Stravinsky Conducts Stravinsky: Three Early LPs

Igor Stravinsky made quite a number of LPs conducting his own music, almost all for the US Columbia label. In the early years of this blog, I posted three albums of the composer leading his compositions released on other labels:

• The ballet Jeu de cartes (Card Game), recorded for Telefunken with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1938

• Mass, recorded for RCA Victor in 1949

• Another ballet, Apollon musagète, and the Concerto in D, also recorded for RCA Victor, in 1950

These recordings are all newly remastered in ambient stereo. Details and links are below.

Igor Stravinsky

Jeu de cartes

Jeu de cartes was premiered by with George Balanchine with the old American Ballet in 1937, and first recorded by its composer the next year for Telefunken. As I wrote years ago, "Jeu de cartes, a ballet score, was among Stravinsky's neoclassical works. Neither the Berlin orchestra nor the resonant acoustic are what we associate with this style, but the musicians put the unfamiliar music across with aplomb."

Critical reaction to the ballet has been mixed. The New York Times' Anna Kisselgoff has written that the piece is not often attempted because "the score, which, although specifically written for Balanchine, is virtually undanceable."

Todd Bolender in Jeu de cartes, New York City Ballet 1951

On the other hand (sorry!), C.J. Luten of the American Record Guide stated, "Though it does not represent one of the high points of the Russian-born master’s career, the work nevertheless contains many of Stravinsky's typically magical flights of imagination. Much of this magic is apparent in the consecutive and cumulative surprises that hold the listener’s attention from point to point."

Luten was reviewing the Capitol LP transfer of the Telefunken originals.

LINK

Mass

Years ago I wrote, "Stravinsky's avowed purpose in this Mass was to provide music that avoids operatic gestures and speaks to the spirit. The performance, however, is a bit anonymous and stylistically typical of its time. The recording is indifferent."

In fairness, it is difficult music for a chorus of men and boys, and according to C.J. Luten, the recorded performance is much better than the live premiere.

Arthur Berger of The Saturday Review: "For those who meet halfway a work that maintains more than the usual reserve, a fascination lies in following the labyrinth of dissonances through to their resolutions in extraordinarily clear, cool harmonious chords (as in the instrumental opening of the Agnus Dei).

"It is more than an intellectual joy - the feeling, rather, of being liberated after wandering in' an underground passage that seems to offer no exit." (Others may prefer simply not to enter the labyrinth.)

There is no denying Stravinsky's sincerity, however. As Berger noted, "His modest, deeply religious work, essentially a profession of faith, is content merely to serve the church as the early Flemish masters did."

LINK

Apollon musagète, Concerto in D

First, a few words about the titles of these works. Apollon musagète is the ballet usually titled simply Apollo. The work that is called the "Concerto Grosso in D" is actually not a concerto grosso; it is more aptly called the Concerto in D.

In these 1950 recordings, Stravinsky conducts the "RCA Victor Orchestra," a group of New York orchestral players. The soloists in the ballet are violinists John Corigliano and Michael Rosenker, then the concertmaster and vice concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic.

Serge Lifar (Apollo) and Alexandra Danilova (Terpsichore)

These are excellent performances of top-drawer Stravinsky. Here's Arthur Berger's take in Saturday Review: "The pure beauty of Apollon is conveyed in long flowing lines by strings whose special quality derives from divided cellos and from basses used independently. Emphasis of the low strings gives grandeur and breadth. 

"The string orchestra normally disposed yields very different sounds, on the reverse side of this LP, in the Concerto in D. Its stunning luminous qualities ... suggest Danses concertantes - the playfully truncated phrases, for example. The Arioso shows how much a musical genius can still do above an old-fashioned accompaniment."

LINK

Noel Mewton-Wood

In the early days of this blog, I often featured the Australian Noel Mewton-Wood, who died very young, leaving a striking legacy of inspired piano playing.

In all Mewton-Wood appeared here seven times, in concertos by Schumann, Chopin, Stravinsky, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky.

I've now gone back to the original files and greatly improved the sound, due both to improved tools and many years of experience. The downloads now also include complete scans. 

All the Mewton-Wood records here - and most of the ones he appeared on - were for the Concert Hall Society. Almost all the discs below were issued in the 10-inch format on its budget subsidiary, the Musical Masterpiece Society.

