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

Mischa Spoliansky's 'Saint Joan,' and More

Mischa Spoliansky

The Russian-born composer Mischa Spoliansky (1898-1985) has made a few appearances here, but this is the first post entirely devoted to one of his scores, and its a good one - music for the 1957 film of Shaw's Saint Joan.

In addition to the music from that film, I have two other Spoliansky posts that may be of interest: one involves Patrice Munsel songs from the 1954 Melba biopic, the other a fascinating set of songs Spoliansky wrote for Paul Robeson. Details follow.

Saint Joan

LP cover, based on Saul Bass' title design

The George Bernard Shaw play Saint Joan was first produced in 1923, but it wasn't turned into a film for more than three decades. An earlier film on the same subject, 1948's Joan of Arc with Ingrid Bergman, was based not on Shaw but on a Maxwell Anderson drama.

Producer-director Otto Preminger cast the unknown Jean Seberg in the title role of Saint Joan, claiming to have tested the absurd total of 18,000 people for the role. In the end, neither the film nor the actor (or screenwriter Graham Greene) won favor with the critics, although the production is more highly regarded these days. Seberg confessed, "I have two memories of Saint Joan. The first was being burned at the stake in the picture. The second was being burned at the stake by the critics. The latter hurt more."

Lobby card

Seberg had the misfortune of beginning her career in a role that had been championed on the stage by such famed actors as Sybil Thorndike, Katharine Cornell and Uta Hagen. When Preminger was filming Seberg, Siobhán McKenna was appearing as Saint Joan in a New York production of Shaw's play. (McKenna can be heard in an LP adaptation available on Internet Archive.)

Despite this critical drubbing, Seberg did go on to star in several noted films, including Preminger's Bonjour Tristesse in 1958 (Georges Auric's score for this film is available here) and Godard's Breathless in 1960.

The download includes any number of production photos and other ephemera from Saint Joan. I am particularly fond of the publicity photo below of Richard Widmark as the Dauphin, looking devious and addled, as Widmark's characters were wont to look.

Richard Widmark in scheming mode

Saint Joan featured a superior score by Spoliansky, who had been resident in England since the mid-30s. (The production was mounted at Shepperton Studios, near London.) The composer, born in Russia, had migrated to Germany in 1914. He achieved some renown as a songwriter and pianist in Berlin, then moved on to England upon the accession of the Nazis.

Spoliansky was a gifted melodist; his Saint Joan music is testimony to his facility. At least on the evidence presented by the LP, he spends little time with the thunderous scoring then characteristic of period epics, and makes no effort to simulate 15th century music. Any "antique" touches are contributed by harpsichord and organ music that would be more at home in the 17th century than the 15th.

Despite these anachronisms, Spoliansky's work - starting with the gorgeous theme music - is entirely enjoyable, and the sound is excellent mono. I believe this is still the single most extended example of his film music available. A 2009 Spoliansky compilation from Chandos consists of bits and pieces from many films; from this score, it includes only the Toccatina for organ.

On this LP, the organist for the Toccatina is the famed George Thalben-Ball (identified by Capitol as H. Thalben-Ball). That piece is thought to have been recorded in his Temple Church.

Spoliansky's Songs for Paul Robeson

Shortly after Spoliansky moved to London, Alexander Korda commissioned him to provide music for an adaptation of Edgar Wallace's Sanders of the River. The composer wrote four superb songs for the magnificent Paul Robeson, one of the film's leads.

HMV issued the songs on 78 in 1935, and I've newly added them to my singles blog, where you can read more about the production and Robeson's denunciation of the final film as colonialist propaganda.

Spoliansky's Songs for Melba

RCA Victor's 10-inch LP of music for Melba, Hollywood's fanciful story of Nellie Melba's life, has been available on this site for many years. Strangely, RCA did not include any of Spoliansky's music on the album, even the titular "Melba Waltz." When I first posted the LP, added a copy of Victor Young's Decca recording of the waltz as a bonus.

Now, thanks to Internet Archive, I've discovered that RCA did record the "Melba Waltz" along with Spoliansky's "Is This the Beginning of Love?", but only issued them on a single, with Melba star Patrice Munsel as vocalist on both sides.

I've now added these songs to the Melba package, and revised and augmented the post otherwise. You can find it here.

