The first side of this record contains music from Virgil Thomson's score for Louisiana Story, a 1948 film by Robert Flaherty. The filmmaker was famous for documentaries, but this was a fictional treatment of a story involving an oil crew and a young Cajun boy. The film, funded by Standard Oil, was so successful in using the documentary style that it is still mistakenly called a documentary today.
Thomson himself had experience with Pare Lorentz's documentaries in the 1930s, and this music is in a somewhat similar style. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Thomson in 1949. The Philadelphians recorded both the soundtrack to the film and this suite, which uses an augmented instrumentation. The sessions for this recording were in May 1949 in the Academy of Music. In addition to the music captured here, Thomson also prepared a set of Acadian Songs and Dances from the film. I will be presenting these pieces at a later date in the the 1952 Little Orchestra Society/Thomas Scherman recording.
On the other side of the LP at hand, Thomson conducts the orchestra in five of the many "portraits" he composed of friends and associates for diverse instrumental forces. This set was recorded in May 1945 and originally issued on 78.
Joe has shared this recording elsewhere, so for those of you who have seen it before, the only difference here is that I have re-equalized Joe's excellent transfer a bit, and cleaned up the covers.
Thanks again to Joe!
17 comments:
Hello Buster,
I dropped in to download the Alfven (which sounds great & thanks for that one) and was surprised you got this up so quickly. The cover looks pristine--all the foxing expertly removed. Do you use Photoshop for these cover enhancements?
I also have a digital copy of 12" LP Columbia ML 4919, Thomson's Three Pictures for Orch (cond VT) and Five Songs from William Blake (cond EOr, bar. Mack Harrell, Lynn Harrel's dad). This record, also rare, contains the Blake song "Little Black Boy," later suppressed by Thomson.
Let me know if you ever want to post that one and I'll send along the FLACs.
Hi Joe,
I do use Photoshop to clean up covers. It's much easier when there are large blocks of flat color, as on this LP.
I would be most interested in the Three Pictures-Five Songs!
Thanks again, Joe!
Three of the ‟Five Portraits” were available on Bay Cities BCD-1006, along with four of the ‟Five Blake Songs,” taken from a CRI LP reissue. Tom Null, who produced the CD, said of the ‟Portraits,” ‟The Lp contained the additional ‘The Percussion Piece’ and ‘Cantabile For Strings’. These were arbitrarily chosen anyway and not a ‘suite’ as such, but drawn from Thomson’s ‘over 100 portraits’ as described above.” A discography of Bay Cities’ catalog on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Bay-Cities-Classical-catalog-1989-1993/lm/R11H2CDJ2FQQ36), which dismisses most of the recordings, indicates that BCD-1006 is unavailable so it is a real service for you to post these transfers. Thank you.
@ Addison,
My friend Joe Serraglio has a rip of the original Columbia version of that release, which contains all the five portraits and all the songs, including the suppressed one. I will be posting that soon, so watch this space!
Great posting!! I was fortunate to be given a near mint condition copy of the vinyl by a friend of mine some years back. It's a huge favorite of mine, and important collectors item to add to your already impressive issues.
Rich
The story behind "Louisiana Story" is a fascinating one. It is the only film score to ever win a Pulitzer Prize. If you'd like to read more, check out my article (pardon the shameless plug and delete if it's offensive to add it here):
http://www.filmscoreclicktrack.com/2009/04/petroleum-politics-and-prizes/
Jim,
Not at all - excellent article. I will link to it when I post the Acadian Songs and Dances later on.
Thanks Buster. Great site. Been a lurker for ages and felt I should finally come clean and tell you how much I enjoy it. :) Thanks for all the hard work you put into it.
one of the great film scores. . Lousianna Story a great film by Robert Flaherty of the invasion of oil machinery to the pristine Bayou. thanks so much for this
would it be possible to repost this? Virgil thomas music is a bit of a passion at the moment, and it's hard to find....
Thanks.
Hi Evilbiggie (love that name) - My friend Joe sent this in; I have to see if I still have the files.
thanks for this one too!!!
Brilliant - will look forward to hearing this one.
Much obliged.
Cheers,
Douglas (UK)
Douglas - You're welcome!
Thank you, Buster.
Rich
Thanks so much -- I've always loved Louisiana Suite, which I heard originally on an old VoxBox CD. So happy to have the original recording also.
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