I so much enjoyed the previous post of Roy Harris' music that I wanted to follow it with this LP of two premiere recordings of his symphonies. It couples a then-new recording of Harris' seventh symphony with a reissue of the composer's Symphony 1933.
Performing the seventh symphony is the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy, who conducted the first performances. The sessions were in October 1955 in the Academy of Music.
The Symphony 1933 (which is sometimes called Harris' first) was a Boston Symphony performance under Serge Koussevitzky, who commissioned the work. This was a February 1934 recording in Carnegie Hall, made shortly after the first performance.
Both works display the muscular approach that Harris brought to his symphonies. The Philadelphia performance manages to sound refined, nonetheless, and the sound is well balanced without being especially vivid. In transferring the earlier work, Columbia has troweled on the reverb (as customary). This has the effect of making the timpani in the first movement sound strangely prominent and makes the atmosphere woolly. The earlier performance must have been all that Harris could have hoped for, although in truth the orchestra sounds a little uncomfortable with the meter changes in the Allegro.
The 1934 recording was thought to be the first recording of an American symphony when this LP came out, but I am not sure if this is still considered to be the case.
LINK - new remastered in ambient stereo, March 2025
Buster...do you have a copy of Harris' 3rd symphony? I think it's his most popular.
ReplyDeleteGil
Hi Gil - I am planning to post Hanson's first recording of that symphony soon.
ReplyDeleteKoussevitzky's 1939 version of Roy Harris' 3rd is available on a 4-CD German-made set of his recordings on the ArtOne label and available from Amazon for $15. Copland's "Appalachian Spring" is there, too as is Howard Hanson's 3rd and Silbelius' 2nd. Lots more, including an immortal performance of Berlioz's "Harold in Italy" featuring William Primrose.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of the Boston Symphony, Buster, do you by any chance have Pierre Monteux's 1954 recording of Debussy's Nocturnes recorded with that orchestra? I owned it as a kid and remember thinking it had no peer. It may have even been an early stereo. I know it was available on reel-to-reel tape, also. I have never heard it in that version but audiophiles rave about it. Did you collect reel-to-reel tapes back in those days, too?
Hi David - I imagine I do have that Monteux recording in one form or another. I never was into reel-to-reel recordings very much - when the Monteux came out, my taste was more inclined to such things as Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo and Suzy Snowflake. However my horizons did soon broaden and I acquired my own record player and record collection while still a young tot - and was opinionated even then.
ReplyDeleteDavid...I think I remember that Monteux recording. I think it also contained "La Mer". It had a blue jacket with a picture of a piece of driftwood on the cover, as I recall.
ReplyDeleteGil
Gil,
ReplyDeleteThat's how I remember the cover, too. If memory serves (and that's debatable these days), only one of the two compositions was in stereo (binaural?) and the other was mono. Do you remember that being the case? To this day, I have fond memories of both performances. Indeed, I used to get goosebumps every time I heard the entrance of the muted trumpets in "Fetes." By the way, a Closet of Curiosities has posted a Leonid Hambro recording of Charles Tomlinson Griffes piano music from the 1950s.
Dave...I think the best version of Debussy's "Fetes" (Festivals) I ever heard was the one done by Edouard Van Beinem and the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam. He starts with the volume very low and as the trumpets pass through the left speaker, and in front, they get loud, and then deminish in sound as they go through the right speakers. I think it might have been released on the old Philips "World Series" budget disk.
ReplyDeleteI also remember an album of marches, done by Morton Gould, that had this same effect. If you closed your eyes it's almost like you were on the street watching a parade :-) This was an RCA recording.
I bought the Van Beinem when it was released on Epic Records over here. To this day, it is my favorite recording of this piece. You might be happy to know that the Japanese reissued it as a budget CD last year, along with just about every other Van Beinem Philips recording.
ReplyDeleteDave...are you familiar with the Stokowski version of the "March" from "The Ruins Of Athens", by Beethoven? It uses that same "parade going by" effect as the other two...quite effectively. This was also an RCA recording.
ReplyDeleteGil
I am not familiar with the Stokowski recording. Can familiarization be arranged. I'm so glad you brought him up because I was going to ask Buster if he had Leopold's recording of De Falla's EL Amor Brujo (pardon my spelling) with the Robin Hood Dell Orchestra. I had it on RCA 45s as a kid, given to me by my dad who loved this music and thought Stokowski's performance was the best he'd ever heard. I'm told that this may still be the case.
ReplyDeleteDave....last night, I went searching for a download of the Von Beinum recording of Debussy Nocturnes. I found one, but it was conducted by Bernard Haitink...and didn't think it would be as good. This was on the AvaxHome site.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Dutch conductors, do you remember which one of them commited suicide? I thought it was Van Remoortel...but now, I'm not sure.
As to the "El Amor Brujo" (yes, your spelling IS correct), I only remember a very fine recording on Epic Records, with Igor Markevitch.
I hope Stokowski didn't make any "changes" in his recording...as he was so prone to do :-)
Adding an extra kettle drum, here....or an extra French Horn, there, etc.
BTW...I haven't heard mention of the Robin Hood Dell Orchestra, in ages!
Gil
Hello gents,
ReplyDeleteI know I have Stoki's stereo recording of El Amor Brujo; I am familiar with the earlier one, but not sure I have a copy - will look. Haitink's recording of the Debussy is excellent, by the way.
and back to Harris...thank you Buster for this offering. I am disappointed in the sound given the Ormandy recording; its not you, I think the Columbia engineering crew was having an off day..its really rather "muffly,"don't you think?
ReplyDeleteDo you have anything by way of the Saidenberg Little Symphony or Janssen Symphony of LA?
Thanks,
Fred
Buster....does Haitink use the same "parade effect" that Van Beinum used?
