More Historic Recordings of Gershwin

There may be no musician more popular on this blog than George Gershwin. It seems as though people - or maybe it's just me - can't get enough of his music.

Today we have three more historic recordings of the great Gershwin's music - two of the immortal Rhapsody in Blue, and one of the glorious Concerto in F.

Specifically, we have the first recording of the Rhapsody in orchestral guise - which is also the first nearly-complete recording - and the first recording of the work outside the United States.

As for the concerto, it appears in the initial recording that used Gershwin's orchestral arrangement.

The artists are pianist Jesús María Sanromá with the Boston Pops and Arthur Fiedler, and pianist Mischa Spoliansky with Julian Fuhs and a Berlin band.

Rhapsody in Blue - Sanromá and Fiedler

Jesús María Sanromá

The Sanromá-Fiedler Rhapsody dates from 1935. The 40-year-old Fiedler had been conductor of the Pops for five years at that time, and the 32-year-old Sanromá had filled the piano chair in the Boston Symphony for several years.

Their performance of the Rhapsody was touted as the first complete recording of the work. While it was indeed much longer - at nearly 14 minutes it was almost twice as long as the earlier recordings - it did reflect a few brief cuts, as my friend Bryan ("Shellackophile") points out in his Internet Archive post.

1937 album cover (courtesy Shellackophile)

This particular transfer comes from a 1950s reissue on a RCA Camden LP. The sound is quite good for its time.

It's not clear - to me anyway - who produced the orchestral arrangements, and the original notes for the 78 set do not say. I've seen speculation that Fiedler himself was the author. Ferde Grofé did not write his own orchestral arrangement until seven years later. (He also was the author of the original "jazz band" orchestration and a set of charts for theater orchestra.)

The performance itself achieved some renown in its day. In a 1956 review of the Camden record, the critic of High Fidelity wrote, "For some time it was considered the definitive performance, and even now it offers pretty stiff competition to a number of recordings, of later vintage, currently available."

Sanromá and Fiedler were compatible musically, sharing a bias towards hustling the music along, which suits this piece nicely and is well in tune with the piano recordings that Gershwin left us. Speaking of Sanromá's performance, High Fidelity opined, "It has tremendous drive, a fine rhythmic pulse, and is impeccably played."

Rhapsody in Blue - Spoliansky and Fuhs

An Australian pressing

Our next historical recording is from 1927, and uses the abbreviated jazz band version of the Rhapsody then standard. Emanating from Berlin, it apparently is the first recording of the piece to be made outside the US.

The pianist, Mischa Spoliansky, achieved a certain renown as a film composer later in life, and has been featured here several times. (This post of his music for the film Saint Joan summarizes those appearances.)

Mischa Spoliansky

Spoliansky had built a reputation in Berlin as a pianist and songwriter before emigrating to England upon the rise of the Nazis in 1933.

Julian Fuhs

Julian Fuhs was a German-born pianist and bandleader who was successful there before emigrating to the US.

The performance is very lively and almost idiomatic, and the sound is fairly good, although Spoliansky's piano is less to the fore than it might be.

I've had this transfer for some time; it's not my own although I did clean it up. It could well have come from Internet Archive.

Concerto in F - Sanromá and Fiedler

Arthur Fiedler

For the Concerto in F there is no question about who wrote the orchestrations. Gershwin himself did them, originally for the conductor Walter Damrosch, who commissioned the piece by the young wizard for his New York Symphony Orchestra. The work premiered in December 1925.

Its first recording was in 1928, using a re-scored version that Grofe produced for Whiteman, featuring Roy Bargy at the piano. The orchestral version did not merit a release until Sanromá and Fiedler took it up in 1940.

Through the years, this worthy effort has been somewhat eclipsed by the 1942 version by Oscar Levant and Andre Kostelanetz. Levant worked hard at making himself the heir to Gershwin and his piano work, to the point of appearing in a fantasy sequence in the film An American in Paris (which featured Gershwin's music) as not only the pianist, but the conductor, other musicians and the audience, applauding his own playing in the Concerto.

Three Camden covers

Reviewing the Camden reissue, the High Fidelity reviewer complained about the sound of the Sanroma-Fiedler Concerto. It was indeed distinctly inferior to the earlier Rhapsody. I've knocked some of the wooliness out of the sonics and create a bit of presence, and it now sounds much better.

