Ballet Music from Meyerbeer-Lambert and Bliss

Here are two souvenirs from the Sadler's Wells Ballet's 1950 season, directed by its staff conductors John Hollingsworth and Robert Irving - Les Patineurs, a pastiche of Giocomo Meyerbeer's music, and Checkmate, with a score by Arthur Bliss. 

Both works were premiered in 1937 and conducted then by Constant Lambert, the Vic-Wells music director at the time.

Massenet-Lambert - Les Patineurs

The Royal Ballet's 2009 production of Les Patineurs 

Les Patineurs has no connection with Émile Waldteufel's famous waltz of the same name. Lambert arranged Les Patineurs from melodies found in Meyerbeer's operas Le Prophète and L'Etoile du Nord, principally the former. Although seldom heard today, Meyerbeer's works were very popular in the 19th century, and this immensely tuneful and pleasing score shows why.

Margot Fonteyn and Robert Helpmann - Les Patineurs 1937

Lambert conceived the idea of the ballet and using Meyerbeer's music; Frederick Ashton was the choreographer. As the title implies, the complete ballet depicts skaters, with the setting a Victorian skating party. Ashton's biographer Julie Kavanaugh notes that such productions were not a novelty: "Skating ballets themselves were a genre of sorts... but only Ashton's work has endured... [I]t is the paradigm of an Ashton ballet, perfectly crafted, with a complex structure beneath the effervescent surface."

Les Patineurs was something of a recorded specialty for Sadler's Wells/Royal Ballet conductors - Lambert recorded it in 1939, Robert Irving in 1952 and Hugo Rignold in 1958. John Hollingsworth conducted this recording, although he and Irving shared 1950's live performances, as also was the case with the Bliss ballet.

Bliss - Checkmate

The 1947 Sadler's Wells staging of Checkmate

Bliss's Checkmate ballet music could not be more of a contrast to Les Patineurs. The composer himself conceived the idea of the ballet, with Ninette de Valois executing it. The concept is simple, taking place on a chess board with the pieces coming to life and eventually battling until a tragic checkmate.

Gillian Lynne as the Black Queen, Checkmate 1937

The music is dramatic and Robert Irving's performance with the Covent Garden orchestra is a good one. However, the reviews of the music as heard on this LP were not kind. "Meretricious melodies" sneered one. "Noisy, overscored and without anything musical to say" asserted another. Nor was Irving spared - Hollingsworth was deemed a "far superior leader." I think both positions were overstated.

Harold Turner as First Red Knight, Checkmate 1947

Regardless of the disdainful notices for the music, Checkmate has been a staple in the Sadler's Wells/Royal Ballet repertoire for many years.

Both these recordings are somewhat abridged from the complete scores. To my knowledge this was the first recording of music from Checkmate. The sound is excellent in both works. The download includes additional production photos and reviews.

Hollingsworth has appeared here several times recently. Irving was heard in music by Arnold and Britten. Constant Lambert has been a frequent guest on the blog. Bliss' music for the ballet Miracle in the Gorbals, as conducted by Lambert, can be found here.

1947 poster

Constant Lambert Conducts 'Coppélia'

Constant Lambert by Gordon Anthony

The 1946 productions of the Sadler's Wells Ballet, in its new home at Covent Garden, have been featured several times here, all in recordings led by Constant Lambert - Sleeping Beauty, The Rake's Progress, Miracle in the Gorbals and Giselle. Today we have recordings made in conjunction with a staging of the ballet Coppélia, with music by Léo Delibes.

The 1946 production was, I believe, a revival of the 1940 staging. It opened on October 25, 1946, and Lambert and the Royal Opera House Orchestra were in the studio the following February for these recordings. Actually two studios - the music from Act III was recorded in Kingsway Hall February 7, with the Act I and II sessions moving to Abbey Road Studio 1 on March 25. The resulting recording contains about a third of the complete score. One note: the composer Gordon Jacob is listed as orchestrating Act III; I haven't found a description of the work he did.

