10 Years of 10 Inchers

This blog marks its 10th anniversary this week. When I started off, I didn't know much about what I was doing, but I had encouragement from people like my great pal Ernie, so I gave it a try.

Through the years, the blog's mandate (if that's the right word) has changed in the sense that I now post transfers from both 10- and 12-inch LPs, but the type of music I favor has not budged much. My first post was of music by the American composers Burnett Tuthill, Robert Sanders and Bernard Rogers, followed by a Delius LP, Alfred Drake in Kurt Weill's last composition, Copland playing Copland, the Page Cavanaugh trio and Steve Gibson and His Red Caps. These are all things that would be at home in this space today. In fact, I just recently remastered and reuploaded a Oscar Levant Gershwin LP that I first posted in early May 2008.

I enjoy going back and redoing those old posts - my basic transfers are usually pretty good, although I have learned a lot about working with raw audio since then.

I do like cleaning up sound files, and can tolerate touching up cover scans. Writing about music is another interest, as well. What makes these labors worthwhile is the comments you leave. I just looked back over the first handful of posts in 2008, and already I see entries by Scoredaddy and David Federman, two of my most loyal and valued supporters for so many years. Thanks to them and to everyone who has commented. I hope all of you reading this have found something to appreciate here. Please stay with me - there is much more to come!

Ravel with the Pascal Quartet, Oscar Shumsky and Bernard Greenhouse

Here, as the result of a request on another site, is another performance by the violinist Oscar Shumsky, who has also been featured in two recent posts.

On this record, Shumsky presents the Ravel Sonata for Violin and Cello with Bernard Greenhouse, previously heard on this site in the Carter Sonata for Cello and Piano.

Pascal Quartet

Also on the LP is Ravel's String Quartet in F major in a sophisticated performance by the Pascal Quartet: Jacques Dumont and Maurice Crut, violins, Léon Pascal, viola, and Robert Salles, cello.

Léon Pascal had been in another notable ensemble, the Calvet Quartet, in the 1930s. The Pascal Quartet was in existence from 1941 to 1973, and made many recordings for this label (Concert Hall Society) in the 1950s. This taping dates from 1951.

Bust by Léon Leyritz

My own tastes lean more to Ravel's Quartet than the later Sonata, although this is a very good performance of the latter work. It apparently was first issued on 78s in 1948, according to fellow blogger Neal of Neal's Historical Recordings, who did a transfer many years ago that is no longer available.

The striking cover art is based on a bust of Ravel by his friend Léon Leyritz. The LP sound is very good.

Brahms with Ossy Renardy and Charles Munch

Ossy Renardy was one of the many "might-have-beens" of his generation - musicians who died very young, before the full bloom of their maturity. I am thinking of such artists as Ginette Neveu, Noel Mewton-Wood, Kathleen Ferrier, Dinu Lipatti, Guido Cantelli, William Kapell and Dennis Brain - supreme talents who all perished before their 40th birthdays.

Renardy was an Austrian-born American violinist who lived from 1920-1953. Although wonderfully talented, he made relatively few commercial recordings - including only this one concerto. In the Brahms concerto, he is partnered by Charles Munch (here Münch; he later dropped the umlaut). The recording dates from September 1948 (per Gray) and was made in the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, with the resident orchestra.

Charles Munch

In an appreciation that appeared in the March 1954 edition of The Gramophone (see below), Peter Ford notes that Renardy "seemed destined to don the mantle of his compatriot Kreisler, whose style of playing was not dissimilar." Ford adds that the Brahms concerto, "though well played and superbly accompanied, was ill-served in the recording where Renardy's tone was made to sound dead and hard." I have attempted to address the sound in this transfer, with some success, I hope.

I also hope this recording gives lie to the notion that conductor Munch had little affinity for German music. To provide further evidence, I have remastered two of his rarest recordings - RCA monos of Schumann's Symphony No. 1 and Schubert's Symphony No. 2, both of which appeared here a number of years ago. The Schumann, in particular, is a glorious performance. Please follow the links above to the original posts.

The Gramophone, March 1954 (click to enlarge)

The Spencer-Hagen Orchestra

When I posted the soundtrack LP to Gentlemen Marry Brunettes a few months ago, I mentioned that Herbert W. Spencer and Earle Hagen, who worked on the music, also headed an orchestra for recording purposes during the 1950s. Some of you were interested in hearing that band, so here is its first album - I Only Have Eyes for You: Memorable Melodies of Harry Warren.

