So the label could call upon all of them when it came time to assemble a prestige product such as the one before us today - 1954's The Ballet, a three-record set with those conducing eminences presenting popular ballet suites, in recordings dating from 1949-53.
Not that Victor made use of the conductors in its marketing. They aren't noted on the cover (nor are the works or composers) and they only warrant a paragraph each at the end of the elaborate 16-page booklet (included in the download).
No, this package would seem to have been aimed at the listener who wanted to learn more about the ballet. It includes a overview of the art form and notes on the works themselves by Robert Lawrence, and evocative photos by George Platt Lynes, a famed commercial photographer.
But what of the works and the performances? Let's run them down.
Meyerbeer - Les Patineurs (excerpts)
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| Anya Linden and Desmond Doyle in Les Patineurs (Covent Garden 1956) |
Fiedler and the Boston Pops present four excerpts from the ballet score that Constant Lambert assembled from melodies found in Meyerbeer's operas Le Prophète and L'Etoile du Nord, principally the former. As I noted when I presented the John Hollingsworth/Sadler's Wells performance a year or two ago, "Although seldom heard today, Meyerbeer's works were very popular in the 19th century, and this immensely tuneful and pleasing score shows why."
This performance, I am told, has not been reissued. It originally came out as a companion piece to Fiedler's Gaîté Parisienne recording, which was later reissued in stereo with a different disc mate. The 1953 Les Patineurs was mono-only so was left on the shelf.
Piston - The Incredible Flutist (suite)
The most popular work by the American composer Walter Piston is also his only ballet score, The Incredible Flutist. The work was written for and premiered by the Boston Pops and Fiedler, and then a suite recorded by them in 1939. That recording was posted on this blog a few years ago. This set includes the Fiedler remake of 1953, with James Pappoutsakis as the flute soloist.
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| Arthur Fiedler and Walter Piston |
As I wrote in connection with the first recording, The Incredible Flutist "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."
This recording is apparently another mono orphan. It was originally coupled with the Ibert Divertissement and the Rossini-Respighi La Boutique Fantasque, which were later reissued in stereo.
Stravinsky - The Firebird (1919 Suite)
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| Maria Tallchief and Francisco Moncion in The Firebird |
Stravinsky's The Firebird is another score that is heard far more often in the concert hall than as a ballet. Here we have Leopold Stokowski's 1950 recording of a suite with a New York pickup orchestra. The American Record Guide thought highly of the performance, even though the review began with a back-handed compliment: "Stokowski seems less wayward in his latest performance of this work, and he does not make the cut he made in his other versions . . I cannot say when I have heard this music played more beautifully; every detail, every nuance is brought out."
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| Leopold Stokowski |
The ballet was written for Diaghilev in 1910 and originally choreographed by Michel Fokine. I believe the photo at top of this section is from a George Balanchine production. Stokowski conducts the 1919 suite, the most popular of the three devised by the composer.
Ravel - Daphnis et Chloé (Suite No. 2)
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| Michel Fokine and Vera Fokina in Daphnis et Chloé |
Maurice Ravel wrote Daphnis et Chloé both as a concert work and as a ballet score, calling it a "symphonie choreographique." It dates from 1912 and again was originally choreographed by Michel Fokine. The Ballet set contains the Suite No. 2, the most frequently heard incarnation of the music.
Leading the 1949 performance was Arturo Toscanini, with his NBC Symphony. He was the most famous living conductor when these records were made; even so, he is not the first name that comes to mind when thinking about Ravel's music.
Writing in the Saturday Review, Roland Gelatt explained why: "I must confess to being impressed but unmoved by his 'Daphnis.' Taken measure by measure the recording is replete with wonders. There are magnificent examples of blending woodwind and strings, and the climax in the 'Daybreak' movement is a marvel of orchestral transparency. But gambits like these do not solve the secrets of Ravel's sybaritic score. Note-perfect though it may be, I cannot believe that this rigid and unyielding reading does full justice to the composer’s intentions."
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| Arturo Toscanini |
Weber-Berlioz - Invitation to the Dance
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| Vaslav Nijinsky and Tamara Karsavina in Le Spectre de la rose |
Carl Maria von Weber wrote Invitation to the Dance as a piano piece. Hector Berlioz orchestrated it as a ballet for a production of Weber's Der Freischütz in Paris, where interpolated ballets were de rigueur in opera productions. The orchestration was popular, and in 1911 Michel Fokine used it for his ballet La Spectre de la rose. (The photo of Nijinsky and Karsavina above is from the original production.)