Very little documentation survives as to when these recordings took place, and the orchestras usually were pseudonymous. The Classical Discography dates then from 1951 to 1954. The latter must be the year of issue. Mewton-Wood died in December 1953.

About Mewton-Wood

Mewton-Wood was born in Melbourne in 1922. A prodigy, he moved to England at a young age to study at the Royal Academy of Music. His debut performance at the Queen's Hall was in 1940 - Beethoven's third concerto with the London Philharmonic and Sir Thomas Beecham.

His death was by his own hand at age 31. He blamed himself for his partner's death of a ruptured appendix.

His obituary in The Times of London described the effect of his 1940 debut: "At once his remarkable control and his musicianship were apparent: the ascending scales in octaves, with which the pianist first enters, thundered out with whirlwind power, but he could summon beautiful cantabile tone for the slow movement and the phrasing of the rondo theme was admirably neat for all the rapidity of the tempo." You will find all that captured in the recordings below.

Walter Goehr

Walter Goehr

A word about the hugely skillful conductor Walter Goehr, who is in charge of the varied orchestral forces in all these recordings.

Born in 1903 in Germany, he came to England in the 1930s, soon becoming a house conductor for EMI. He became a free-lancer later on, making many recordings for the Concert Hall Society. Goehr also was a composer - as was Mewton-Wood. Goehr son, Alexander, was also a well-known composer who died last year. Walter Goehr died in 1960.

Schumann - Piano Concerto

The recordings all were made over the period of a few years and the dates are uncertain; the discussions below are not in chronological order.

The Schumann concerto was apparently released in 1954, which suggests but does not prove that it was one of the last ones recorded. (The Pristine release dates it as "circa 1952.")

As with several of these records, the orchestra is billed as the "Netherlands Philharmonic." While there is an orchestra by that name today, it did not form until 1985. The band accompanying Mewton-Wood is thought to be either a Dutch radio orchestra, or an ensemble chosen from players in those orchestras.

This was a good recording and a superb performance by the pianist. Goehr, as always, is highly effective.

LINK to Schumann Concerto

Chopin - Piano Concertos No. 1 and 2

The Chopin piano concertos, both masterfully done, date from about 1952 and 1953 respectively. (Please note that the Pristine release dates the latter as being from 1948.)

The sound of the first concerto was a trifle tubby, which I've tamed. The second concerto has an "empty hall" sound and was somewhat steely sounding, which I have again addressed.

The first concerto is with the "Netherlands Philharmonic." The ensemble in the second concerto is listed as the Radio Zurich Orchestra, which as far as I can tell was a pseudonym. A Classical Discography lists the performers as the Radioorchester Beromünster, but that ensemble did not exist under that name until 1957.

That said, the performances are fine. As others have noted, the orchestras are nothing special, but Goehr has them on alert.

LINK to Chopin Concerto No. 1

LINK to Chopin Concerto No. 2

Beethoven - Piano Concerto No. 4

The majestic Beethoven concerto comes from 1952, per the Pristine release. The accompaniments are by the Utrecht Symphony Orchestra, which actually existed, but had changed its name to the "Utrechts Stedelijk [Municipal] Orkest" by the time this record was made. To complete the circle, that ensemble was to become part of the newly formed Netherland Philharmonic in 1985.

Neither the recording nor the orchestra is the equal of the Vienna Philharmonic, who recorded this concerto with Maurizio Pollini and Karl Böhm, recently uploaded here. The pianist is another matter.

LINK to Beethoven Concerto No. 4

Tchaikovsky - Piano Concertos No. 1 and 3, Concert Fantasy

By the time the Tchaikovsky first concerto came out circa 1954, the Musical Masterpiece Society had run out of pseudonyms, so it just listed the band as the "MMS Symphony Orchestra." It seems likely that this is a Dutch ensemble of some complexion.

The third concerto - coupled with the rarely heard Concert Fantasy - comes from Winterthur, Switzerland and 1951. (Pristine says 1952.) Concert Hall Society listed the orchestra as the "Winterthur Symphony," which is likely the Winterthurer Stadtorkester. (It later became the Musikkollegium Winterthur.)

The recording of the first concerto is OK; the third was fog-bound, which I've tried to dispel. The latter was also well off pitch, which has been corrected.

The performances seem fine to me, but I am far from a Tchaikovsky piano concerto aficionado.

