From the Back Room: Eleanor Steber at Eventide

This is another in a series of posts from Buster's Back Room, where I keep the many projects I have completed but never offered on this blog.

For these "From the Back Room" items, the transfers, etc., are prepared with the usual care, but my gabby commentary may be abbreviated.

In this 10-inch LP from 1949, the soprano Eleanor Steber presents Songs at Eventide, with the assistance of Howard Barlow and the Firestone Orchestra. All would have been familiar from appearances on The Voice of Firestone, a radio program presenting classical and semi-classical music.

Eleanor Steber

Steber herself was a leading artist at the Metropolitan Opera. In 1947, she had commissioned Samuel Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915. (The link takes you to the first recording of the work.)

This entirely melodious Songs at Eventide program largely consists of what we today would call works from the American songbook: "You and the Night and the Music," "Ev'rytime We Say Goodbye," "I'll Be Seeing You," "Out of My Dreams" and "When I Grow Too Old to Dream."

But three selections may be more obscure. "When Day Is Done" is a German song written by Robert Katscher in the 1920s, here with English lyrics by Buddy DeSylva. "Bird Songs at Eventide" is by English light music composer Eric Coates, with words by Rodney Bennett. And the concluding "Sing Me to Sleep" is from 1902, when it was composed by Edwin Greene to words by Clifton Bingham.

Howard Barlow leads the Firestone Orchestra

This recording made the excellent Firestone Orchestra sound boomy, which I have tamed. Steber is somewhat recessed into the sonic picture, which is more truthful to concert sound than most recordings.

LINK