Publicity photo of Margot Fonteyn as Swanilda

Coppélia set design by William Chappell

Delibes' captivating music influenced Tchaikovsky. The performance does full justice to the score; Lambert's clarity and incisiveness are everywhere in evidence. The Royal Opera House Orchestra was not a virtuoso ensemble, but you will not notice much amiss, except for some insecure horn playing in the Prelude. That passage soon gives way to the wonderful Mazurka and the rest of the score is handled well. (The Mazurka's tempo is swift; I suspect that Lambert used a more moderate tempo for the stage production.)

Naturally, not all the critics agree with my assessment of the performance. The Gramophone's reviewer sneered that the playing was "of a good routine order," complained of a missing diacritic on the label, and was bored with the music: "It is all rather faded, for me, but these amiable things have a place in the corner of most hearts." But then the critic of The Spectator, reviewing the opening night performance, had this to say: "The music, delightful in its melodiousness and piquant rhythms, was particularly well played by the orchestra under Constant Lambert, and the audience was wildly and justly enthusiastic."

UK Columbia issued its 78 set in 1947, with US Columbia following the next year. This transfer is from my pressing of the 1949 US LP (cover below). The sound is good. The download includes many production stills and reviews.

Historic Delius Recordings from Sammons, Moiseiwitsch and Harrison, Plus Bonuses

The composer Frederick Delius (1862-1934) benefited from the impassioned advocacy of conductor Sir Thomas Beecham during his lifetime and until Beecham's own demise in 1961.

So pervasive were the conductor's efforts that it almost seems like he was Delius' only champion. But that is far from the truth. Notable early recordings of the composer's music included those by violinist Albert Sammons, cellist Beatrice Harrison, pianist Benno Moiseiwitsch and conductors Eric Fenby and Constant Lambert, none of which involved Sir Tommy. These form today's post, which is centered on a World Records Club LP from 1975, with the addition of several transfers from the original 78 issues.

Also today, we also have a bonus in the form of one of David Federman's much appreciated compilations, this one called "When Tourists Trod the Earth - A Farewell to Summer." Details below.

LP cover

The Violin Concerto with Albert Sammons and Malcolm Sargent

Albert Sammons by Alexander Akerbladh

Delius' concertos are not usually considered among his best or most characteristic compositions, although it is difficult not to enjoy these works in good performances. Here the Violin Concerto of 1916 is performed by its dedicatee, the eminent English instrumentalist Albert Sammons (1886-1957), who is also particularly associated with the Elgar concerto.

Malcolm Sargent

Sammons' was the first commercial issue of the Delius concerto. He, the Liverpool Philharmonic and its then-conductor Malcolm Sargent recorded the work in early July 1944 in Philharmonic Hall. Beecham followed up a few years later with his own version, done with violinist Jean Pougnet.

Sargent has been featured on this blog many times, including my transfer of his first Dream of Gerontius recording, with the Liverpool Philharmonic. Sammons has only appeared in a brief recording, that of Grainger's Molly on the Shore, which can be found in this compilation.

The Piano Concerto with Benno Moiseiwitsch and Constant Lambert

Benno Moiseiwitsch

The Russian-born British pianist Benno Moiseiwitsch was an ideal choice for Delius' Piano Concerto, which is more extroverted than much of the composer's oeuvre. It's been compared the Liszt's concertos; conductor Constant Lambert may have been an apt choice for the recording because of his affinity for the Abbé's music.

Moiseiwitsch was strongly associated with the Romantic repertoire, particularly Rachmaninoff and Schumann. To me, the Delius concerto is temperamentally more similar to the ruminative qualities of those masters than to Liszt's concoctions. The opening of Delius' work, for example, is directly indebted to Rachmaninoff. Moiseiwitsch is ideal in this music.

Constant Lambert

To record the work, the pianist, Lambert and the Philharmonia assembled in Abbey Road Studio No. 1 in August 1946. Depending on how you look at it, this was either the concerto's first or second recording. Beecham and his then-wife, pianist Betty Humby, had recorded it in late 1945, but that version was never issued. They remade the concerto in October-December 1946, and that was the one that HMV sent to market.

In 1946, Beecham sponsored a Delius Festival in London, recording a good number of the composer's works at the same time, including  the violin and piano concerto recordings mentioned above. I transferred these pieces for my own listening several years ago and can post them here if there is interest.