LINK to Tchaikovsky Concerto No. 1

LINK to Tchaikovsky Concerto No. 3 and Concert Fantasy

Stravinsky - Firebird (1919 Suite), Concerto for Piano and Winds

The Stravinsky disc is the only one where Goehr is given a solo turn, so to speak. He leads a lively reading of the 1919 suite from Stravinsky's ballet The Firebird, a 20th century masterwork.

Mewton-Wood is heard in Stravinsky's neo-classical Concerto for Piano and Winds, from 1923-24 and often described as "spiky." That it is - except the work begins with a dirge-like Largo.

The performance does show Mewton-Wood's range - at least after he joins in to a motoric passage following the Largo. He has this work well in hand - and the orchestra is much better too.

These performances are listed as by the "Netherlands Philharmonic." A Classical Discography claims the concerto is with the Residentie Orchestra of The Hague. It dates the concerto as being from 1952 and The Firebird from 1956.

LINK to Stravinsky works

RCA Victor's 'The Ballet'

In the early LP years, RCA Victor was blessed by a remarkable roster of conducting talent: Arturo Toscanini, Leopold Stokowski, Charles Munch, and Pierre Monteux - and the inimitable Arthur Fiedler of Pops fame as well.

So the label could call upon all of them when it came time to assemble a prestige product such as the one before us today - 1954's The Ballet, a three-record set with those conducing eminences presenting popular ballet suites, in recordings dating from 1949-53.

Not that Victor made use of the conductors in its marketing. They aren't noted on the cover (nor are the works or composers) and they only warrant a paragraph each at the end of the elaborate 16-page booklet (included in the download).

No, this package would seem to have been aimed at the listener who wanted to learn more about the ballet. It includes a overview of the art form and notes on the works themselves by Robert Lawrence, and evocative photos by George Platt Lynes, a famed commercial photographer.

But what of the works and the performances? Let's run them down.

Meyerbeer - Les Patineurs (excerpts)

Anya Linden and Desmond Doyle in Les Patineurs
(Covent Garden 1956)

Fiedler and the Boston Pops present four excerpts from the ballet score that Constant Lambert assembled from melodies found in Meyerbeer's operas Le Prophète and L'Etoile du Nord, principally the former. As I noted when I presented the John Hollingsworth/Sadler's Wells performance a year or two ago, "Although seldom heard today, Meyerbeer's works were very popular in the 19th century, and this immensely tuneful and pleasing score shows why."

This performance, I am told, has not been reissued. It originally came out as a companion piece to Fiedler's Gaîté Parisienne recording, which was later reissued in stereo with a different disc mate. The 1953 Les Patineurs was mono-only so was left on the shelf.

Piston - The Incredible Flutist (suite)

The most popular work by the American composer Walter Piston is also his only ballet score, The Incredible Flutist. The work was written for and premiered by the Boston Pops and Fiedler, and then a suite recorded by them in 1939. That recording was posted on this blog a few years ago. This set includes the Fiedler remake of 1953, with James Pappoutsakis as the flute soloist.

Arthur Fiedler and Walter Piston

As I wrote in connection with the first recording, The Incredible Flutist "is an entirely delightful piece of music that must have made for an effective ballet. Piston wrote the scenario with choreographer Hans Wiener, who also took the role of the flutist. The setting is a marketplace; a circus comes to town with its main attraction - the magical flutist."

This recording is apparently another mono orphan. It was originally coupled with the Ibert Divertissement and the Rossini-Respighi La Boutique Fantasque, which were later reissued in stereo.

Stravinsky - The Firebird (1919 Suite)

Maria Tallchief and Francisco Moncion in The Firebird

Stravinsky's The Firebird is another score that is heard far more often in the concert hall than as a ballet. Here we have Leopold Stokowski's 1950 recording of a suite with a New York pickup orchestra. The American Record Guide thought highly of the performance, even though the review began with a back-handed compliment: "Stokowski seems less wayward in his latest performance of this work, and he does not make the cut he made in his other versions . . I cannot say when I have heard this music played more beautifully; every detail, every nuance is brought out."

Leopold Stokowski

The ballet was written for Diaghilev in 1910 and originally choreographed by Michel Fokine. I believe the photo at top of this section is from a George Balanchine production. Stokowski conducts the 1919 suite, the most popular of the three devised by the composer.

