This present 10-inch LP derives from two productions in the 1946 season, the ballet's first in residence at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
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| Arthur Bliss and Constant Lambert during a 1944 rehearsal |
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| Shearer and Rassine as the lovers |
The second side of the LP presents a suite from Adolphe Adam's music for Giselle, one of the most popular ballets of all time. In this recording, Lambert performs the dual role of conductor and orchestrator. Although the music was written in 1841, Adam's orchestration was not published until the 20th century. Rather than licensing that version, ballet companies such as Sadler's Wells found it less expensive to commission their own orchestrations - and of course that company had a highly skilled arranger on staff in the person of Lambert.
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| Margot Fonteyn as Giselle |
The sound is good on these recordings. The download includes the contemporary Gramophone review, plus additional production ephemera.
In addition to Miracle in the Gorbals and Giselle, Lambert was also in the studios to record three other ballets from the 1946 season - The Sleeping Beauty, Coppélia and Gavin Gordon's music for The Rake's Progress. I plan to transfer all at a later date.
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| Ad in The Gramophone - click to enlarge |
Link (Apple lossless):
ReplyDeletehttp://www.mediafire.com/file/l8keqljb99bapz7/Bliss%20%20-%20Miracle%20in%20the%20Gorbals%2C%20Adam%20-%20Giselle%20%28Lambert%29.zip
Thank you, Buster, for this exceptional issue which I, for one, haven't heard in--what?...50 years??!
DeleteI have at least a half-dozen old Bliss LP era recordings that were amongst my personal "desert island disks". I am torn between his Decca recording of the mid-fifties of "A Colour Symphony" and the one I finally decided on uploading for you: the 1957 (Decca-taped) LSO performance of the suite from "Things to Come" cond. by Bliss, issued in the USA on the famed "Living Stereo" RCA Victor series. This is in fact one of my own transfers, to analogue tape: which turned up when I uncovered it in the late '90s, long after I'd sold off my large vinyl collection. I digitized it on a CDR in 1999 and this is a 'rip' of that, converted to a best-quality mp3:
https://www24.zippyshare.com/v/RKpPytVj/file.html
(21 MB mp3, unfortunately available only for thirty days, and deleted by around 9/29/18.)
I am not as fond of the Elgar P&C March performances, which have been reissued numerous times on LP and now CD; the performances are perfectly fine for the time but have been surpassed by Barbirolli and Solti. So I haven't included those, or the little Bliss filler track. That might turn up here if I look hard enough for it.
Frank Martin once uploaded on his Pristine Blog his own transfer of some sides from Bliss's own 1935 records of the suite, made as a commercial HMV set and not from the film soundtrack. His copy was very crackly but it was quite interesting to compare the performances: *incredibly* similar in style, and even in mike and hall pickup balances. It was almost as if you took the 1957 recording and cut it onto 78 shellac disks with 1935 gear, and left them in a public library to be trashed by bad styli for the next quarter of a century! Decca's 1957 engineering concept actually replicated the 1935 effort, with fully up to date sonics! (If prompted, I should have the temerity to upload my 'cleanup' of a couple of those sides, if Frank promises not to burst a blood vessel!)
8H Haggis
With full recognition that discretion is the better part of valour, I shall go ahead with some timidity and produce what I threatened to do in the above post: the 1935-36 HMV 78s of music from "Things to Come" with the LSO mostly conducted by Sir Arthur Bliss, but the last side by Muir Mathiesson (unfortunately, this last section is obviously a dub from the optical film track and is vastly inferior in sound; drat!) I worked long and hard to try to reduce "blasting" in the original grooves but (as I asserted) the LSO does sound, in the first part of the GOOD recordings of the selections, very much like it did later in 1957.
Deletehttps://www49.zippyshare.com/v/nZkikJsV/file.html
27 MB, mono mp3. Available only for thirty days, starting on 8/29/18--so don't fret about it, Frank!
8H Haggis
8H - Thanks once again. I am very fond of the Things to Come music.
