Kathleen Long Plays Fauré and Françaix

The English pianist Kathleen Long (1896-1968) had a wide repertoire, but was particularly noted for her performances of Gabriel Fauré's music. In he two LPs comprising today's post we cover most of her recordings of that composer, while adding Jean Françaix's always-welcome Concertino. This is the pianist's first appearance on the blog.

Kathleen Long Plays Fauré

In this 10-inch LP, Long combines three middle-period compositions by the composer with his last piano work, the Op. 119 Nocturne. The latter is often considered one of Fauré's most profound creations. It is said to reflect his struggles both with increasing deafness and the approaching end of his life. As the anonymous sleeve notes proclaim, "In conclusion, expressed with a verity that mere words could never approach, we have the lassitude, the anxiety, the regrets and the despair of man as he stands on the threshold of the inescapable hereafter."

That description may be overblown, but the performance is not. Long was an understated artist a bit like Solomon, a frequent visitor to these pages. As with Solomon, the critics' views of her playing were mixed. The New Records claimed the disc represented Long at her best, while Roland Gelatt wrote in the Saturday Review, "The pianist plays this music with loving care, albeit stodgily at times."

The recordings date from 1944 to 1950. All but the Op. 31 Impromptu had been released on 78s. The sound is consistently good.

LINK to Kathleen Long Plays Fauré

Gabriel Fauré

Fauré - Ballade, Four Nocturnes; Françaix - Concertino

This 1954 LP of Fauré with a soupçon of Françaix contains all new recordings. In it, Long continued her exploration of the elder composer with four more Nocturnes along with his Ballade Op. 19, here in the version for piano and orchestra.

The Ballade has been recorded many times (even so, it managed to end up on a CD called "The Secret Fauré"), and rightfully so. It is elegant and a bit melancholy, like much of the composer's music. In this, Long's second recording of the work, she is ably partnered by the 44-year-old Jean Martinon, at the time the principal conductor of the Lamoureux Orchestra. Here he leads the London Philharmonic. It's a strikingly good performance.

Jean Martinon

In his High Fidelity review, Ray Ericson wrote, "Miss Long is not at first hearing the most seductive of pianists. She plays with a full tone most of the time, without a wide dynamic variation, although with many fine graduations. But how alive the music sounds, from the luscious individual tones through the phrasing up to the whole span. You hear everything - the voices superbly balanced and blended, the long lines sustained so as to keep the shimmering harmonies from disintegrating. Her performances can be played time and again without ever becoming pale."

Jean Françaix

Jean Françaix's Concertino, from 1932, is very much in the vein of his orchestral Serenade, which has appeared here three times (in versions led by Louis Lane, Anshel Brusilow and Eugen Jochum). The latter disc also includes the composer's own performance of the Concertino with the Berlin Philharmonic and Leo Borchard, made just five years after the work's composition. As I commented in that earlier post, the music manages to be memorable even though the whole piece lasts less than eight minutes. I recently remastered Françaix's recording in ambient stereo.

The sound on the second Long LP is quite good; the performances are highly recommended. Both albums are from my collection, transferred by request.

Let me also mention that you can find newly remastered Jean Martinon recordings of Prokofiev's Suite from The Love for Three Oranges and Classical Symphony here. They were made with his Lamoureux forces in 1953.

LINK to Fauré - Ballade, Four Nocturnes; Françaix - Concertino

Romances and Serenades from Cleveland

My last post from the Clevelanders and conductor Louis Lane elicited a plea from long-time blog follower Douglas (coppinsuk), who wanted to hear the companion LP Romances and Serenades from the same source.

I warned Douglas that my copy is in mono, but that was fine with him, and I hope with you. (The sound is excellent, regardless.)

The previous LP was called Rhapsody, and included the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 and such. This program has nothing so beefy. In keeping with its title, the works are generally much lighter.

Louis Lane

The longest work is Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending. Britain's Classic FM says it is the nation's favorite classical work - and has been for 11 years.

The retailer Presto Music lists 168 releases of the piece, although presumably with some duplicates. So imagine a world where there was only one recording available - the 1952 effort by Jean Pougnet with Sir Adrian Boult and the London Philharmonic. That was the situation when this performance by Cleveland concertmaster Rafael Druian and the Cleveland Sinfonietta came on the market.