Delius also wrote a Double Concerto for violin and cello, which did not receive a recording until 1965, per the Delius Society discography. I also have that LP is anyone is interested.

The Caprice and Elegy with Beatrice Harrison and Eric Fenby

Beatrice Harrison

Today, perhaps the least known soloist in this set is the cellist Beatrice Harrison (1892-1965), another musician closely associated with Delius. Harrison and her sister May premiered the Double Concerto, which Delius wrote for them in 1915. Here she performs two works that the composer also wrote for her, the Caprice and Elegy, charming pieces that are lovingly played here.

The Caprice and Elegy recordings come from 1930, and are performed with small orchestra as scored and conducted by Eric Fenby. The latter was closely associated with Delius in the composer's last years, and is generally called his "amanuensis." That's a fancy term for scribe, but Fenby was far more than that. To my knowledge, he had only this one opportunity to conduct a Delius recording until many years later, when he produced a superb set for the Unicorn label.

Frederick Delius with Eric Fenby and Beatrice Harrison

The transfers of the Caprice and Elegy included here come from the original 78s, which have more immediate sound that the LP I used for the concerto transfers.

Bonus: Additional Delius Recordings from Constant Lambert

In addition to the Piano Concerto above, Constant Lambert also recorded Delius' On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring, the Intermezzo and Serenade from Hassan, and La Calinda from Koanga. They have appeared here before, but I am including them in this package as well.

Bonus: When Tourists Trod the Earth - A Farewell to Summer

David takes us on a tour of the past in his latest 30-song compilation, "When Tourists Trod the Earth - A Farewell to Summer." As he says in his notes, "As befits escapist fare, this medley is heavily enriched with Hawaiian music and music played through the lens it provided musicians everywhere to gaze at the songs of their own homelands." But it also continues into the 70s, "as it makes room for the Brazilian paradise that replaced the Hawaiian one."

David makes note that, "One of my favorite songs of all-time, 'On a Little Street in Singapore,' is sung by Dick Stewart - an earnest voice who made only one album I know of." I have that album myself and may transfer it if I can find it.

Thanks, David, as always for your contributions!

Constant Lambert Conducts Boyce, Rossini, Offenbach and Suppé

For some time, we've been presenting the works that Constant Lambert (1901-51) produced as composer, arranger and conductor. For today's post Lambert assumes the latter two roles. The main work is his arrangement of the music of the English baroque composer William Boyce for the 1940 Vic-Wells ballet The Prospect Before Us. Completing the program are his recordings of popular works by Gioachino Rossini, Jacques Offenbach and Franz von Suppé.

Boyce-Lambert - The Prospect Before Us

The Prospect Before Us - act drop

Lambert was a proponent of the music of his baroque-period predecessor William Boyce (1711-79). He edited Boyce's symphonies for publication and arranged his music for use in the comic ballet The Prospect Before Us, which opened in summer 1940 with choreography by Ninette de Valois.

The ballet was suggested by a 1791 print of the same name by the English caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson (1757-1827), which depicts cavorting dancers on the stage of the Kings Theatre. (See below - I've brightened and clarified the faded original.)

Thomas Rowlandson - The Prospect Before Us

For the work, de Valois constructed a scenario pivoting on two rival theatrical managers who fight over the best dancers, with it all ending up with the calamity depicted on Roger Furse's act-drop at the top of this section.

Robert Helpmann

The download includes several of Furse's sketches for the costumes and a number of the publicity photos for the production. One such is Robert Helpmann's dance as one of the managers, shown above.

Lambert took the Sadler's Wells Orchestra into Abbey Road Studio No. 1 on August 1, 1940, less than a month after the ballet opened. The performance is as lively and high-spirited as the ballet must have been. The work was a popular success, serving as a diversion from the realities of wartime.

The download also includes reviews from The New Records and from The Gramophone, the latter of which provides a useful synopsis of the ballet.

Rossini - William Tell Ballet Music

Detail from 1939 Gramophone ad

Lambert also conducted his Sadler's Wells Orchestra in this 1939 Kingsway Hall recording of the ballet music from Rossini's opera William Tell. The sessions were not in conjunction with a Vic-Wells performance, as far as I can determine.

