Another in RCA's "Show Time" Series

The latest installment in our slow-motion examination of RCA's "Show Time" series from 1953 is notable for documenting that year's revival of Porgy and Bess - but I particularly enjoyed the songs from Girl Crazy on the other side of the record.

Leslie Scott

This recording presents Cab Calloway, Leslie Scott and Helen Thigpen from the Broadway Porgy. Calloway is Sportin' Life, as he was in the 1953 production. Scott is Porgy, and he was one of the Porgys on Broadway. Thigpen is Bess, although she was Serena in the stage play.

Helen Thigpen with William Warfield

Calloway is vivid in this role, but as usual remarkable in the wrong way. Scott is a vulnerable Porgy, lighter voiced than such singers as Paul Robeson or even William Warfield. Thigpen is a shrill Bess. Jay Blackton conducts here; the music director for the stage was Alexander Smallens.

The LP was in effect a Gershwin double-feature, with songs from Girl Crazy on the other side.

Edie Adams and Rosalind Russell

Edith (Edie) Adams, a talented singer-comic actor, is delightful in "Embraceable You," complete with verse. She was in Wonderful Town with Rosalind Russell at the time of this recording. Also terrific are two then luminaries of Broadway, whom we have seen before in this series. Lisa Kirk does "But Not for Me" and Helen Gallagher "I Got Rhythm". Their previous appearances in the RCA series can be found here. Milton Rosenstock conducts.

RCA didn't bother much with documentation on these records. There is no identification of who sings what. "Bidin' My Time" is sung by a completely anonymous male quartet to close out the record. It's strange that the company was so off hand about such a well-produced, enjoyable series that shows what great talent there was on Broadway at the time.

Inghelbrecht Conducts Fauré

There has been quite a selection of recordings by the French conductor Désiré-Émile Inghelbrecht appearing on the classical newsgroups lately, so I thought I would do my part by transferring this recording of Fauré's surpassingly beautiful Requiem, which I had at hand.

Inghelbrecht, who died in 1965, had little reputation outside France, although his recordings did circulate in other countries - I have several of them on US labels. This recording of the Fauré Requiem and other choral works by that composer comes from 1955, when the conductor was 75.

D. E. Inghelbrecht

It is not entirely a success, in truth, both as a performance and as a recording. I have not been able to track down where the recording of the Requiem was made, but it sounds like a church - a church with  truck idling outside the windows. The balances can be awry as well - the first entrance of the male voices sounds like they are outside the church and down the block (perhaps they were looking for the idling truck making all the racket).

Inghelbrecht was a dry-eyed conductor, and he did not let the emotional temperature get too high in this performance. The rendition of "Pie Jesu" is much too fast, whether at the choice of the soloist or conductor. (Or maybe the idling engine was their waiting car?)

The other pieces are better done, seemingly in a different location, and the Madrigal and Pavane (with its optional choral part intact) have not been reissued, as far as I can tell.

Although the Requiem is attributed to the Champs-Élysées orchestra, I believe that is a pseudonym, and the actual musicians are from the Orchestre National de la Radiodiffusion Française.