DeleteHere is my "tie" for favorite desert-island Bliss record: the performance cond. by Sir Arthur Bliss, with the LSO in Kingsway Hall, of his "Colour Symphony". It was taped on 23,4 Nov. 1955 -- in mono, which suggests that Decca's ONE stereo tape deck was being used elsewhere, probably for opera tapings in Italy at the time. The sound is splendid, even if not in 2-channel stereo. This is actually my own transfer, from Decca "Eclipse" ECS-625, which was in a mild form of artificial stereo with barely any difference between left and right. I mixed it back to pure mono and made an analogue tape dub, which -- again -- turned up when I was throwing away old tapes in the mid-90s. I digitized this onto CDR and have done this mp3 for you.
DeleteDecca have included this in a big box of their classic mono analogue records of the 50s. I have not bought it but heard a copy: it's a lot hissier and brighter. Since there has been an interim tape dub, my transfer has probably lost a little bit of the LP sound; but it's still quite good--though not as transparent as the new Decca CD transfer, which has a TAD more of the highest upper partials.
25 MB mp3; available only for 30 days after my upload date of 8/29/18.
A scan of the Eclipse cover, via Discogs, has been embedded in the file.
https://www40.zippyshare.com/v/gH7w4GCX/file.html
8H Haggis
Buster, Thank You for your generosity.
ReplyDeleteYou're just crazy prolific lately! Thanks for all the hard work.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this, Buster. Despite my lifelong fascination for orchestration, specifically of ballet (e.g. Pineapple Poll, the various versions of Les Sylphides), I did not know this facet of the history of Giselle. I love that there's always more to learn!
ReplyDeleteI had no idea that there was a Lambert orchestration of Giselle. And I cannot wait to hear your transfer of the Rake's Progress music. That is a tremendous score. Thanks as always Buster for your wonderful work.
ReplyDeleteBy the way the Adam orchestration of Giselle is a pit musician's nightmare: it is notoriously dull to play, particularly if you are second flute or viola...
ReplyDeleteHi everyone,
ReplyDeleteI have quite a few records of Lambert orchestrations, some conducted by him and some by Robert Irving, who succeeded him with the Sadler's Wells company.
Phillip - The Gavin Gordon score is interesting in that he produced nothing else that is remembered. I'll transfer that LP next.
Thanks a million for that post dear Buster. Besides being an interesting composer and excellent orchestrator, Lambert was an expert in ballet conducting, like Fistoulari, Irving or Dorati to mention a few.
ReplyDeleteI was assistant to (the fantastic French conductor) André Girard at Paris National Opera for Giselle and can confirm that the orchestration of that first romantic ballet is troublesome !!
Here are two GREAT performances of Russian tone poems -- Tchaikovsky's "Hamlet" and Glazunov's "Stenka Razin" -- conducted by Constant Lambert from classic old 78 rpm records. I first obtained these nearly a decade ago on a web blog but had not saved the provenance. It was obvious that these were very responsible 'purist' transfers from good quality records, edited properly--a first rate job. Today, re-reading the comments about Lambert on Buster's blog, I remembered those files and opened them up again in my audio editor, recalling that they had traces of disk surface noise that I wanted to investigate to see if any correction was possible.
ReplyDeleteDuring the editing, I had my memory jogged and went looking for them with a web search--and discovered them on a highly respected blog by a gentleman who does *exceptional* work; he quite often comments here. I am keeping his name a little 'surprise' that I reveal in the detailed text file with my 'reworked' versions, giving him full attribution and with his current link. As these were offered without specific copyright, I assume they are 'fair game' for 'fair use', respecting his fine work and attempting ONLY to make what I hope are some potential improvements, not changing his sound quality or falsifying his excellent transferring and editing. I repeat my high praise to him in the explanatory remarks included, describing what I attempted to do in added click suppression and VERY small, subtle changes at certain points in the files, to try to ameliorate what seemed to me to be instances of disk wear, and the usual mechanical detritus that is present on virtually any old 78 rpm set. The results, either from his originals or (I do hope!) from my extra work, reveal a true conducting genius at highest form, and superb orchestral playing--plus MOST of the time, good sound for the period (allowing that, IMO, it's quite evident that at least the first disk side of the Glazunov Stenka Razin was most likely dubbed by a 78-rpm reproduction process, and suffers for it.)
https://www19.zippyshare.com/v/IqmaVtL4/file.html
64 MB, two zipped FLACs and documentation, plus cover image of Lambert - file will be removed by the uploading company on 10/1/18.
8H Haggis
Great performances indeed (although the orchestras aren't the smoothest). And the originating blog is a favorite of mine and many others.
Delete