Some parts of this music may be familiar from having appeared in re-orchestrated form in Britten's Matinées and Soirées Musicales. Much of it is delightful, although the Gramophone reviewer drolly and accurately noted that, "There is a cornet solo of the kind beloved of the pier on Part 2." The music is very well performed and recorded, and as always, Lambert's touch is sure.

Offenbach - Orpheus in the Underworld Overture

Although he was the Vic-Wells music director, Lambert also recorded with orchestras other than the Sadler's Wells forces. Here, just a month after the Rossini recording, he was again in the Kingsway Hall, this time with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. The session was again devoted to music from the opera - the delightful overture to Offenbach's comic masterpiece Orpheus in the Underworld.

That's not to say that Offenbach actually wrote the overture per se - it was apparently concocted by the Austrian Carl Binder for a performance in Vienna. Nor was the concluding "can-can" originally devised as such. This galop from the score was co-opted by the Folies Bergère folks for their famous dance well after Offenbach's death.

Perhaps needless to say, Lambert and the orchestra do this to a turn - although I will note that the LPO's playing is not superior to that of the Sadler's Wells band in the recordings above.

Suppé - Overture Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna

While two of Franz von Suppé's best known and most parodied works are overtures to two of his seldom-heard operettas (Poet and Peasant and Light Cavalry), the third was an early, stand-alone overture titled Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna. Like the others, it was used as the backdrop to a mid-century cartoon, in this case one of Bugs Bunny's conducting escapades.

Although I much admire Lambert, he did favor a few composers who leave me cold, notably Liszt but also Suppé, whose music strikes me as noisily insubstantial. That said, Lambert makes the most of the piece in this 1950 Kingsway Hall recording with the Philharmonia Orchestra, made near the end of the conductor's short life.

The transfers for all these works come to us through the good graces of Internet Archive, and were edited and remastered by me. The sound is uniformly excellent for its period.

Lambert Conducts Warlock, Delius and Lambert

The composer-conductor Constant Lambert has been a periodic subject of posts hereabouts. Today he takes on the music of two people he knew well - "Peter Warlock" (Philip Heseltine) and Frederick Delius, along with his own most famous composition, "The Rio Grande."

Peter Warlock

Philip Heseltine by Gerald Brockhurst

In the 1920s, the young Lambert (1905-1951) was a close friend of the composer Philip Heseltine (1894-1930), who published his music under the name "Peter Warlock," supposedly because of his affinity for the occult.

Heseltine was principally known for his brilliant songs, which have appeared here more than once. His song cycle "The Curlew," set to Yeats, is one of the finest in the English language. Both "The Curlew" and the first work on today's program, the Capriol Suite, betray the influence of Vaughan Williams. The Suite was supposedly based on Renaissance dances, but it is more Warlock's work than any ancient source material.

The second Warlock work is his Serenade to Frederick Delius on His 60th Birthday, from 1922. Heseltine was a confirmed Delius disciple earlier in his life. Although the influence had faded by the time this music was written, this particular piece is a conscious homage to the older composer, and makes a good segue between Warlock's music and Delius' own.

These recordings were made at Abbey Road with the Constant Lambert String Orchestra in 1937.

Frederick Delius

Frederick Delius by Achille Ouvré

In 1938, Lambert was again in Abbey Road, this time with the London Philharmonic and Delius' most famous work, "On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring."

He returned to the studio in 1941 for two interludes from Delius opera, the Serenade from Hassan in Thomas Beecham's edition and "La Calinda" from Koanga as arranged by Eric Fenby. This time the orchestra was the Hallé and the site was the Houldsworth Hall in Manchester.

All these works are nicely handled and the recordings are more suitably atmospheric than those done in 1937.

Lambert's The Rio Grande

Vocal score

Lambert was well aware of currents in music, and was particularly inspired by what he considered jazz. He had been very impressed with the short-lived Florence Mills, whom he had seen in the West End revue Blackbirds in 1926. The composer wrote, "The colour and rhythm of the singing was an absolute revelation of the possibilities of choral writing and this Rio Grande is the first example of a serious and perfectly natural use of jazz technique in a choral work."