Ravel - Daphnis et Chloé (Suite No. 2)

Michel Fokine and Vera Fokina in Daphnis et Chloé

Maurice Ravel wrote Daphnis et Chloé both as a concert work and as a ballet score, calling it a "symphonie choreographique." It dates from 1912 and again was originally choreographed by Michel Fokine. The Ballet set contains the Suite No. 2, the most frequently heard incarnation of the music.

Leading the 1949 performance was Arturo Toscanini, with his NBC Symphony. He was the most famous living conductor when these records were made; even so, he is not the first name that comes to mind when thinking about Ravel's music.

Writing in the Saturday Review, Roland Gelatt explained why: "I must confess to being impressed but unmoved by his 'Daphnis.' Taken measure by measure the recording is replete with wonders. There are magnificent examples of blending woodwind and strings, and the climax in the 'Daybreak' movement is a marvel of orchestral transparency. But gambits like these do not solve the secrets of Ravel's sybaritic score. Note-perfect though it may be, I cannot believe that this rigid and unyielding reading does full justice to the composer’s intentions."

Arturo Toscanini

Weber-Berlioz - Invitation to the Dance

Vaslav Nijinsky and Tamara Karsavina in Le Spectre de la rose

Carl Maria von Weber wrote Invitation to the Dance as a piano piece. Hector Berlioz orchestrated it as a ballet for a production of Weber's Der Freischütz in Paris, where interpolated ballets were de rigueur in opera productions. The orchestration was popular, and in 1911 Michel Fokine used it for his ballet La Spectre de la rose. (The photo of Nijinsky and Karsavina above is from the original production.)

The performance here is again by Toscanini and the NBC Symphony from 1951. It is phenomenally well played, very impressive, and certainly not designed for dancing.

Delibes - Sylvia (excerpts)

Margot Fonteyn (Sylvia) kneels before Julia Farron (Diana)
(Covent Garden 1952)

The French composer Léo Delibes wrote two ballets, both important and influential and both still staged. Sylvia, from 1876, is actually the second of the two.

Tchaikovsky was hugely impressed by the score: "The first ballet in which the music constitutes not just the main, but the sole interest. What charm, what grace, what melodic, rhythmic and harmonic richness."

Victor had just the conductor for such a score: Pierre Monteux, who had been closely associated with Diaghilev, and who had conducted the premiere of Daphnis et Chloe. (One wonders why RCA did not use Monteux's 1946 recording of the first suite in place of the uncongenial Toscanini Suite No. 2.)

Regardless, it's a pleasure to have Monteux's 1953 recordings of both Delibes suites, made with "Members of the Boston Symphony." The Sylvia excerpts were taped in the Manhattan Center in New York.

Pierre Monteux

Delibes - Coppélia (excerpts)

Margot Fonteyn in Coppélia

Coppélia was Delibes's first ballet score and remains the most familiar. It has appeared on this blog twice before; first, in excerpts conducted by Constant Lambert in conjunction with a 1946 Covent Garden production. (I believe the photo of Margot Fonteyn above is from that season.) Then, too, there was a later disc from another Covent Garden conductor, Hugo Rignold, with the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra. That LP also had excepts from Sylvia.

In the Boston performance, the opening horn passage is fairly slack, but the strings are lovely, and the famous Mazurka is dynamic. The recording from Symphony Hall is good, although the horns are distant. Alfred Krips is the violin soloist both here and in the Sylvia excerpts. Manuel Valerio is the clarinet soloist.

Both Delibes scores are delightful - as are all the selections in this album, for that matter.

Ravel - La Valse

Diana Adams of the New York City Ballet in La Valse

Monteux often conducted the Boston Symphony, but that orchestra's music director from 1949-62 was the Alsatian Charles Munch, who led the final two items on this program.

Ravel wrote La Valse as a "poème chorégraphique pour orchestre" for Diaghilev, who refused to stage it. It later was choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska, and in 1950 by George Balanchine for the New York City Ballet. (Balanchine used Ravel's Valses nobles et sentimentales as a preface to the La Valse music.)

Ravel's music is mysterious, lush and macabre in turn, all of which are made for Munch's gifts as a conductor. (Also for Balanchine, who made the piece into a dance of death.) Munch often aimed for excitement, and the critics were at times critical of that tendency. "The kind of performance with which Munch closes a frenzied evening of music making, faithfully duplicated in every particular," observed the Saturday Review. The Gramophone's Andrew Porter complained, "La Valse turns into a noisy roar at the climax." But others were appreciative. The recording is from 1950.