Bonus - "Strike Up the Band"

The 78 album of Rhapsody in Blue included a performance of Gershwin's "Strike Up the Band" as a fill-up. This was not included on the Camden LP, but I've added it from a HMV pressing cleaned up from Internet Archive.

The performance is lively; indeed, it struck me as too lively. The percussion effects in the first chorus sounded frantic. I took the recording down half a step, and it now sounds much more natural.

I have no idea why HMV or Victor might have changed the pitch, if indeed they did so.

PS - More Gershwin

I mentioned that Gershwin has often appeared here. If you click on the George Gershwin label at the end of this post, you will be taken to all the 17 posts available.

These include two-piano and choral versions of the Rhapsody, several LPs by Oscar Levant, instrumentals from Kostelanetz and Gould, vocals by Lee Wiley, and more.

LINK to the Fiedler-Sanromá recordings

LINK to the Spoliansky-Fuhs recording

First Recordings of Piston and MacDowell from the Boston Pops

Today's post is devoted to two important first recordings of American music made by the Boston Pops and Arthur Fiedler in the 1930s. First is Edward MacDowell's Piano Concerto No. 2, recorded in 1936 with soloist Jesús María Sanromá. The second is a suite from Walter Piston's ballet The Incredible Flutist, from 1939. My transfers come from one of the pseudynonymous 1950s RCA Camden reissue LPs, which ascribed the performances to the "Festival Concert Orchestra." I was not fooled.

I also have a bonus for you - Piston's orchestration of the Moonlight Sonata's first movement, as recorded in abridged form by the Pops circa 1954.

MacDowell's Piano Concerto No. 2

Edward MacDowell (1860-1908) was considered the leading American composer for quite some time, and many think the second piano concerto of 1890 is his best composition. The piece is sometimes likened to Grieg's concerto, although to me it is most reminiscent of Liszt. A high-Romantic work to be sure, and very effective in meeting its aims.

MacDowell lived in Boston from 1888 to 1896, and appeared with the Boston Symphony as a pianist. When this recording was made in 1936, he was still famous, enough so that he was memorialized on a 1940 postage stamp. Today his music is seldom heard, with the possible exception of his piano suite Woodland Sketches and its "To a Wild Rose."

Jesús María Sanromá

Considering the composer's renown, it is perhaps surprising that the second concerto was not recorded until 1936. But the performance by the Boston forces and particularly the soloist is all that one could hope for.

Sanromá (1902-84) was born in Puerto Rico and educated at the New England Conservatory. Soon after graduation he became the Boston Symphony's pianist, remaining in that post until 1940. Victor recorded him fairly extensively during this period, including Gershwin and Paderewski concertos with Fiedler; Bartók, Grieg and Rachmaninoff concertos with Charles O'Connell; music of Hindemith with the composer, and the Chausson Concert for Violin, Piano and String Quartet with Heifetz.

Piston's The Incredible Flutist

Walter Piston, Arthur Fiedler, Hans Wiener
and designer Marco Montedoro, 1938

Walter Piston (1894-1976) also had strong ties to Boston and the Boston Symphony. Educated at Harvard, he taught there from 1926-60. His students included many illustrious names among the succeeding generation of American composers - Leonard Bernstein, Elliott Carter, Irving Fine, Harold Shapero, John Harbison and many others.

Hans Wiener as
the Incredible Flutist

Piston's first symphony was premiered by the BSO in 1938, the same year as the ballet The Incredible Flutist was staged by the Pops. His Symphony No. 3 later was commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation and Symphony No. 6 by the BSO for its centennial. The orchestra recorded the latter work in 1956 under Charles Munch.

The Incredible Flutist is the only stage work in Piston's catalogue. It 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.

While Fiedler and his forces recorded a suite from the ballet in 1939, they technically did not give the public premiere of the work in that form - the Pittsburgh Symphony and Fritz Reiner did so in 1940.

Beethoven-Piston - Moonlight Sonata

I don't know the background of Piston's orchestration of the first movement of Beethoven's "Moonlight" sonata, only that the Pops and Fiedler recorded it in abridged form circa 1954. RCA Victor put it out on a single that I believe was backed by Piston's orchestration of Debussy's "Clair de Lune." I remastered the Beethoven transcription from a lossless needle drop on Internet Archive, but the Debussy was nowhere to be found.

Like The Incredible Flutist, the Beethoven arrangement is an  attractive work.

The sound from the 1930s items came up nicely, although the piano overshadows the orchestra in the MacDowell concerto. The Moonlight Sonata orchestration sounds good as well.