All this may be true, but the first name that comes to mind when listening is Gershwin. The writing in the important piano part is Gershwinesque in its rhythms and phrasing. The critic Angus Morrison also cites Liszt's Faust Symphony as a direct influence. Lambert was fond of Liszt; he mined the Abbe for the ballet music Apparitions, done for Sadler's Wells and for a setting of the Dante Sonata for piano and orchestra.

Sacheverall Sitwell

As we have seen before on this blog, Lambert was close with the Sitwells, serving both as conductor and reciter in William Walton's various settings of Edith's Façade. For 1928's The Rio Grande, Lambert set a poetic exercise in exoticism by Sacheverall Sitwell. The poet moved the Rio Grande from North America to South America for the purpose of his verse, and imagines a dream world of dancing and revelers.

"The music of The Rio Grande no more represents any actual scene or event than the poem that inspired it," wrote Lambert. "It is an imaginary picture that it conjures up, a picture of the gay life of a riverside town which may be in either South or North America, as the listener chooses to fancy."

Kyla Greenbaum

The poetry is atmospheric, if dated, but you would have a hard time telling from the woolly diction of the Philharmonia Chorus and even at times the well-known contralto Gladys Ripley. I've included the text for those who want to understand the words. 

The Philharmonia Orchestra plays well for Lambert. The stand-out performance is by pianist Kyla Greenbaum, one exposed slip aside. She did not have a big career, but on this evidence, was a fine talent.

For this recording, Lambert returned to Abbey Road in early 1949, two years before his early death. The recording is good. My transfer of The Rio Grande comes from a 1950s LP reissue on UK Columbia. The other works were remastered from lossless transfers found on Internet Archive and CHARM.

Lambert's 'Sleeping Beauty' Recordings, Plus Weldon's 'Faust' Ballet Music

1946 Covent Garden Sleeping Beauty production - the Prologue

My recent post of an LP containing Nicolai Malko's recording of excerpts from Tchaikovsky's score for the Sleeping Beauty ballet set off a lengthy discussion: was it really Malko or did the record company mistakenly include Constant Lambert's 1939 Sadler's Wells recordings?

It turns out it really was Malko. I had always doubted the doubters, mainly because I was familiar with Lambert's Sleeping Beauty recordings, and they were not the same as what RCA had presented as Malko's rendition. So today I come full circle by presenting the Lambert recordings.

The remarkable Lambert, the long-time music director for the Sadler's Wells Ballet, actually made two sets of excerpts from the ballet, one in conjunction with a 1938 staging, and one in 1946. The latter was recorded in association with a new production by Ninette de Valois and Frederick Ashton in the troupe's new Covent Garden home, with costumes by Oliver Messel. As she did in 1938, Margot Fonteyn danced Princess Aurora, with Robert Helpmann as both Prince Florimund and Carabosse.

Margot Fonteyn as Princess Aurora in the Rose Adagio

Margot Fonteyn and Robert Helpmann in the Awakening Scene

Robert Helpmann as Carabosse

Fortunately - and unusually - there is a good visual record of the 1946 staging in the form of color photographs taken by Frank Sharman during performances. The images seen here are from his collection, as made available on the Covent Garden website. Several others are in the download, along with a few black-and-white images taken by Merlyn Severn and published in his book Sadler's Wells Ballet at Covent Garden, a record of the 1946 season.

In the February 1939 session for HMV, Lambert assayed some of the most familiar excerpts from the score - the Introduction, the Waltz, the Rose Adagio, Puss-in-Boots and the White Cat, and the Finale. In 1946, he avoided these items, taking up the Dance of the Maids of Honor and Pages, the Aurora Variation, Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, and a few other dances.

Robert Helpmann and Constant Lambert

Lambert's work is, as usual, beautifully done. Both orchestras are up to the task, although neither has much weight of tone, as far as one can tell from the 70- and 80-year-old recordings, which nonetheless are relatively good for the period. As you might expect, the sound from 1946 is better than from 1939.

The 1939 recordings are taken from lossless needle-drops found on Internet Archive, as refurbished by me. The 1946 excerpts come from an early 50's U.S. Columbia LP in my collection that also included ballet music from Gounod's opera Faust, discussed below.