More Spoliansky

Last year I prepared a expanded set of contemporary recordings of music for mid-century British films, building on an earlier post. That compilation included music from three Spoliansky scores: his "A Voice in the Night" from Wanted for Murder (one of the most effective of the many quasi-romantic film concertos of the period), along with his music from Idol of Paris and That Dangerous Age.

The set also encompasses music by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Allan Gray, Lord Berners, Arthur Benjamin, Arnold Bax, William Alwyn and Richard Addinsell. It's available here.

Music for 1940s British Films, Plus Songs for a Change of Seasons

Muir Mathieson

This post supersedes and builds on one from the early days of the blog devoted to music from British films of the 1940s. It now is more than twice as extensive - including 16 examples drawn from the best films composers of the era - Vaughan Williams, Rosza, Addinsell, Mischa Spoliansky, Allan Gray, Bax, Alwyn, Ireland, Charles Williams and Arthur Benjamin - all in vintage performances. These come primarily from two albums, as detailed below.

Also today, to mark the transition between seasons, David F. has provided us with two of his fine compilations.

Summer Turns to Autumn

David has prepared a set of songs both for the waning of summer and for the coming of fall - "A Farewell to Summer" and "Autumn Auguries." These total 60 selections by artists known and obscure, as always well programmed and carefully considered. The downloads (links in comments) include David's thoughts on the music and the seasons.

One of our readers recently called his compilations "brilliant" - and I won't disagree!

'Music for Films' - the Columbia Entré LP

My 2009 post was mainly devoted to an early 50s Columbia Entré LP, Music for Films, which was almost entirely composed of British releases of the 1940s. The various recordings originated with EMI, and included performances by the Queen's Hall Light Orchestra as conducted by Charles Williams or Sidney Torch, and the Philharmonia conducted by Ernest Irving.

Here is what I wrote about these recordings a decade ago, much augmented.

The only well-known item on the record is the one American item, Miklos Rózsa's music from Spellbound, here in a performance led by Charles Williams.

The best-known composer represented is Ralph Vaughan Williams, whose beautiful score for the Loves of Joanna Godden was almost unknown until a more recent re-recording. Here the music is performed by the Philharmonia and Irving, the music director of Ealing Studios.

 

Ernest Irving and Ralph Vaughan Williams at a recording session

The little-known composer Allan Gray appears with two very effective items - the memorable prelude from Stairway to Heaven and the theme from This Man Is Mine. These pieces are apparently all that was ever recorded of Gray's film music. The composer left Germany after the ascension of the Nazis, as did Mischa Spoliansky, also represented in the collection.

Mischa Spoliansky

Much of the Entré LP, in fact, is devoted to three pieces by the now little-known (but very talented) Spoliansky. His "A Voice in the Night," from Wanted for Murder, is one of the most effective of the many quasi-romantic film concertos that turned up following the 1941 success of Richard Addinsell's "Warsaw Concerto." The album also contains Spoliansky's music from Idol of Paris and That Dangerous Age.

Lord Berners in repose

Finally, the Entré LP includes the Nicholas Nickleby music from the eccentric composer-novelist-painter Lord Berners (Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson), who wrote concert as well as film music and was a friend of Constant Lambert and William Walton. I don't care for Berners' music, but he cut quite a figure!

'Film Music' - the 1947 Decca-London Album

Like EMI, UK Decca was active in the film music realm during the 1940s. I have included a new transfer of a six-sided 78 album, Film Music, from the London Symphony and Muir Mathieson, the music director for a large number of British films.

Mathieson's set is largely given over to composers better known for concert than film music. It leads off with one of the most beautiful themes ever written by Vaughan Williams - the hymn-like Epilogue from the film 49th Parallel.

Arthur Benjamin

Next is what is possibly Arthur Benjamin's greatest hit - the "Jamaican Rhumba" of 1938, which doesn't seem to be film music at all [thanks Boursin for the tip!]. Benjamin's other popular favorite ishis "Storm Clouds Cantata" (not included here), featured at the climactic moments of both versions of Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much.

Sir Arnold Bax's music for the short film Malta G.C. was one of his few scores for the screen. It concludes with an Elgarian march.

William Alwyn

We return to Jamaica for another well-known use of its music, as captured in William Alwyn's score for The Notorious Gentleman. Neither the Alwyn nor Benjamin pieces were what you would call authentic, but are enjoyable nonetheless. Alwyn was equally renowned for his film and concert scores.

