Morel Conducts Albéniz and Ravel

Today we have another one of the few orchestral recordings led by the French-American conductor Jean Morel, this the result of a request by long-time blog follower centuri.

As with the recent post of excerpts from Swan Lake, Decca UK produced this double-LP for RCA Victor. Decca made quite a number of recordings with the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra during the period, including these September 1959 sessions with Morel.

Jean Morel

The LP set is notable in that it was the first complete recording of Isaac Albéniz's Iberia in its orchestrated form. The composer wrote the 12 pieces for piano in the years before his death in 1909. He asked his colleague Enrique Fernández Arbós to undertake the orchestration, but Arbós only scored five of the 12 sections. It wasn't until the 1950s that the Spanish-American conductor-composer Carlos Surinach provided orchestrations for the other pieces.

In its piano guise, Iberia is famed for its difficulty. Its kaleidoscopic, pictorial nature is well suited for Morel's orchestral control and mastery of balance. There is little passion in his approach, however, and the Paris orchestra was not a virtuoso ensemble. I have nothing but praise for the performance of Ravel's Rapsodie Espagnole that completes the set.

The Decca recording is typical of its output, with elevated high and low frequencies. It's impressive, but can make the strings sound harsh.

The download includes scans of the gatefold sleeve, along with reviews from High Fidelity and HiFi-Stereo Review and the ad below. RCA had several interesting releases that month, including a Delibes record conducted by Hugo Rignold that will appear here at some point. The feature attraction, though, was symphonic chunks extracted from Fritz Reiner's records.

Click to enlarge

Jean Morel Conducts Tchaikovsky

Tchaikovsky's ballet scores for The Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty have appeared here a number of times, but I have neglected his Swan Lake music. To make amends, here is a set of excerpts from the early days of stereo.

The conductor is Jean Morel (1903-75), born in France and primarily associated with the operas from that country. This post is one of the few commercial records he made that were not accompaniments.

Jean Morel

Morel left Europe in 1936, and after stops in Latin America, came to the US in 1940. He became associated with the New York City Opera a few years later, staying there until 1951. A 22-year association with the Juilliard School began in 1949. He soon became an influential teacher. Morel has appeared on this blog before, conducting the Juilliard Orchestra in a Mozart concerto with pianist Rosina Lhévinne, his colleague at the school. Much of the conductor's reputation rests on his 1956-71 tenure with the Metropolitan Opera, where he primarily was associated with French works.

In this Tchaikovsky recording, he leads the Royal Opera House Orchestra, Covent Garden. As far as I can determine, Morel never was engaged by the Royal Ballet, and only conducted a single 1960 performance of Manon for Covent Garden Opera. Nor was he a specialist in ballet music, unlike most of the conductors who have appeared here in that repertoire.

That said, his reading of the Swan Lake music is very good. The opposite of an improvisatory conductor, Morel believed in having all aspects of the score worked out ahead of time. You can hear that this performance is well controlled, and his care over the score may seem a little too careful at times. But all in all, it's most enjoyable.

The recording was made for RCA Victor by UK Decca engineers working in Watford Town Hall in September 1957. As usual with Decca recordings, both the low and high frequencies are emphasized. While the results are vivid, the microphones perhaps were too close to the strings, which can sound wiry at times.

Cover of first US issue

RCA originally issued the LP in mono only in the US (above). The first US stereo edition, which is the source of my transfer, was in 1965 in the budget Victrola line (advertisement below). RCA's UK arm issued a mono version in late 1958 and stereo early the next year. The download includes a Gramophone review from October 1958.

Ad in May 1965 High Fidelity magazine (click to enlarge)

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Mozart Concertos from Rosina Lhévinne

I thought I might follow up the Ania Dorfmann and Maryla Jonas posts with a selection of the recordings of another lesser-known woman pianist, Rosina Lhévinne.

Lhévinne made very few appearances in the recording studio and was principally known in her lifetime for being a noted piano teacher, with pupils including Van Cliburn and John Browning, as well as for being the wife of pianist Josef Lhévinne. The few items that were captured, however, show her to be a first-rate artist.

Rosina Bessie was a promising piano student in Moscow when she met Josef Lhévinne, marrying him soon after her 1898 graduation from the Conservatory, and quickly abandoning any career as a solo performer, although she did engage in duo-piano works with Josef. The pair came to the US following the World War, and they joined the Juilliard faculty several years later. Josef died in 1944.

The Lhévinnes only made two recordings together, to my knowledge – Debussy’s “Fêtes” and a Mozart sonata, both in the 1930s.

Today’s LPs include the first record that Rosina made following Josef’s death, a November 1947 rendition of Mozart’s Concerto for Three Pianos K.242, where she is joined by the duo-pianists Vitya Vronsky and Victor Babin, and accompanied by the Little Orchestra Society and conductor Thomas Scherman, in a recording from Liederkranz Hall. The transfer is from an early Columbia LP that also includes Vronsky and Babin in a showy version of Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos K.365 with the Robin Hood Dell Orchestra and Dimitri Mitropoulos. The latter dates from September 1945. The sound on both is good. Strangely, Columbia bills Rosina Lhévinne only as “Lhévinne” on the LP cover.

Jean Morel

Rosina is heard to best advantage, however, in today’s second album, recorded in May 1960 to mark her 80th birthday. This is a superior account of Mozart’s Concerto No. 21 in which she sounds just as youthful as the students in the accompanying Juilliard Orchestra (I suspect the ensemble also included faculty), led by Jean Morel, another famed teacher. (Vronsky and Babin also were instructors, and were on the Cleveland Institute of Music faculty for many years – Babin was the director of the school.) The sound from Columbia’s 30th Street Studio is as vibrant as the artistry. That is Josef Lhévinne’s portrait over Rosina’s shoulder on the LP cover up top.

I also have the Lhévinnes’ version of “Fêtes” and Rosina’s 1961 Chopin Concerto No. 1 if there is interest.