Weldon Conducts Ballet Music from Gounod's Faust

George Weldon by
Walter Stoneman, 1949

George Weldon (1908-63) was a talented English conductor who was the director of the City of Birmingham Orchestra in 1946, when these recordings were taken down. He was to stay there only until 1950, when he was dismissed or resigned (accounts differ), supposedly because he was having an affair with choir director Ruth Gipps, a very good composer whose music has lately been revived. Orchestras could be strict about such things back then - blog favorite Efrem Kurtz was reportedly shown the stage door by the Houston Symphony because of a liaison with principal flute Elaine Shaffer, later a well-known soloist.

Weldon made quite a number of records for EMI during his brief life - including a semi-complete version of Sleeping Beauty in 1956. I believe he was associated with the Sadler's Wells Ballet at that time, although the recording was with the Philharmonia. Sadler's Wells music director Robert Irving had recorded a competing version of the ballet the year before, which has appeared on this blog. EMI seemed to make the score a specialty - and so does Big 10-Inch Record, it appears.

The premiere of Gounod's Faust had been in 1859; Gounod added the dance music to Act 5 a decade later at the request of the Paris Opera, where ballets were expected as part of the spectacle.

Weldon secures a lively performance from the underpowered Birmingham band, which had been been decimated during the war. The sound - as with the rest of these items - is well-balanced and pleasing without any high-fidelity pretensions.

The Curious Case of Malko's "Sleeping Beauty"

Is it you, Nicolai? Or you, Constant?

My post directly below combines two Tchaikovsky readings by the illustrious conductors Constant Lambert and Nicolai Malko. The 1955 RCA Bluebird LP includes Lambert's 1941 Romeo and Juliet with the City of Birmingham Orchestra, and Malko's 1952 excerpts from The Sleeping Beauty with the Philharmonia Orchestra.

Or does it? No sooner did I cross-post my item to a Google classical music group than one of the knowledgeable members there dropped a line to say that there has been some dispute as to whether this was really the Malko recording. Apparently RCA had issued the LP with Lambert's 1939 Sleeping Beauty selections in place of the Malko items, while attributing them to the Russian conductor.

I thought this was curious. I am familiar with Lambert's Sleeping Beauty recordings - and am planning to post them - and the 1939 records do not match up with what is contained on the RCA LP. For example, "Red Riding Hood and the Wolf" appears on the RCA album but does not appear to be among the excerpts that Lambert set down in 1939. (He did record it in 1946.) Conversely, Lambert had a go at the famous Waltz in 1939, but it does not appear on the Bluebird LP.

I also checked the items that this LP and the 1939 recordings hold in common, and they do not seem to be the same, to my ears. Admittedly, comparisons are difficult because the excerpts are not uniformly labelled and the scores can be edited differently for the various recordings.

Later, another member posted a transfer from one of the Malko 78, and it does match the same selections on the Bluebird LP. And checking the Tchaikovsky Research site, what appears to be contained on the original 78s seems to match what's on the LP, although the site seems to be unaware of the two sides that aurally match the Bluebird album.

First and second LP covers

I wonder if RCA, after flubbing the first edition of the LP, did in fact correct the later editions. The record exists in two different versions - one with the stock ribbon cover that Bluebird was using at the time, the second my later issue with Romeo and Juliet on the cover. The group member who raised the issue is acquiring an original English EP of the music to make sure.

In the meantime, one thing that did come to light is that my transfer of the Sleeping Beauty excerpts is still a half-step flat - even though I had raised the pitch a half-step already, knowing that it was not correct. So I have adjusted the pitch again (hopefully accurately this time), and have posted a link to a new file both in the comments here and the original post.

Update: another member sent along a transfer of all the Malko Sleeping Beauty 78s, and they do correspond to additional items on the LP.

Lambert and Malko Conduct Tchaikovsky

Today we return to the recordings of composer-conductor-arranger-author Constant Lambert in a work by Tchaikovsky, a composer he favored. We also hear another Tchaikovsky composition led by a much different maestro, the expatriate Ukrainian-Russian Nicolai Malko (1883-1961).