The final composer in this set - John Ireland - only composed for one film, The Overlanders, which involved a cattle drive in Australia. (One wonders how they attracted people into the theaters for that scenario.) Ireland was an uneven composer, and this is not among his best work, although it has enjoyed several recordings, all of which I seem to own.

Bonus Items

Richard Addinsell

The talented Richard Addinsell was not represented on either album above, but I have added two of his finest themes as a bonus. First is the original recording of music from Passionate Friends by the Philharmonia Orchestra and Muir Mathieson, which comes from another Entré album that otherwise does not contain film music. (Parenthetically, I saw David Lean's Passionate Friends a long time ago, and remember it as excellent.)

I also wanted to include perhaps the most popular and influential piece of film scoring from that period - Addinsell's "Warsaw Concerto" from Dangerous Moonlight. Here from the original 78, Muir Mathieson conducts the London Symphony with uncredited pianist Louis Kentner.

As a final bonus, I have included the "Dream of Olwen" music from While I Live, another notable quasi-concerto of the period. The composer was Charles Williams, who conducted several of the works on the Entré LP above. In this recording William Hill-Bowen was the pianist, with George Melachrino leading his orchestra on an HMV 78.

All transfers are from my collection, except for the bonus items, which are remastered from lossless needle-drops from CHARM and the Internet Archive. The sound is good in all cases.

Patrice Munsel as Melba

This is the 1953 soundtrack to a sanitized version of the life story of famous soprano Nellie Melba. True to form, Hollywood cast young singer Patrice Munsel, who was much better looking than Melba, and made her version of the diva into a sweet character, whereas the real thing was a pain in the larynx region.

Munsel did very well in the role, on the aural evidence. Her attractive soprano and forthright approach suited the familiar arias and songs nicely, and she was well accompanied by Covent Garden forces under Muir Mathieson and Warwick Braithwaite.

Patrice Munsel as a glamorized Nellie Melba

This 10-inch LP consists almost entirely of popular opera arias, from Gounod, Puccini, Mozart, Rossini, Donizetti and Verdi, salted with the usual chestnuts (now there's a mixed culinary metaphor): the Bach-Gounod "Ave Maria," Mendelssohn's "On Wings of Song," and, be it ever so humble, "Home Sweet Home."

Munsel pushes Melba toast

What it does not include are the songs written for the film by Mischa Spoliansky and lyricist Norman Newell. This is an odd omission because RCA Victor recorded the two songs with Munsel and an orchestra conducted by Henri René, and issued them as a single. For this revised (2021) post, I've included these numbers, which although delightful are somewhat similar waltzes, via an HMV pressing. Completing the package is Victor Young's instrumental recording of the "Melba Waltz."

Melba was Munsel's only starring role in film, although she often appeared on American television, either as a talk show or musical variety guest, and occasionally as an actor in roles that generally involved singing. She had her own television show in 1957-58. One of her TV roles was in The Stingiest Man in Town, which has appeared here.

Munsel was in the Met company from 1943, when she was just 18, until 1958. She continued appearing in opera and eventually musical comedy until 1981. She died in 2006.

Back then, opera stars often appeared in ads. Above, Munsel endorses Old London brand Melba toast. Below, she does away with "fingertip monotony." And in common with many singers, she also appeared in cigarette ads.

The download includes more ephemera, including a Life magazine article on Melba.

Music for Mid-Century British Films

Although this is an American Columbia LP, it mostly consists of recordings of British film music circa mid-20th century.

The only well-known item on the record the one American item, Miklos Rózsa's music from Spellbound, here in a British performance. The best known composer represented is Ralph Vaughan Williams, whose beautiful score for the Loves of Joanna Godden was almost unknown until a recent re-recording.

Also on board are Allan Gray, with two very effective items, and Lord Berners, who wrote concert as well as film music. This is all that was ever recorded of Gray's film music.

Much of the record is devoted to three pieces by the now little-known (but very talented) Mischa Spoliansky. His A Voice in the Night from Wanted for Murder is one of the most effective of the many quasi-romantic piano concertos that turned up in film music following the success of Richard Addinsell's Warsaw Concerto. That latter piece is not included here. However, I have added another Addinsell item as a bonus. It is the original recording of music from Passionate Friends by the Philharmonia Orchestra and Muir Mathieson, and it comes from a different Entre album that otherwise is not film music.