The performance here is again by Toscanini and the NBC Symphony from 1951. It is phenomenally well played, very impressive, and certainly not designed for dancing.
Delibes - Sylvia (excerpts)
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| Margot Fonteyn (Sylvia) kneels before Julia Farron (Diana) (Covent Garden 1952) |
The French composer Léo Delibes wrote two ballets, both important and influential and both still staged. Sylvia, from 1876, is actually the second of the two.
Tchaikovsky was hugely impressed by the score: "The first ballet in which the music constitutes not just the main, but the sole interest. What charm, what grace, what melodic, rhythmic and harmonic richness."
Victor had just the conductor for such a score: Pierre Monteux, who had been closely associated with Diaghilev, and who had conducted the premiere of Daphnis et Chloe. (One wonders why RCA did not use Monteux's 1946 recording of the first suite in place of the uncongenial Toscanini Suite No. 2.)
Regardless, it's a pleasure to have Monteux's 1953 recordings of both Delibes suites, made with "Members of the Boston Symphony." The Sylvia excerpts were taped in the Manhattan Center in New York.
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| Pierre Monteux |
Delibes - Coppélia (excerpts)
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| Margot Fonteyn in Coppélia |
Coppélia was Delibes's first ballet score and remains the most familiar. It has appeared on this blog twice before; first, in excerpts conducted by Constant Lambert in conjunction with a 1946 Covent Garden production. (I believe the photo of Margot Fonteyn above is from that season.) Then, too, there was a later disc from another Covent Garden conductor, Hugo Rignold, with the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra. That LP also had excepts from Sylvia.
In the Boston performance, the opening horn passage is fairly slack, but the strings are lovely, and the famous Mazurka is dynamic. The recording from Symphony Hall is good, although the horns are distant. Alfred Krips is the violin soloist both here and in the Sylvia excerpts. Manuel Valerio is the clarinet soloist.
Both Delibes scores are delightful - as are all the selections in this album, for that matter.
Ravel - La Valse
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| Diana Adams of the New York City Ballet in La Valse |
Monteux often conducted the Boston Symphony, but that orchestra's music director from 1949-62 was the Alsatian Charles Munch, who led the final two items on this program.
Ravel wrote La Valse as a "poème chorégraphique pour orchestre" for Diaghilev, who refused to stage it. It later was choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska, and in 1950 by George Balanchine for the New York City Ballet. (Balanchine used Ravel's Valses nobles et sentimentales as a preface to the La Valse music.)
Ravel's music is mysterious, lush and macabre in turn, all of which are made for Munch's gifts as a conductor. (Also for Balanchine, who made the piece into a dance of death.) Munch often aimed for excitement, and the critics were at times critical of that tendency. "The kind of performance with which Munch closes a frenzied evening of music making, faithfully duplicated in every particular," observed the Saturday Review. The Gramophone's Andrew Porter complained, "La Valse turns into a noisy roar at the climax." But others were appreciative. The recording is from 1950.
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| Charles Munch |
Roussel - Bacchus et Ariane (Suite No. 2)
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| Bacchus et Ariane set by Giorgio de Chirico |
The ballet Bacchus et Ariane is a late work by Albert Roussel (1869-1937), staged in 1930 with choreography by Serge Lifar and sets by the painter Giorgio de Chirico. Roussel derived two orchestral suites from the ballet - Suite No. 1 was premiered by Charles Munch in 1933; Suite No. 2 by Pierre Monteux in 1934. Regardless of this lineage, Munch programmed the second suite for this 1952 recording from Symphony Hall.
The ballet concerns the abduction of Ariane by Dionysus (aka Bacchus). Early on Roussel was considered an Impressionist, but by this late stage of his career was called a neoclassicist. That term, however, doesn't really capture his multi-faceted music, of which this is an excellent example. Munch's performance is definitive, in my view.
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It's worth noting that although the set is called The Ballet, none of the recordings are of full ballets, except for La Valse and Invitation to the Dance. Nor does the set include anything by the arguably most famous ballet composer, Tchaikovsky.
The sound is generally excellent. As Victor sometimes did back in those days, it provided information about the number of microphones and their placement, ranging from the multi-miked Stokowski to a single microphone for the Toscanini-Ravel, Delibes and Roussel sessions.
I transferred this set from my collection, belatedly responding to a request. I did make use of the booklet scans on Internet Archive, suitably cleaned up and presented along with the covers as a PDF.