The Lambert recording is Romeo and Juliet, Tchaikovsky's dramatic and descriptive so-called "Fantasy-Overture," here in a 1941 performance with the City of Birmingham Symphony. For some reason, neither on the original 78s nor here, in its only LP issue, were the Birmingham forces identified, being tagged only as a "Symphony Orchestra."

Constant Lambert by Madame Yevonde, 1933

The Birmingham musicians were not known to be a virtuoso ensemble - during the war the orchestra was composed of part-time players. Lambert draws good results from the group, however - certainly better than a few of the orchestras that have appeared on this blog. It's possible the orchestra was augmented for this recording.

Lambert takes the introduction slowly (too slowly for me), contrasting this music with the turbulent second section, depicting the Montagues and Capulets. The love music is nicely handled by the orchestra. Throughout, as often happens with 80-year-old recordings, the impact of the music suffers from a compressed dynamic range.

I don't think the Lambert recording has had an official reissue since this 1955 LP version, nor has Malko's rendition of excerpts from Tchaikovsky's score for the ballet Sleeping Beauty. Both were issued originally on 78 by HMV - even the 1952 Malko recording, which also appeared on EP - and have not been revisited by that company or its successors, to my knowledge. If anything, the Malko has been even more neglected than the Lambert. This 1955 RCA Victor issue is the only LP version of both scores that I can find.

Malko was a fine conductor who made many excellent records for EMI in the 1950s, first with the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra and then the Philharmonia, who appear here in the Sleeping Beauty excerpts. Even so, he never had a prestigious orchestral position in the West, being best known for working regularly with the Danish orchestra.

Nicolai Malko

Malko takes a dry-eyed approach to Sleeping Beauty. It's all very impressive, but there is little emotion here in what is, after all, a fairy tale. The orchestra - probably the best in England at the time - plays beautifully throughout. The sound from Abbey Road is, as it often was, clear but not overly warm.

Label of the Waltz 78

The complete Sleeping Beauty is a long (nearly three-hour) score, and RCA is of little help in identifying the handful of excerpts that Malko chose. The disc is not banded and George Jellinek's notes are vague. I spent some time with the more-or-less complete Previn recording, and have identified the selections in the download by number. Malko programs many of the familiar items in the score - the Introduction, the "Rose Adagio," "Puss-in-Boots and the White Cat" - but curiously leaves out the big waltz that is the ballet's most famous dance. It turns out that he had recorded it a few years earlier with the Danish Radio Symphony for another HMV 78. I've appended that title as a bonus.

HMV EP cover

The Malko recordings do not appear to relate to any production of the ballet, even though the HMV EP cover depicts Margot Fonteyn in the Royal Ballet's production. As far as I can tell, Malko never conducted one of the Sadler's Wells/Royal Ballet performances. They were primarily led by Lambert during the 1940s (with a few Beecham incursions), and by Robert Irving and John Hollingsworth in succeeding years. Irving himself recorded a two-disc Sleeping Beauty set with the Covent Garden orchestra in 1955. It appeared on the blog a few years ago and is still available here.

Lambert also recorded excerpts from the score, on two occasions: in conjunction with the 1939 Sadler's Wells production, called The Sleeping Princess, and in 1946 when The Sleeping Beauty was mounted by the ballet company in its new home, Covent Garden. One of my next posts will collect those recordings, along with the ballet music from Gounod's Faust as conducted by George Weldon - who himself taped a more-or-less complete version of Sleeping Beauty with the Philharmonia in 1956.

Returning to the Malko recording, I should note that the RCA transfer was about a half-step flat, which I've corrected. The LP was issued on the budget Bluebird label, so perhaps the company didn't expend as much care on the low-priced product as on its prestigious Red Seal mark. By the way, can anyone explain those black blobs enshrouding the lovers on the cover?

Update: Please see the post above this one, which delves into the question of whether the Sleeping Beauty excerpts contained on this record were really conducted by Malko - or by Lambert. (I think the likeliest answer is still Malko.) In the process, a kind reader has pointed out that the Sleeping Beauty transfer is still below score pitch - even though I adjusted it once - so I have readjusted it, and I think it is correct now - but please let me know if not!

