Benny Goodman commissioned Aaron Copland's Clarinet Concerto in 1948, and although Goodman's stereo recording is well known, this earlier edition, from 1950, is not.
Columbia took Goodman and Copland to its 30th Street studio in New York for the November 1950 session. Benny sounds cautious but does no serious harm to this gorgeous composition.
A few months later, the illustrious New York Quartet went to the same studio to tape a thornier composition, Copland's Piano Quartet, for the Clarinet Concerto's coupling. These days, works in Copland's populist style are generally packaged together. Not so back then.
The New York Quartet had presented the first performance of the Piano Quartet a few months before this recording, which must have been all that Copland could have wished for. The quartet's members were Mieczysław Horszowski, piano, Alexander Schneider, violin, Milton Katims, viola, and Frank Miller, cello.
Perhaps Columbia sensed that they were creating historic recordings, because the sound is better than much of the sludge that came out of its 30th Street site. And these are historic recordings indeed. It's curious that they are not better known.
NEW LINK
13 comments:
Buster, may I have your permission to repost these at my Copland blog? I will, of course, credit you and this site.
Certainly!
Congratulations on your skills and wide ranging tastes that make this site so interesting! The Copland Clarinet Concerto is an fascinating item.Many thanks for your generosity in providing access to these recordings.
@ glebowski,
Thanks for your note and welcome to the site!
THANKS A MILLION TIMES FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART..THE FEEL AND PRESENCE OF OLD MUSIC COULD ONLY BE FOUND ON A DIRECT RIP..NOT FROM SOME CD RIP....IT IS A RARE SOUL THAT UNDERSTANDS THIS.
love AND BEST WISHES FROM INDIA..
i AM BY YOUR SIDE BUDDY..
CHEERS AND HAVE A HEALTHY LIFE..
TRILLION THANKS ONCE AGAIN FOR AL,L THE GREAT MUSIC THAT YOU re giving us
Tanmoy
@ Tanmoy,
Thanks - nice to hear!
I've emigrated to you from "Random Classics" and am impressed by the breadth and level of your interests.Tanmoy's comment about source dictating quality hit home for me. I always resisted the analog purists' claims about CD sound, partly because my home setup, Rogers Studio II aided by a Velodyne subwoofer, seemed to enrich my CDs.
Now, having heard the extraordinary quality of your and Fred's efforts, I must admit there is a very real difference in terms of warmth and dimension in analog sound...so I'm a slow learner.
hi - is this download available anywhere?
Exciting!
hi
sorry I got the link eventually - my ISP provider had directed my calls to rapidshare to a 404 error - its called 'clean feed' in the UK i.e. I am blocked from downloading (unofficially from certain sites) - but have now arranged cloaking for the downloads - such a shame having only just found these websites here..
o my ISP provider is BT in the UK - so avoid them!
I was looking forward to downloading and listening to his recording. Unfortunately, I'm receiving an error message, which says that file is not found. It's giving some kind of rapidshare/mediafire combined URL. Could you repost the link?
Thanks!
Thanks for letting me know - link has been corrected.
in fact, the URL is wrongly written but one can easily modify it so that it fits
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