Charles Munch

Roussel - Bacchus et Ariane (Suite No. 2)

Bacchus et Ariane set by Giorgio de Chirico

The ballet Bacchus et Ariane is a late work by Albert Roussel (1869-1937), staged in 1930 with choreography by Serge Lifar and sets by the painter Giorgio de Chirico. Roussel derived two orchestral suites from the ballet - Suite No. 1 was premiered by Charles Munch in 1933; Suite No. 2 by Pierre Monteux in 1934. Regardless of this lineage, Munch programmed the second suite for this 1952 recording from Symphony Hall.

The ballet concerns the abduction of Ariane by Dionysus (aka Bacchus). Early on Roussel was considered an Impressionist, but by this late stage of his career was called a neoclassicist. That term, however, doesn't really capture his multi-faceted music, of which this is an excellent example. Munch's performance is definitive, in my view.

* * *

It's worth noting that although the set is called The Ballet, none of the recordings are of full ballets, except for La Valse and Invitation to the Dance. Nor does the set include anything by the arguably most famous ballet composer, Tchaikovsky.

The sound is generally excellent. As Victor sometimes did back in those days, it provided information about the number of microphones and their placement, ranging from the multi-miked Stokowski to a single microphone for the Toscanini-Ravel, Delibes and Roussel sessions.

I transferred this set from my collection, belatedly responding to a request. I did make use of the booklet scans on Internet Archive, suitably cleaned up and presented along with the covers as a PDF.

LINK

Stravinsky's 1950 Recording of Apollo

This is the final installment of LPs of Igor Stravinsky conducting his own works on labels other than Columbia, which handled most of his recordings throughout his career.

The major work on this RCA LP is Apollo (also known as Apollon Musagète), a neoclassical ballet score from 1928. This, Stravinsky's first recording of the piece, comes from 1950 New York sessions.

Also here is the 1946 Concerto in D, sometimes called the Basle Concerto, one of the many important works commissioned by Paul Sacher. This recording, also made in New York, is from 1949. The violin soloists are John Corigliano and Michael Rosenker. (I believe Corigliano was concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic at that time.) As far as I can tell, this is the only commercial recording of this piece by Stravinsky.

The sound and performances are very good.

NEW LINK

Stravinsky in Berlin

Continuing our series of recordings that Igor Stravinsky conducting his own works on labels other than Columbia. I believe this may be the only recording he made for Telefunken and the only session with the Berlin Philharmonic.

Stravinsky wrote Jeu de Cartes (or as it is presented here, The Card Game) in 1936-37. Its premiere was in 1937 in New York. This recording, made the following year, was Stravinsky's first of the work and I suspect was the first by anyone.

Jeu de Cartes, a ballet score, was among Stravinsky's neoclassical works. Neither the Berlin orchestra nor the resonant acoustic are what we associate with this style, but the musicians put the unfamiliar music across with aplomb.

This transfer is from Capitol's early 50s Telefunken series, which in my experience was otherwise heavily devoted to Willem Mengelberg's prewar Concertgebouw recordings.

NEW LINK

Stravinsky Conducts His Mass

Stravinsky made most of his recordings for Columbia, with the exception of one made for Telefunken in the 1930s, several albums made for RCA in the 1940s, one Vox and one Mercury LP. This post by request starts a short series of Stravinsky's own non-Columbia recordings. It is a 1949 recording of his Mass issued on an early 10-inch RCA LP.

The performers are men and boys from New York's Church of the Blessed Sacrament, along with a wind ensemble.

Stravinsky's avowed purpose in this mass was to provide music that avoids operatic gestures and speaks to the spirit. The performance, however, is a bit anonymous and stylistically typical of its time. The recording is indifferent.

I'll be back with another RCA LP and the 1938 Telefunken recording with the Berlin Philharmonic, as reissued on Capitol.

NEW LINK

Mewton-Wood, Part 3

This is perhaps the only misfire in the Noel Mewton-Wood canon that I have heard. It isn't his doing; his performance is fine, even though Stravinsky's neo-classical style doesn't play to all the pianist's strengths. The recording is, however, congested and somewhat strident, and Walter Goehr's pickup band sounds a little discouraged.

The orchestra and recording are both better for the Firebird suite (which, of course, doesn't involve Mewton-Wood).

See earlier posts for more about this wonderful pianist.

LINK