Rafael Druian

The reviewers uniformly praised the performance. Edward Greenfield in The Gramophone wrote, "I have a feeling that the very 'authenticity' of many English performances ... lies more than anything in their very tentativeness musically." He added, "Give me polish and confidence like this ... when it is allied with such warm, genuine emotions."

It's not just Druian who is outstanding here - there are notably assured contributions from the solo clarinet and horn. The cover notes say that the Sinfonietta is composed of "21 first-chair and supporting players from the internationally famous Cleveland Orchestra." This suggests that the musicians may be principal clarinet Robert Marcellus and principal horn Myron Bloom, but we can't be sure.

Druian also is featured in Delius' Serenade from Hassan, along with the orchestra's second harpist, Martha Dalton (who is identified on the label). Greenfield claims the overall performance is "soupy". This is the least successful item on the disc, but also its shortest.

Another English piece is contributed by Peter Warlock, his Serenade for Strings, sometimes called the Serenade for Frederick Delius on His 60th Birthday. Warlock wrote the piece in Delius' style. You can hear Constant Lambert's 1937 and 1941 recordings of the Warlock and Delius compositions via this post.

Much darker hued is the Sibelius Romance in C major of 1903. Greenfield says it emerges from this performance as "something more than an occasional piece."

The lightest work on the program is probably Jean Françaix's Serenade for Small Orchestra, a delightful piece that critics like to call "cheeky," and so it is. This is an accomplished performance, equal to the two previous recordings featured on this blog - a 1939 version from Hamburg under Eugen Jochum, and a 1968 reading from the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia and Anshel Brusilow.

I mentioned that this record has fine sound - although I should note that it was bright enough to loosen your fillings until I adjusted the usual 1960s Columbia (and Epic) glare.

Anshel Brusilow Conducts French Music

The talented conductor, violinist and writer Anshel Brusilow died last week. As a memorial, I prepared this transfer of one of his few recordings as a conductor.

Brusilow, a student of Efrem Zimbalist and once a protege of Pierre Monteux, was the associate concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra under George Szell, and then concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy. He had conducting ambitions, however, leading a chamber group of Philadelphia Orchestra musicians for a few years, and then striking out to form his own professional ensemble, the Chamber Symphony of Philadelphia, in 1966.

Anshel Brusilow

Brusilow shrewdly had an RCA Victor recording contract in hand even before the Chamber Symphony's first concert, and today's post is one of the projects he completed before the ensemble ran out of funds in 1968.

This LP of 20th century French works is the final product of that association, and it is a very good one. Ravel's familiar suite "Le Tombeau de Couperin" is complemented by the less often heard music of Jean Françaix and Jacques Ibert. Francaix's delightful Sérénade has been featured on this blog before, in a vintage performance led by Eugen Jochum, but this is the first appearance for Ibert's pictorialist Suite Symphonique and Capriccio. The Ravel has previously appeared here in a Dimitri Mitropoulos recording from Minneapolis.

After his Philadelphia days, Brusilow moved to Texas, first as music director of the Dallas Symphony, and then in university posts. In addition to his RCA recordings, he also made a few discs in Bournemouth and Dallas.

Late in life, Brusilow produced an amusing memoir, Shoot the Conductor: Too Close to Monteux, Szell and Ormandy, which I have been reading of late. The photos in this post come from that book.

The cover art may strike the contemporary eye as garish, but that was the style 50 years ago. The colorful illustration is by Mozelle Thompson, a favorite of my friend and fellow blogger Ernie. RCA's sound is vivid and immediate.

The Chamber Symphony of Philadelphia

Jean Françaix

Here are two delightful neoclassical pieces by Jean Françaix, recorded shortly after their composition. Unexpectedly - at least to me - both come from German orchestras.

The soloist in the Concertino for Piano is Françaix himself. The music manages to be memorable even though the whole piece lasts less than eight minutes. Telefunken recorded this with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1937. The conductor was Leo Borchard, who became the BPO music director for a few months after the second world war, until a sentry killed him by accident.

Jean Françaix

Eugen Jochum led the 1939 recording of the Serenade for 12 Instruments during his residence as Hamburg music director from 1934-49.

This record is one of a series that Capitol sourced from Telefunken circa 1950 - many of them recordings by the Concertgebouw Orchestra under Willem Mengelberg. All have this same drab cover style - particularly unsuited to Françaix's sparkling music.

Note (September 2023): this recording has now been remastered in ambient stereo.