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

8H Returns with Toscanini Conducing Griffes, Kennan and Grofé

Toscanini by David Levine

It wasn't very long ago that our friend 8H Haggis was packing the comments section of this blog with limited-time uploads from his vast storeroom of fine musical goods. I am pleased that he has returned tonight with a splendid concert for us all - Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony with a program of American music, as heard on February 7, 1943 from NBC's Studio 8H in Rockefeller Center.

As perhaps you have inferred from the dual "8H" appellations in the preceding paragraph, 8H Haggis has adopted his name from the studio that Toscanini used for most of his famous broadcasts. (The "Haggis" is a play on the name of critic B.H. Haggin - another Toscanini admirer.) And so one of 8H's principal interests is in rescuing the Toscanini legacy from the sludge pit of awful sound in which it is often mired.

Griffes by Levine

The concert for today is one that should interest all who fancy 20th century American music. It starts with Henry Gilbert's anachronistic "Comedy Overture on Negro Themes" (1910), then picks up considerably with two superb works - Kent Kennan's "Night Soliloquy" (1936), which has appeared on this blog before, and Charles Tomlinson Griffes' "White Peacock" (1915). As 8H says in his characteristically pungent and informative notes (included in the download), the Griffes and Kennan receive "magical, rapt interpretations."

The program concludes with a remarkable performance of Ferde Grofé's technicolor masterpiece, the "Grand Canyon" Suite. 8H tells us that this 1943 line-check recording of the work is not only "a far better and more expressive performance than Toscanini's famous (and quite popular) commercial RCA Victor records of 1945," but that it "presents vastly more realistic fidelity than the RCA Victor RECORD engineers were willing to give Toscanini!" I concur, and can only add that the concluding "Cloudburst" section is more vivid than the real thing!

Grofé

This is one of Toscanini's most memorable achievements in the American repertoire - and I say that even though I am not much of an admirer of the Maestro, who has only appeared on this blog once before, and that as an accompanist.

Thanks, 8H, for this new favor.

Lenore Engdahl Plays Griffes

The pianist Lenore Engdahl died recently at age 100. While she did not have a major career, she was a talented performer who also taught in Boston for many years.

Engdahl did not make many records. As far as I can tell, her output was limited to four LPs on the M-G-M label, dating from 1955 and 1957.

Lenore Engdahl

The pianist's musical tastes ran to Chopin, Brahms, Schubert and Beethoven, according to an obituary in her hometown newspaper, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. But M-G-M had her attempt different repertoire, including the present LP of compositions by the American Charles Tomlinson Griffes (1884-1920). She also recorded works by Dukas, Franck, Kabalevsky, Milhaud and Villa-Lobos.

The Griffes pieces here are in an impressionist vein, as are most or all of his most widely recognized compositions. These include one of the works heard here, "The White Peacock," which the composer later orchestrated. You can find an introduction to Griffes here. The detailed cover notes also are helpful.

Charles Tomlinson Griffes

Engdahl's readings are sympathetic. Writing in High Fidelity, the critic Alfred Frankenstein was impressed by the record, calling it "a performance of marvelous sensitivity, penetration and technical resourcefulness." 

The recording is excellent, and has now (July 2023) been enhanced by ambient stereo processing. 

My transfer is from one of those 1960s M-G-M reissues that repurposed the original back cover as the front. I did find a reproduction of the original cover (at top), which is included in the download.

Flutist Maurice Sharp with the Clevelanders and Louis Lane, Plus a Julius Baker Reup

This is another in a series of recordings by spin-offs of the Cleveland Orchestra, conducted by longtime assistant/associate/resident conductor Louis Lane. Today the spotlight is on the orchestra's principal flute, Maurice Sharp, who performs with a chamber ensemble of principals and others from the band, here called the Cleveland Sinfonietta.

The repertoire encompasses four 20th century works, three by Americans (Charles Tomlinson Griffes, Arthur Foote and Howard Hanson) and one by the French/Swiss composer Arthur Honegger.

Harvey McGuire joins Sharp for Honegger's Concerto da Camera for Flute, English Horn and Strings. Alice Chalifoux is the harpist in Hanson's Serenade.

Sharp joined the orchestra right out of the Curtis Institute, where he studied with William Kincaid, and remained principal flute for 50 years. He joined the ensemble when founding music director Nikolai Sokoloff was still in charge, with his tenure lasting to the brink of the Christoph von Dohnányi era.

