Thor Johnson in Cincinnati: Decca Recordings

The conductor Thor Johnson (1913-75), while not a familiar name today, did make quite a few records. The ones that are remembered are principally with the Cincinnati Symphony on the short-lived Remington label. But before those sessions, he and the orchestra recorded in 1951 for the Decca company of the UK (London in the US).

UK Decca seldom if ever recorded in the States until the those sessions in the Cincinnati Music Hall. This was to be the only such recording date for the orchestra; even so, it resulted in three LPs worth of material, most of which has been assembled for this post, including music by Hugo Alfvén, Edvard Grieg, Hector Berlioz and Franz Schubert.

These are good records of - for the time - unusual repertoire. I believe only the Berlioz songs have been reissued.

About Thor Johnson

Johnson was born in Wisconsin to a family of Norwegian and German descent. His father was a Moravian minister, and he himself devoted quite a bit of time to music ministry for that denomination.

I've read that he studied with Serge Koussevitzky, but this is not mentioned in the biographical material available today, the most detailed of which is on the site devoted to Remington records. Before his 1947 ascent in Cincinnati, he had conducted the North Carolina Symphony, the Grand Rapids Symphony and, during World War II, a US Army band. For the 34-year-old Johnson to be appointed in Ohio was quite an accomplishment. His predecessors there included Leopold Stokowski, Eugene Ysaye, Fritz Reiner and Eugene Goossens.

Thor Johnson

Johnson led the Cincinnati ensemble until 1958, when he became a professor at Northwestern. He then headed the Interlochen Academy from 1964-67, becoming music director of the Nashville Symphony from 1967 until his death.

Johnson and the Cincinnati orchestra have appeared here once before - with a Remington recording of Robert Ward's Symphony No. 3 and Leon Stein's Three Hassidic Dances. (That recording is newly remastered in ambient stereo.) Johnson had a strong commitment to contemporary music, personally commissioning dozens of new works.

Alfvén - Midsommarvaka, Grieg - Suite from Sigurd Jorsalfar

We start with music reflecting Johnson's Scandinavian heritage: Hugo Alfvén's Midsommarvaka ("Midsummer Vigil"), the composer's Swedish Rhapsody No. 1, and a suite from Edvard Grieg's incidental music for Sigurd Jorsalfar, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson's play about King Sigurd I of Norway.

These works played to Johnson's strengths - orchestral discipline and, in the Alfvén, his ability to build tension throughout the performance of an episodic work. Here and in the records below he also chose unusual pieces that were not in the catalogue.

Midsommarvaka actually had been recorded several times before, but only once outside Scandinavia. The Cincinnati recording was made a few years before the opening theme of the piece became famous as the "Swedish Rhapsody," in a pop performance by Percy Faith. (Go here for an elaborate discussion of the two popular Swedish Rhapsodies, along with several disparate performances.) The Cincinnati performance also took place a few years before the composer's own early-stereo recording, which can be found here.

The Sigurd Jorsalfar incidental music consists of three pieces: a prelude, "In the King's Hall"; an intermezzo, "Borghild's Dream"; and a vigorous "Triumphal March." This suite also was not often heard at the time. The Classical Discography shows only 1925 recordings conducted by Georg Schneevoigt and Frieder Weissmann.

Second cover - I have no idea what is going on here, but Johnson seems fine with it

The Gramophone's verdict was as follows: "The Grieg incidental music I find enchanting; he had a highly individual touch with the orchestra, making his points with care; and those points Thor Johnson treats with understanding, and holds Grieg’s exquisite balance between harmonic epigram and broad statement... As in the Grieg work, we meet in Alfvén’s Swedish Rhapsody excellent playing, sympathetic conducting, and excellent recording - more uniform in its best qualities, indeed, than its partner is... The Swedish Rhapsody is engaging enough as music - immensely skilful, painstaking, energetic, even inventive."

Saturday Review's Irving Kolodin added that "the really superb performance of Alfvén's colorful score leaps off the disc with startling vitality."

LINK to Alfvén and Grieg

Berlioz - Les Nuits d'été

Like the works on the disc above, the songs from Hector Berlioz's cycle Les Nuits d'été had not often been recorded before this disc came along. The English reviewers of this LP mention two numbers that had been done by Maggie Teyte, and the discography also suggests that Tito Schipa had recorded some or all of the six.

Not only was the material unusual, it demonstrated the range of the orchestra and conductor, and introduced US audiences to the Belgian soprano Suzanne Danco (1911-2000), who had begun recording extensively for UK Decca after the war.

Suzanne Danco

Desmond Shaw-Taylor wrote in The Gramophone: "Suzanne Danco earns our gratitude by singing, for Decca, the entire cycle of Nuits d’été, which shows Berlioz at his most lyrical, fresh and inventive. It is evident that these songs are not all intended for the same type of voice; 'Sur les lagunes,' for instance demands a high baritone of the type of Gérard Souzay. There is some monotony in the shrill tones of Mme Danco’s upper register, and in 'Absence' and 'Le Spectre de la Rose' she cannot match the warmth and subtle coloration of Maggie Teyte’s famous record. (By the way, she sings the 'Spectre' in the original key of B; Maggie Teyte transposed it up to D.) Whatever the drawbacks of this recording, made in Cincinnati with the Symphony Orchestra of that city, I count it as a most valuable possession..."

Irving Kolodin in the Saturday Review: "One is conscious at times of a little acidulous bite, a shrill edge in her vocal sound, but also - and much more consistently - of her really fine musical intelligence and sense of poetic line. I'd scarcely call Thor Johnson's direction of the score a magical evocation of mood, but he makes few false moves. The total may be termed satisfactory if not deeply satisfying."

For those curious about Maggie Teyte's record, I've just posted it to my singles blog.

The LP download includes texts and translations.

LINK to Berlioz - Les Nuits d'été

Schubert - Symphony No. 3

Schubert's third symphony, written when he was 18, is a delightful work that was seldom heard then, or now. The discography and reviews suggest that there was at most one other recording in the catalogue at the time the Cincinnati LP came out.

The Gramophone reviewer's comment on the symphony: "To have this work available on gramophone records is valuable indeed, for it makes a permanent possession of a work seldom played in public, if ever. It is lovable music, bubbling over with cheerfulness, and laughter, and love, and tenderness; but I should not call the whole a great work of art. The first movement shows much promise as well as considerable achievement. The second movement is couched melodically in too nearly a nursery-rhyme idiom to appeal to my taste. The scherzo is amiable. On the whole, I consider the last movement the best of the four."

The US cover - I detect a pattern here

As for the performance, Irving Kolodin in the Saturday Review was reserved in his comments, noting that it did not show Johnson as a distinguished stylist, but adding that "he obviously has the orchestra playing with zest and unflagging attention."

In the US, the Schubert symphony was coupled with one of Johann Christian Bach's attractive Op. 18 symphonies. For this post, I worked from an Internet Archive needle drop of that London release, but the J.C. Bach side of the disc was severely damaged. I could not find another copy, so I haven't been able to include it. That's why at the top of this section I used the cover of the UK Decca 10-inch LP, which is devoted solely to the Schubert symphony. 

LINK to Schubert Symphony No. 3