Fiedler Conducts Offenbach

If Arthur joined the can-can ... an AI fantasy

No, Arthur Fiedler did not join the Gaîté Parisienne chorus line, as far as I know. The above is what 60 seconds with Gemini will produce for you. When it came to Jacques Offenbach's most famous (and completely posthumous) creation, Fiedler did everything but the can-can. He recorded the ballet score three times in a little over 10 years during his belle époque with the Boston Pops.

Today we have his second recording, a stereo version made just a few months after RCA Victor began recording in the new format. That was in 1954, and the results sound just as fresh today as they did then.

A few years after this recording, Fiedler was back in the studio for a go at an collection called Offenbach in America, commemorating the composer's tour of this country just four years before his death in 1880. The resulting Pops LP also is part of today's program.

Jacques Offenbach

Gaîté Parisienne

As mentioned, Gaîté Parisienne would have been unknown to its composer. It's actually a ballet score from Offenbach's music commissioned by Leonid Massine for the Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo in the 1930s. The choreographer had asked the conductor Roger Désormière to assemble the score from Offenbach's music, but he was too busy. Désormière did manage to inveigle the reluctant Manuel Rosenthal to take on the job.

Rosenthal must have been glad he did because he later assembled two other works using Offenbach's music - Offenbachiana for orchestra, and La belle Hélène, a ballet based on the opera of that name.

Manuel Rosenthal

The LP's liner notes are given over to reminiscences by impresario Sol Hurok, so let me provide the sources of the ballet's 19 scenes - or rather let me let Wikipedia provide them:

1. Ouverture (from: La vie parisienne)

2. Allegro moderato (from: Mesdames de la Halle)

3. Polka (from: Le voyage dans la lune)

4. Ländler (from: Lieschen et Fritzchen)

5. Mazurka (from: Vert-Vert)

6. Valse (from: La vie parisienne)

7. Entrée du Brésilen (from: La vie parisienne)

8. Polka (from: La belle Hélène)

9. Valse (from: Orphée aux enfers)

10. Marche (from: Tromb-al-Cazar)

11. Valse (from: La belle Hélène)

12. Entrée du Brésilien (from: La vie parisienne)

13. Valse (from: Les contes d'Hoffmann)

14. Duel (from: Le voyage dans la lune)

15. Valse (from: La Périchole)

16. Prelude au Can-Can (from: Orphée aux enfers)

17. Can-Can Scene 1 (from: Orphée aux enfers, Robinson Crusoe)

18. Can-Can Scene 2 - Polka (from: Orphée aux enfers)

19. Can-Can Scene 3 (potpourri)

You also will find music from some of those works on the second LP below.

Leonid Massine in Gaîté Parisienne

Fielder's conducting style had proponents and detractors, but this work did suit his dynamic approach. J.F. Indcox had this to say in High Fidelity: "A sparkling new recording of the lively, frothy ballet suite Manuel Rosenthal arranged from Offenbach music. The performance, beautifully played, is bright, humorous and light-hearted, and confirms the impression gained from Fiedler's earlier recording of 1947 ... that the conductor has a real flair for this music."

There is a 1941 Ballet Russe film of the ballet on YouTube, with Efrem Kurtz conducting. He also led the premiere of the work.

The sound on this LP is strikingly good. It's amazing what the engineers did with the new stereo format.

LINK to Gaîté Parisienne

Offenbach in America

Offenbach comes across as quite the boulevardier in the cover illustration, and he had reason to be pleased. He came to America at the invitation of the International Exposition in Philadelphia and scheduled hugely successful appearances both there and in New York.

Now, did this LP present the music he conducted in America? Well, the liner notes say it is "the kind of program which Offenbach conducted at Gilmore's Gardens" in New York. I take that as a maybe.

Let me outline Fieldler's selections and then make a few comments about the unusual ones.

1. La belle Hélène: Overture
2. Les contes d'Hoffmann: Intermezzo 
3. Geneviève de Brabant: Galop
4. La Périchole: Selection
5. La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein: Overture 
6. Les Belles Américaines (waltz orchestrated by Robert Russell Bennett) 
7. Musette-Air de Ballet for Cello and Orchestra (Samuel Mayes, cellist) 
8. Orphée aux enfers: Overture

Offenbach composed Les Belles Américaines as a piano piece for his American tour. This version, which may have been commissioned by the Pops, uses an orchestration by the great Robert Russell Bennett.

Samuel Mayes

The full title of Musette is Musette Air de ballet du 17me siècle. It's not clear to me whether this is an arrangement for orchestra by another hand; however, it's of particular interest because the composer was a cellist. Here we have Samuel Mayes (1917-90), the principal of the Boston Symphony from 1948-64 as soloist. The work is beautifully done.

Here is High Fidelity's Indcox on some of the other works: "A dashing galop from Geneviève de Brahant capers along, until suddenly, one hears phrases that surely served as the basis for The Marine's Hymn ("From the halls of Montezuma"), and it is a joy to hear the grand tunes from The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein set forth with such brilliance. My own favorite is the charming selection from Offenbach's wonderful score for La Périchole, a score that has Mozartean overtones and is full of truly delightful melodies."

Indcox was again impressed by the performances: "Fiedler and the Boston 'Pops' play these enchanting pieces with tremendous verve and finesse, and I would not hesitate to call this one of the best recordings this group has ever made. A lightish Victor sound is most appropriate to the occasion, and the record is highly recommended on all counts."

Not sure what he means by "lightish," but the 1956 recording is very fine.

LINK to Offenbach in America

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.