ReplyDeleteGil
@ FredT,
ReplyDeleteYes, the recording is rather dull; not unusual for Columbia.
@ Gil,
I don't recall about the "parade effect" re Haitink, sorry. By the way, there is a somewhat similar effect in The Wagon Passes in Elgar's Nursery Suite I posted yesterday.
@ FredT,
ReplyDeleteI know I have Janssen records; offhand I can't recall what they are, however. As for Daniel Saidenberg, I can't recall if I do or don't! Will look around.
The Eduard van Beinum reissue of Nocturnes and La Mer is still available on a Japanese Phillips CD UCCP-3336 for about $12 from www.cdjapan.co.jp. Many of the others released in this series are also available including his recordings of Bruckner and Mahler. Just thought those of you who are not put off by the idea of buying CDs might want to know.
ReplyDeleteI checked and I do have the earlier Stokowski recording on El Amor Brujo. I'll put it on the list for a future post.
ReplyDeleteBuster....I don't remember the title of the album, but it featured Leonard Bernstein/NY Philharmonic Orchestra doing the three German Dances, by Mozart, among others. This included the No. 3, known as "Sleigh Ride". It also featured a great piece called "Batuche", by a Spanish/Mexican composer (can't recall his name). It is a very exciting work, if you're not familiar with it. Just wondered if you might have the album (Columbia), and might post this short piece (Batuche). I think it's pronounced bah-TOO-kay.
ReplyDeleteGil
Hi Gil,
ReplyDeleteI'll look around - I remember having a NYP LP of Latin American pieces, but that certainly wouldn't include Mozart's German Dances!
Buster....well, it wasn't just Mozart's "German Dances"....there were other miscellaneous things, as well, and not all "Latin American" :-)
ReplyDeleteGil
This download no longer exists.
ReplyDeleteHere's one more EO treasure: his live 1935 Mahler Second, done with the Minneapolis Symphony. This was done around the time that the Philly, under Stokowski, experimented with long takes that spread over more than one 4 minute side; Stoky had the producer and engineer fade out/in, which now gives havoc to a modern transfer engineer!
ReplyDeleteThis was perhaps even more necessary during a live concert: Victor should be congratulated for its daring! But, it has been said that the original producer Charles O'Connell was not terribly familiar with the work, and got lost a couple of times, failing to cue the disk engineer at proper moments. So some of the masters were "overcut" beyond the proper area. To make a playable 78 rpm commercial release, several sides had to be redubbed, and the 1935 gear wasn't quite up to the task: I could hear the drop in HF overtones and clarity on those sides, but tried my best to even them out, using a nearly unplayed copy of the original set that I purchased from a local library: it looked as if no one had EVER checked it out!
The last inch or so of the final side was obviously redubbed: the sound immediately became VERY dim and "clotted", and the disk was so overmodulated that I had to stack three or four 25-cent pieces on the tone arm! No applause is heard; it is said that this coda was recorded after the live concert had been given and was cut it into an edited final wax side master.
Furthermore, the big bass drum 'explosion' in the last movement occurred IN THE SPLIT BETWEEN TWO DISK SIDES, and you could hear the switch being thrown! I spent hours trying to smooth this out; made a dub to a 10" reel of tape in 1972, and then in 1999 digitized that; over the years I've done FURTHER editing on this one spot!
The engineers compromised the sound by indulging in severe gain-riding, no doubt cued by O'Connell. I've also had the effrontery to try to undo much of that.
Back in '72 I had, as normal practice, used a high-cut filter above about 8-9 kHz. Today, with access to extremely effective digital noise suppression techniques, I might have made the cutoff at, say, 13 kHz or so instead. Still, there is amazingly full bass that gives the performance terrific impact.
Ormandy is at his young best here: ardent, propulsive, and eloquent. He obviously KNOWS and LOVES this piece, and drives the ensemble to their utmost. The singers and chorus are fine, too. I would imagine that Minneapolis had NEVER heard ANYTHING like this! (My father told me that he heard Mitropoulos conduct the Franck D-Minor when that orchestra later toured Iowa, and it blew off the roof. Maybe ONLY Dimitry could have topped Ormandy!)
I am told that this has been transferred once to a UK CD, which I've not heard. A friend I trust bought it and said only "it's very thin sounding". Well, my ancient transfer is NOT thin at all!
The Victor 78s of this period were well pressed and quiet; I don't think that there were any more ticks and pops than you'd expect on a good LP of the fifties. There has been BARELY the slightest effort at NR in my final digitizing of the 1972 analogue disk/tape transfers that I did for my then-current radio show.
I wrote to Ormandy and asked him if he had any comments--but received the answer "I'd rather you NOT play this early immature record of mine; please do my latest release of it on RCA Red Seal Lp!" Needless to say, THIS old 1935 performance blows away the much more stilted one Ormandy seems to have preferred; but surely he never heard the flaws of the 78s properly corrected -- not that I'm PERFECTLY right, but at least have made attempts...
Discogs page with more info, solo, chorus IDs:
https://www.discogs.com/Gustav-Mahler-Eugene-Ormandy-Minneapolis-Symphony-Orchestra-Symphony-No-2-Resurrection/release/9962474
61 MB zipped file with embedded postwar 78 cover image:
https://www52.zippyshare.com/v/gRPxoFQH/file.html
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8HHaggis
My early transfers need work, so this may not be very good.
DeleteI will enjoy the Mahler, I'm sure.
I have Mitropoulos' recording of the Franck around here somewhere.
I was never very impressed with Mitropoulos' Franck d with the MSO; I guess either my father -- who said that not only he, but also the rest of the audience were wildly enthusiastic -- must have heard a much more stimulating and exciting live performance back c.1940, than the subsequent Columbia 78 set.
Delete8HHaggis