Air de Ballet for Cello and Orchestra (Samuel Mayes, cellist) 
8. Orphée aux enfers: Overture

Offenbach composed Les Belles Américaines as a piano piece for his American tour. This version, which may have been commissioned by the Pops, uses an orchestration by the great Robert Russell Bennett.

Samuel Mayes

The full title of Musette is Musette Air de ballet du 17me siècle. It's not clear to me whether this is an arrangement for orchestra by another hand; however, it's of particular interest because the composer was a cellist. Here we have Samuel Mayes (1917-90), the principal of the Boston Symphony from 1948-64 as soloist. The work is beautifully done.

Here is High Fidelity's Indcox on some of the other works: "A dashing galop from Geneviève de Brahant capers along, until suddenly, one hears phrases that surely served as the basis for The Marine's Hymn ("From the halls of Montezuma"), and it is a joy to hear the grand tunes from The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein set forth with such brilliance. My own favorite is the charming selection from Offenbach's wonderful score for La Périchole, a score that has Mozartean overtones and is full of truly delightful melodies."

Indcox was again impressed by the performances: "Fiedler and the Boston 'Pops' play these enchanting pieces with tremendous verve and finesse, and I would not hesitate to call this one of the best recordings this group has ever made. A lightish Victor sound is most appropriate to the occasion, and the record is highly recommended on all counts."

Not sure what he means by "lightish," but the 1956 recording is very fine.

LINK to Offenbach in America