Gordon and Prokofiev Ballet Scores with Lambert and Braithwaite

This post is another in a series devoted to Constant Lambert's recordings as composer, conductor and orchestrator.

Today he and Warwick Braithwaite conduct scores from notable 20th century ballet scores as mounted by the Sadler's Wells Ballet - Gavin Gordon's score for The Rake's Progress and Sergei Prokofiev's music for Cinderella.

The Rake's Progress

Constant Lambert by
Lola Walker (1951)

Gordon (1901-83) wrote his score for the Vic-Wells Ballet, which first mounted it in 1935. This recording dates from a 1946 revival soon after the Sadler's Wells Ballet took residence at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Lambert had led the 1935 premiere of the ballet, many intervening performances, and the March 1946 revival and recording. Lambert was one of the three artistic directors of the ballet along with choreographers Ninette de Valois and Frederick Ashton. 

Here, as in the Prokofiev work, the Royal Opera House Orchestra performs, as it did for the ballet performances themselves.

The Rake's Progress is notable in that it has remained in the repertory for many decades even though its composer is known for no other works. Gordon was not a full-time composer;  he also worked as an actor and singer, appearing both in the first performance of Vaughan Williams' Hugh the Drover and in a stage production of My Fair Lady. In the musical realm, Gordon did produce a series of ballets and other compositions, but none were nearly as successful as The Rake's Progress.

It was Gordon himself who conceived mounting a ballet based on William Hogarth's series of pictures known as A Rake's Progress, bringing his ideas and music to the Vic-Wells Ballet. This was presumably through the intercession of Lambert, a friend from the Royal College of Music. It turned out to be quite a good conception, not the least because of the brilliant choreography by de Valois and the scenic design and costumes from the remarkable Rex Whistler.

Costume designs for The Rake and The Dancer

Among the leading roles in the 1935 premiere were Robert Helpmann as The Rake and Alicia Markova as The Betrayed Girl. Helpmann also took the leading role in the 1946 revival, with Margot Fonteyn as the girl.

Robert Helpmann
as The Rake

The current recording includes three scenes of the eight in the one-act ballet. Gordon's music is lively and descriptive, even though his "Orgy" music is more of a genteel English romp than a Dionysian revel.  Lambert is fully in command of the proceedings, as always in his recordings.

Igor Stravinsky was later to produce far better known Rake's Progress music in the form of his 1951 opera, but Gordon's music remained closer to Hogarth's scenario.

Cinderella

Moira Shearer
as Cinderella

Profofiev's Cinderella ballet music was first heard in Moscow in 1945. The Sadler's Wells production was the ballet's first Western performance. It premiered on December 23, 1948 with choreography by Ashton and scenery and costumes by Jean-Denis Malcles. Moira Shearer was Cinderella and Michael Soames the Prince, with Helpmann and Ashton himself as the wicked stepsisters.

Just as Prokofiev's glorious music is in part an homage to Tchaikovsky, Ashton's choreography is a tribute to his predecessor Marius Petipa.

Conducting was Warwick Braithwaite (1896-1971), who had become music director of the ballet company. He had previously been an opera conductor for Vic-Wells and then chief conductor of the Scottish Orchestra.

Warwick Braithwaite by
Howard Coster (c. 1944)

The recording sessions, held in January and February 1949, encompassed seven selections from the more than 40 in the three-act ballet. Braithwaite's reading has been described as dull, but I prefer to think he is setting tempos appropriate for the dancers and scenario. But then, many recorded ballet performances seem overly dramatic and demonstrative to me.

This was the second recording of Cinderella excerpts. Yuri Fayer, who had conducted the 1945 premiere, recorded two scenes with the Bolshoi orchestra in 1946. Braithwaite's Cinderella selections do not correlate with any of the three orchestral suites from the ballet published by Prokofiev.

The Rake's Progress and Cinderella recordings were originally issued on 78 by English Columbia. My transfer comes from a circa 1949-50 LP pressing by US Columbia with very well balanced sound. The LP's cover design is by Darrill Connelly, and is typical of the many such illustrations he devised for Columbia during the early days of the LP.

The download includes many additional production photos and images, some from my modest collection of vintage ballet books.

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Cinderella: Moira Shearer, Michael Soames and the corps de ballet