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.

Rhapsodies from Louis Lane and the Clevelanders

From time to time, I've been delving into the recordings of the Cleveland Orchestra conducted by George Szell's associates and predecessors - Nikolai Sokoloff (here and here), Artur Rodziński, Erich Leinsdorf, Robert Shaw and Louis Lane, the conductor of today's LP.

Beside rising at the Cleveland Orchestra from conducing apprentice to resident conductor, Lane was the music director of the Akron Symphony and later held positions with the Dallas and Atlanta Symphonies. In 1963, when this album was made, he was associate conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra and the conductor of the Cleveland Pops Orchestra, which he leads here.

The young Louis Lane, in his summer Pops garb

I believe the Cleveland Pops was analogous to the Boston Pops in that it was the Cleveland Orchestra minus some of its principals. In those years before Blossom Music Center was built, the orchestra performed summer concerts in Cleveland's Public Hall, which is much larger than Severance.

Lane devotes the LP to orchestral rhapsodies - Chabrier's España, Alfvén's Midsommarvaka (the Swedish Rhapsody No. 1, which I believe is a bit abridged here), Enescu's Romanian Rhapsody No. 1, Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 and the least familiar of the bunch, Victor Herbert's Irish Rhapsody.

It was common at the time to declare the Cleveland ensemble the best in America or even the world, and just as common to complain that it was almost too perfect. After the orchestra's 1965 European tour, the eminent horn player Barry Tuckwell wrote in the Telegraph that "in spite of my great enthusiasm for the orchestra, particularly the teamwork, corporate musicianship and professionalism in the best sense, I waited in vain to feel excited; in an extraordinary way it was too perfect, too calculated."

Similarly, in his High Fidelity review of this LP, Paul Affelder observed, "These performances are meticulously note perfect, right down to the last turn and trill. There is only one thing missing: excitement. Not that Lane's readings are dull - far from it - but they could have been just that much better had they been invested with a little more sparkle and zest."

There is another way to look at this phenomenon, as expressed by Andrew Porter in the Financial Times: "The character of the orchestra is somehow that of Cleveland itself, the most cultivated of American cities," he wrote. "The Cleveland players show the most unobtrusive and artistic kind of virtuosity. There is no striving for fat, sleek, overfed tone, not any attempt to wow us with brazen clangour. On the other hand their controlled soft playing ... can be breathtaking in effect."

Breathtaking the playing is on this LP, and I detect no lack of sparkle. What is missing is the "brazen clango[u]r" that we usually hear in such pieces as Liszt's rhapsody.

The sound on this LP was even brighter than usually offered by the Columbia engineers working in Severance Hall. I have adjusted it so that the balance is better.

Early Schubert and Mendelssohn from Louis Lane, Plus a Summer Bonus

This post continues my traversal through the recording of George Szell's predecessors and assistants in Cleveland. Recently we have heard from Nikolai Sokoloff, Artur Rodziński and Erich Leinsdorf, and earlier from Robert Shaw and Louis Lane. We return to the latter today with one of his best discs, combining the first symphonies of those Romantic prodigies, Felix Mendelssohn and Franz Schubert.

The recordings come from a 1966 session in Severance Hall, when Lane was the Associate Conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra. He would become Resident Conductor in 1970, and later held conducting positions at the Dallas and Atlanta Symphonies.

US cover

This being the Cleveland Orchestra at the full extent of its powers, the performances are notable for their sheen and sophistication. Lane does not try anything tricky with the scores, not that they would benefit from such an approach. These are truly youth symphonies. Mendelssohn wrote his when he was 15; it was premiered at his sister's 19th birthday party and had its first public performances by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in 1827. The work shows an astonishing mastery for someone so young. The wonder is that it is not played more often.

For the symphony's 1829 London premiere, the composer reworked the Scherzo from his equally remarkable Octet of 1826 and substituted it for the Menuetto movement in the original score. Lane recorded both the Menuetto and Scherzo for his LP.

Schubert's first symphony dates from 1813, when the composer was 16. It, too, is not often heard, although it has been recorded any number of times, often in complete sets of Schubert's symphonies. The first major label recording was, I believe, led by Sir Thomas Beecham in 1953. That composer's suave way with the work has long been a favorite of mine, but Lane is not less persuasive.

UK cover

My transfer comes from the US and UK issues. As often happened, they had different covers. The 17rh century landscape (The Avenue at Middlehams by Meindert Hobbema) on the British release may have been more appropriate than the US' cardboard terrarium.

The two issues did have one thing in common beside the music - terrible pressings. I had to edit pieces and parts from the two records into one final, nearly blemish-free transfer. The sound is per usual from Severance Hall and the Columbia engineers - clear and a little too bright. Good enough to appreciate these fine performances from a much underrated conductor. Previously he has been heard here in film music, American composers, and a program of flute works, where he led the accompaniment for Maurice Sharp, the orchestra's principal.

A Summer Bonus

Our friend David Federman has sent along one of his welcome compilations, this one themed to the season - "Pinnacles of Summers Past." As usual, he has provided a generous selection of the best recordings of past decades - 32 items in all, including such artists as David Allyn ("I'm Old Fashioned"), and my own favorite summer song, "The Things We Did Last Summer," here in Jo Stafford's rendition. He ends with Dave Brubeck's "Summer Song" as performed by the composer and Carmen McRae. David's notes are in the download.