Julius Baker (left) and Maurice Sharp, circa 1975

It is instructive to contrast Sharp's approach to another Kincaid pupil who became a famed orchestra principal - Julius Baker, who was solo flute both in Chicago and then for many years in New York (and who earlier spent several years in the Cleveland flute section). A while back I posted a Decca release in which Baker assays two of the works on this Cleveland issue - Griffes's Poem and Foote's A Night Piece. (Baker presents the Foote with string quartet accompaniment; Sharp uses the score for a larger ensemble.)

To my ears, Baker is the warmer of the two, although both are immaculate in their presentation. Sharp's cooler approach is in keeping with the proclivities of the Cleveland forces in the records they made with Lane - and with Szell, for that matter.

I've refurbished the sound of Baker's recording and added a link to it in the comments, along with the link to the Cleveland Sinfonietta LP. The sound on both is very good - Baker in mono, Sharp in stereo. Michael Gray's discography tells us that the Cleveland recordings were taped in Severance Hall in July 1960. The Baker sessions date from June 1952.

Julius Baker in Works by Foote and Griffes

Flutist Julius Baker made any number of records in the 1950s. During much of the period he was a New York freelance musician, but when these recordings were made, in June 1952, he was the principal flute of the Chicago Symphony. He later was the principal of the New York Philharmonic for many years.

Julius Baker

The repertoire could not be more welcome, consisting of the Poem for flute and orchestra by the American Impressionist Charles Tomlinson Griffes and "A Night Piece" by the American Romantic Arthur Foote.

Assisting in the Griffes is a chamber orchestra led by Daniel Saidenberg, also a busy performer during the period. In "A Night Piece" Baker is joined by the then violins of the Stuyvesant Quartet (Sylvan Shulman and Bernard Roberts), violist Harold Coletta of the NBC Symphony, and cellist Bernard Greenhouse, later of the Beaux Arts Trio.

These are excellent performances that I recommend. The sound is good. They come from American Decca's spartan (no notes) 4000 series of 10-inch LPs, dating from the early 1950s. I have a few more from this series coming up.

By the way, if you are interested in the Stuyvesant Quartet, fellow blogger Bryan over at The Shellackophile offers three different recordings by the group, including one he just posted.

Digression No. 23

It was quite a thrill to receive a note from Sue Raney and her husband Carmen Falzone following my posting of her uncollected singles recently. This was through the intercession of Bill Reed, who knows Sue and had taken Sue a CD of the singles. She responded:

"I can’t begin to express my gratitude for the compilation of the singles I made so long ago. It was such fun to listen to them again. We sure tried to get a hit record in those days (ha). 'Biology' was the only one that made it to the Billboard chart at about 50 something (I think). [Note from Buster - that's the only Capitol single I don't have, ironically.] What a special person you are to have taken the time to do all that. You made me so happy, and I thank you so very much for your love and support – the notes you wrote are also quite a keepsake for me."

Speaking of Bill (maestro of the People vs. Dr. Chilledair), he reminds me that in my recent Carole Simpson post, I really should have mentioned that Carole has a 2008 release called "Live" and Otherwise, available here.

Finally - and completely unrelated to the previous discussion - I came across a most interesting radio show on the web this weekend, and thought I would share my refurbishment of the sound. This comes from the Sunday Gramophone feature of a site called Crooks and Liars, which apparently does not refer to the musicians or proprietors but to the site's main preoccupation, politicians. Sunday Gramophone has exceptionally interesting material, unfortunately presented in exceptionally low bit-rate mp3s. Yesterday's offering was from an NBC program of July 1, 1943 by the NBC Orchestra, conducted by Joseph Stopak. This was in a late-night sustaining series called Music of the New World, devoted to all types of music from the Americas - a wartime effort designed to promote inter-American harmony.

This particular program was devoted to US composers, and included less-often heard works by Sowerby (Comes Autumn Time) and Creston (Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra, with Artur Balsam), along with pieces by Griffes and Carpenter.

I have rebalanced the sound, but the compression artifacts from the low bit-rate file are of course still audible (but not too distracting, I hope). It is presented in FLAC format to avoid additional compression effects. The program also is now tracked. The link is below.

LINK