Hollingsworth Conducts Humperdinck and Grieg

The English conductor John Hollingsworth (1916-63) was a fine talent who died too young. We recently heard him conducting Malcolm Arnold's Tam O'Shanter Overture in a 1955 Philips LP where he shared conducting duties with the composer. Today he leads the Covent Garden orchestra in music by Engelbert Humperdinck and Edvard Grieg.

John Hollingsworth

These are good, well-recorded performances that came out on EMI's Parlophone label in 1953 and have not been seen again, to my knowledge. The M-G-M folks issued the recordings in the US.

At the time of the recordings, Hollingsworth had already gained experience in film industry working with Muir Mathieson, at Covent Garden both in opera and ballet, and at the Proms assisting Sir Malcolm Sargent. Hollingsworth would continue his film work in later years and was very active in that realm until his early death from pneumonia. The download includes a 1954 Music and Musicians article about him.

His commercial recordings, which are not many, are primarily of lighter music. The current selections fit into that category, and are most enjoyable.

The most recent Hänsel und Gretel production at Covent Garden

The German composer Humperdinck these days is remembered primarily for one work, but an enchanting one - his children's opera Hänsel und Gretel, based on the brothers Grimm story. Hollingsworth recorded five selections from the orchestral suite, all memorable.

The second side of the LP contains music by Grieg. First is a three-movement suite that the composer extracted from his incidental music for a production of Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson's play Sigurd Jorsalfar.

Grieg's Two Elegiac Melodies were orchestral transcriptions of two songs from a set of 12 with texts by Aasmund Olavsson Vinje. The melodies' titles, "The Wounded Heart" and "The Last Spring," are taken from those songs.

I've enclosed several brief reviews of the US M-G-M pressing; the reactions to the performances ranged from "admirable" to "competent."

Bonus - Ibert's Circus

In 1952, Hollingsworth recorded the Circus music that Jacques Ibert wrote for Gene Kelly's film Invitation to the Dance (a film that did not come out until 1956). The conductor led the Royal Philharmonic for that assignment.

M-G-M issued the music on a soundtrack disc, where it was paired with Andre Previn's brilliant pastiche, Ring Around the Rosy. Truthfully, neither the Ibert piece nor the recording is as good as Previn's music and his spectacular piano playing. As I wrote in 2014 when I first posted the soundtrack recording, "You will hear echoes of Britten, Khachaturian (!) and Gershwin, Kenton-style stentorian jazz, blues piano, salon music, mood music and much more."

I've now remastered the record, clarifying the sound of the Ibert while doing additional cleaning on the awful M-G-M pressing. You can find the link in the comments both to this post and the original item. 

Back to Hollingsworth: I also have his recording of Constant Lambert's Meyerbeer ballet score, Les Patineurs, which I'll post later on. It's coupled with the first recording of Bliss' Checkmate score, led by Robert Irving.

Hans Kindler, Conductor and Cellist

Detail from 1944 Life ad

I've been interested for some time in the recordings of conductor Hans Kindler, who founded the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington, D.C., in 1931 and led it until 1949. I posted his reading of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 3 (Polish) several years ago, and have just remastered it for those interested.

Today I've brought together quite a number of Kindler's other recordings, working from an LP issued in the 1970s by Washington radio station WGMS and a parcel of 78 needle-drops found on Internet Archive. I've also added a V-Disc and two of Kindler's cello recordings from 1916.

These give a very good account of the music that Kindler was conducting and recording, along with a sense for his skill as a cellist.

Kindler in action

The main item in the collection is Brahms' Symphony No. 3, in a most interesting rendition from 1941. The orchestra - then only a decade old - gives a good account of itself.

Also in the collection are a variety of short items: from 1940 we have William Schuman's "American Festival Overture." This was written for Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony and premiered in 1939. But Koussevitzky did not record it; Kindler's was the first on record.

The second work from the 1940 sessions has an interesting back story. It is a Toccata supposedly by the 17th century composer Girolamo Frescobaldi. At least that is what Kindler thought when he made an arrangement for orchestra. He was working from a cello arrangement purportedly of a Frescobaldi work by fellow instrumentalist Gaspar Cassadó.

It came out much later that Cassadó, somewhat in the vein of Fritz Kreisler and his inventions, was the real author of the piece. Regardless, it's a tuneful work.

At about the same time, Kindler, born in Rotterdam, recorded two 16th century Dutch tunes in his own arrangements. These compositions had appeared on the first official concert ever given by the orchestra, in 1931.

From 1941 comes a recording of "Stars" by the American composer Mary Howe, who was the patron of the orchestra. It's a very good composition that has been recorded a few times.

Moving ahead to early 1945, we have Armas Järnefelt's Praeludium and Berceuse along with the "Dream Pantomine" from Humperdinck's opera Hansel und Gretel. The latter comes from a somewhat noisy V-Disc. The work also was issued on Victor, but I didn't have access to that pressing.

Finally, I thought you might like to hear a few of Kindler's early cello recordings. These were made in 1916, when he was the principal cello of the Philadelphia Orchestra. They are J.C. Bartlett's "A Dream" with by an orchestra conducted by Josef Pasternack, and a transcription of Schumann's "Traumerei," accompanied by pianist Rosario Bourdon.

The young cellist

Kindler died not long after ceding the conductorship of the orchestra to his protégé, another cellist, Howard Mitchell, who recently appeared here leading the music of Paul Creston.

The download includes scans of the WGMS LP, the 78 labels, and a variety of promotional photos and ads. The latter includes a spectacular two-page Victor ad from a 1944 Life Magazine. It features the Kindler portrait at top along with similar images of Vladimir Golschmann, Artur Schnabel and Arthur Fiedler.