Flutist Maurice Sharp with the Clevelanders and Louis Lane, Plus a Julius Baker Reup

This is another in a series of recordings by spin-offs of the Cleveland Orchestra, conducted by longtime assistant/associate/resident conductor Louis Lane. Today the spotlight is on the orchestra's principal flute, Maurice Sharp, who performs with a chamber ensemble of principals and others from the band, here called the Cleveland Sinfonietta.

The repertoire encompasses four 20th century works, three by Americans (Charles Tomlinson Griffes, Arthur Foote and Howard Hanson) and one by the French/Swiss composer Arthur Honegger.

Harvey McGuire joins Sharp for Honegger's Concerto da Camera for Flute, English Horn and Strings. Alice Chalifoux is the harpist in Hanson's Serenade.

Sharp joined the orchestra right out of the Curtis Institute, where he studied with William Kincaid, and remained principal flute for 50 years. He joined the ensemble when founding music director Nikolai Sokoloff was still in charge, with his tenure lasting to the brink of the Christoph von Dohnányi era.

Julius Baker (left) and Maurice Sharp, circa 1975

It is instructive to contrast Sharp's approach to another Kincaid pupil who became a famed orchestra principal - Julius Baker, who was solo flute both in Chicago and then for many years in New York (and who earlier spent several years in the Cleveland flute section). A while back I posted a Decca release in which Baker assays two of the works on this Cleveland issue - Griffes's Poem and Foote's A Night Piece. (Baker presents the Foote with string quartet accompaniment; Sharp uses the score for a larger ensemble.)

To my ears, Baker is the warmer of the two, although both are immaculate in their presentation. Sharp's cooler approach is in keeping with the proclivities of the Cleveland forces in the records they made with Lane - and with Szell, for that matter.

I've refurbished the sound of Baker's recording and added a link to it in the comments, along with the link to the Cleveland Sinfonietta LP. The sound on both is very good - Baker in mono, Sharp in stereo. Michael Gray's discography tells us that the Cleveland recordings were taped in Severance Hall in July 1960. The Baker sessions date from June 1952.

Film Music from Louis Lane and the Clevelanders

Here is the second in a series of recordings that the late conductor Louis Lane made with the Cleveland Orchestra's summer assembly, then called the Cleveland Pops Orchestra.

Lane in his summer Pops garb

This program of film music is varied, with contributions from composers who concentrated in musicals (Frederick Loewe, Richard Rodgers, Harold Rome), classical composers (William Walton, Virgil Thomson) and a film score specialist (Ernest Gold).

As you might expect, Lane and his group do particularly well with Walton's beautiful string pieces from Henry V and Thomson's characteristic Acadian Dances from Louisiana Story. When they get into fare that requires ardor, such as the theme from Gigi, they seem detached in a way that (for example) the Boston Pops did not in its recording of the same music.

The analytical recording from Severance Hall (then a rather dry acoustic) adds to this impression - so different from the billowing reverberation that RCA Victor derived from Boston's Symphony Hall. But the clarity in the Cleveland sound has its benefits, allowing you to fully enjoy the superb playing throughout the program.

Epic's sessions for the Thomson and Walton were in July 1961, per Michael Gray's discography. It's likely that the other works were set down at about the same time. Lane was then the assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra.

Louis Lane Conducts American Composers, Plus a Bonus

To mark the death of conductor Louis Lane, I recently shared on another site my transfer of Lane's 1961 Epic LP, "Music for Young America," made with the Cleveland Pops Orchestra, at that time the summer incarnation of the Cleveland Orchestra. Lane was the longtime assistant, associate and resident conductor of the Cleveland ensemble, during the Szell years.

I thought I might also make it available here, together with a substantial bonus of more music by Cleveland-related composers (see below).

Louis Lane

The performances in Lane's program of music by conservative American composers are finely judged and clean cut, a fitting tribute to an excellent musician and the superb Cleveland ensemble.

It may be a little ironic that the chosen “Music for Young America” was composed by five older composers, two of whom had already passed away at the time of the recording. But that doesn’t take away from the quality of the works themselves. The most familiar is Aaron Copland’s “An Outdoor Overture,” followed by the suite from Gian Carlo Menotti’s "Amahl and the Night Visitors." Wallingford Riegger’s “Dance Rhythms,” unlike many of his other works, is tonal.

The second side is devoted to two Cleveland composers. Herbert Elwell, longtime critic of The Plain Dealer, is represented by his most frequently performed work, the ballet suite from "The Happy Hypocrite." Finally, there is “The Old Chisholm Trail” from Arthur Shepherd’s suite “Horizons” (I believe Shepherd designated it as his Symphony No. 1), a relatively early example of Americana, dating from 1926.

To make the Cleveland connection complete, the informative liner notes are by Klaus Roy, longtime program annotator for the Cleveland Orchestra and himself a notable composer.

LINK to Music for Young America (April 2025 remastering)

Music by Herbert Elwell and Ernest Bloch

Now to the bonus disc - a private recording of Elwell's "Blue Symphony," a setting of John Gould Fletcher's poem "The Blue Symphony" from the 1940s, together with Ernest Bloch's Piano Quintet, written in 1923, when the composer was head of the Cleveland Institute of Music.

Herbert Elwell

The worthy performances are by the Feldman String Quartet, with soprano Elizabeth V. Forman and pianist Gloria Whitehurst Phillips. The recording was made for the Roanoke Fine Arts Center in 1962.

LINK to music by Elwell and Bloch (April 2025 remastering)