Discogs tells us that the Spencer-Hagen Orchestra made three and a half LPs on its own (splitting one with Richard Maltby) and backed singers on an additional three. I have all those records, so more of their work may appear here as time goes by.

That's a good thing for those of you who like lush Hollywood-style orchestrations. Spencer and Hagen, who were masters of their craft, both had long careers in film and later television. They worked together throughout the 1950s.

Herbert Spencer and Earle Hagen

The cover notes of this LP imply that "X" Records suggested the formation of the orchestra for recording purposes. Label "X" started up in February 1954, and I Only Have Eyes for You is actually the first record issued by "X" in its LXA series. "X" was set up as a subsidiary of RCA but run separately and distributed independently. The name apparently came from Billboard's 1953 stories about RCA's plans for the then-unnamed entity, which the magazine dubbed Label "X" for want of another term.

"X" was a short-lived enterprise. RCA closed it at the beginning of 1956 and transferred some of its catalog to the new Vik label, including this LP. Vik replaced the "I Only Have Eyes and a Mouth for You" cover with a more conventional pretty-girl motif (see below). The unusual "X" cover design was no doubt inspired by a famous 1950 Vogue magazine photo by Erwin Blumenthal (at right).

The disc pays tribute to the prolific Hollywood songwriter Harry Warren. Even though Warren was still active and producing hits ("Zing a Little Zong," "That's Amore") when the record was made, the most recent song covered dates from 1937. Most of the tunes will be familiar to people who enjoy the music of that era, with the possible exceptions of "Summer Night" and "Where Am I?" 

Good sound on this fine record. The download includes front and back scans from both the "X" and Vik LP, plus a brief history of those labels from the excellent Both Sides Now discography site.

Note (October 2024): This has now been remastered in ambient stereo.

LINK

Cy Coleman's Broadway Pianorama

I am once again indebted to my friend StealthMan for a valuable contribution to the blog, in the form of this Cy Coleman LP from 1962.

As with previous Coleman posts, the focus here is on his piano prowess, as he takes on the usual LP complement of 12 tunes, all from Broadway shows.

Coleman was important Broadway tunesmith, but on this program he limits himself to just one of his own songs, "Tall Hope" from 1960's Wildcat - not one of his best-known works. He was preparing the superb score for Little Me at about the time this LP was being recorded, so it's a little surprising he didn't include one of that show's songs, such as "The Other Side of the Tracks" or "I've Got Your Number."

Nancy Andrews and Cy Coleman during Little Me rehearsals

But what is here is very well done in the pianist's usual locked-hands, multi-noted style. By the early 60s he had also incorporated the then-fashionable soul jazz sound into his approach. The producers saw fit to add a cooing vocal chorus at times, but you can ignore their effusions - Coleman seems to do so.

Good sound on this one - thanks again to StealthMan!

More Mozart from Shumsky, Plus the Haffner Symphony with Wallenstein

Following up on my recent post of violinist Oscar Shumsky in Mozart sonatas, here is his circa 1956 reading of the Violin Concerto No. 5 in A major, K. 219. It is coupled with a fleet performance of the Symphony No. 35 in D major, K. 385, from Alfred Wallenstein and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

The LA forces play strikingly well under the baton of Wallenstein, who was completing his 13 years as LAPO maestro when this record was issued in 1956. Shumsky is backed by the New York-based Little Orchestra, which does not display the same discipline as the West Coast musicians. Thomas Scherman is the conductor in the concerto.

Oscar Shumsky

As always, Shumsky is perfectly in control - perhaps even a little too much so in the finale's quasi-Turkish music, which benefits from some abandon. The sound is good throughout.

These recordings come to us from Music-Appreciation Records, which had been started a few years previously as a mail-order subscription effort by the Book-of-the-Month Club. As with the similar efforts before and later, the pitch was getting cultured. In one widely-placed ad, publisher and TV personality Bennett Cerf exclaimed, "In a few minutes Music-Appreciation Records taught me more about Beethoven's Fifth Symphony than I learned in a month in a course in college!"

Many of the Music-Appreciation records contained both a performance of the work and an audio analysis; sometimes they came on separate discs. My own collection has both orphaned performances and analyses with no performance. This particular record did not have an recorded analysis; at least I don't have it. There are notes on the back cover by Deems Taylor, but of course this is not any different from most classical recordings then and now.

Wallenstein himself appears in some of the Music-Appreciation ads, providing a not-entirely-disinterested rave (see below).