Griffes and Loeffler from Eastman

For a while now, this blog has been taking a leisurely tour through the "American Music Festival Series," which Howard Hanson and his Eastman-Rochester forces recorded for Mercury in the 1950s.

The object is to transfer all the 15 or so entries in the series. There are links to the previous installments at the end of the post. Today's contribution includes a disc devoted to Griffes and Loeffler, along with later recordings of those composers, also from Eastman and the Mercury label.

American Music Festival Series Vol. 13 - Griffes and Loeffler

The music of Charles Tomlinson Griffes (1884-1920) and Charles Martin Loeffler (1861-1935) is often described as "American Impressionism," although that label is perhaps more appropriately applied to Griffes.

Charles Tomlinson Griffes

This Hanson disk, recorded in 1954, presents some of Griffes' best-known works.

Here's Alfred Frankenstein's description from High Fidelity: "The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan is Charles Tomlinson Griffes’ major orchestral work. Like the three short, orchestrated piano pieces with which it is associated on this record, it is a sumptuous, luxurious, impressionistic piece, strongly beholden to Debussy, but with sufficient originality of profile to justify its being kept alive."

That appears to Kubla Khan on the cover, cavorting with what appear to be two paper dragons, which might be the artist's conception of living in a stately pleasure-dome.

Griffes, born in the US, died young in the 1918 flu epidemic.

Charles Martin Loeffler

Charles Martin Loeffler was was born in Germany, although his family moved to several places on the continent, including near Kiev, which experience later inspired the composer's Memories of My Childhood. It is one of the two Loeffler works on this disk, both composed after he emigated to the US when he was 20. The other is his Poem for Orchestra, La Bonne Chanson.

Ad in High Fidelity

Loeffler was perhaps as much influenced by earlier French composers and the Russians as the Impressionists themselves. Alfred Frankenstein's view: "The two compositions by Charles Martin Loeffler ... are the products of one who was a far finer craftsman [i.e., than Griffes] but had much less to say. The early Poem for Orchestra, subtitled La Bonne Chanson, is a full throated, somewhat Straussian affair, magnificent in texture, subtle in form, but not quite first-class in its essential substance ... Memories of My Childhood recalls a sojourn in the Ukraine and is a kind of academic, professional Petrouchka."

There is much more about this colorful, impressive music in the detailed cover notes. This LP has been mastered in ambient stereo. The sound is typical of Mercury at the time - vivid and detailed, but with little bloom in the upper strings due to the proximity of the single microphone pickup.

More Griffes and Loeffler from Eastman

Following the 1954 disc above, Hanson and Mercury were to record the music of Griffes and Loeffler on at least two other discs. I've included these performances in the download along with the LP discussed above.

First we have one side of a 1958 stereo disc, which presents Loeffler's Deux Rapsodies (L'Etang and La Cornemuse), as performed by Eastman School faculty members Armand Basile, piano, Robert Sprenkle, oboe, and Francis Tursi, viola. Exceptional performances in truthful sound.

Francis Tursi and Robert Sprenkle portraits at Eastman

Finally, we have one of Griffes's best and best-known works, the Poem for Flute and Orchestra, as presented by longtime Eastman faculty member Joseph Mariano, in a 1963 stereo recording with the Eastman Rochester Orchestra and Hanson. They had recorded the same work some 20 years earlier for Victor.

Joseph Mariano

Also on this blog, the Poem can be heard by Maurice Sharp and the Cleveland Sinfonietta here and by Julius Baker and a chamber orchestra here.

The download includes an article on Hanson, Eastman and American music from a 1958 edition of High Fidelity, along with scans of all three LPs, etc.

LINK to music of Griffes and Loeffler from Eastman

Previous Installments in the American Music Festival Series

• Morton Gould's Latin American Symphonette; Samuel Barber's School for Scandal Overture, Adagio for Strings, Essay for Orchestra No. 1

• Barber's Symphony No. 1; Hanson's Sinfonia Sacra and Cherubic Hymn. LINK

• Music for Democracy: Randall Thompson's The Testament of Freedom and Hanson's Songs from Drum Taps.

• Edward MacDowell's Second Indian Suite

• Americana for Solo Winds and String Orchestra, including Hanson's Serenade for Flute, Strings and Harp

• Hanson's Symphony No. 4, along with an alternative recording led by Dean Dixon

• American Music for String Orchestra with works by Mennini, Foote and Canning