Issay Dobrowen Conducts Russian Music

The Russian conductor Issay Dobrowen (1891-1953) was active in the recording studios for the EMI labels in the postwar years until his relatively early death at age 62. He had been the chief conductor of the San Francisco Symphony, the Oslo Philharmonic and the Gothenburg Symphony, which he led from 1941 until his death.

On this blog, he has led the accompaniment to Solomon in their recording of Brahms' second piano concerto.

Although Dobrowen made his career primarily outside Russia, he was perhaps inevitably considered a specialist in Russian music, and it is in that repertoire that we find the materials for today's post - primarily the music of Rimsky-Korsakov, but also short works by Glinka and Tchaikovsky. The program begins with the latter selections.

Glinka and Tchaikovsky

Any conductor wanting to open a concert with a bang surely considers programming the overture to Mikhail Glinka's 1842 opera Ruslan and Ludmilla. It provides an orchestra the perfect opportunity to play catchy themes at breakneck speed. In the right hands, it is exhilarating - and that is certainly the case as Dobrowen leads the Statsradiofoniens Symfoniorkester (Danish State Radio Symphony Orchestra) in a blazing reading.

The Glinka is the earliest recording in the set, dating from 1950.

Dobrowen in action

Next, the scene shifts to London and Kingsway Hall for a July 1951 date with the Philharmonia Orchestra, yielding two famous excerpts from Tchaikovsky's 1879 opera Eugene Onegin - the Waltz from Act II and Polonaise from Act III. Again, these are beautifully played and well recorded - and delightful music.

The Glinka and Tchaikovsky works were originally issued on 78; EMI did not begin to produce LPs until 1952. These transfers were cleaned up from the original issues as found on Internet Archive. 

The balance of the post is devoted to two LPs from my own collection. I've processed all works in ambient stereo, and the sound throughout is strikingly good.

Rimsky-Korsakov - Le Coq d'Or and Tsar Saltan Suites

Dobrowen returned to the Kingsway Hall in December 1952 to conduct orchestral suites extracted from two of Rimsky-Korsakov's operas - Le Coq d'Or and The Tale of Tsar Saltan, both based on Pushkin poems.

Le Coq d'Or was Rimsky's final opera. He did not live to see its 1909 premiere.

Tamara Karsavina as the Tsaritsa of Shemakha in Diaghilev's 1914 Coq d'Or production

Dobrowen conducts the musical suite that Glazunov and Steinberg produced after Rimsky's death.

The Tale of Tsar Saltan also is a late opera, dating from 1900. The suite from the opera comes from three years later, and was devised by the composer.

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

In his notes, Gerald Abraham writes that Rimsky-Korsakov "possessed the power of creating a world, or (more accurately) creating music that evokes a world. Like Pushkin's, it is a world in which the matter-of-fact is fused with the fantastic, the naïve with the sophisticated, the romantic with the humorous, the beautiful with the absurd." These are well captured in the Dobrowen recordings with the Philharmonia.

From an ad in The Gramophone, October 1953

Rimsky-Korsakov - Schéhérazade 

Like the suites above, Rimsky's Schéhérazade, which dates from 1888, is an example of "orientalism." Leaving aside the term's colonialist implications, in art it manifested itself as an escape to the exotic. And what could be more exotic than the story of the ruler Shahryar, convinced that women were faithless and habitually having his wives put to death, being captivated by the nightly tales told by his latest wife, Schéhérazade, and eventually sparing her life after 1001 such stories.

The legend of Schéhérazade forms a framing device for a collection of folk-derived tales and literature from the Middle East collected over centuries. It became known as One Thousand and One Nights and eventually in English as the Arabian Nights.

Rimsky adopted the framing device and its exotic setting, and initially titled the four movements of his suite after several such tales - "The Sea and Sinbad's Ship," "The Story of the Kalendar Prince," "The Young Prince and the Young Princess," and "Festival at Baghdad. The Sea. The Ship Breaks against a Cliff Surmounted by a Bronze Horseman." Paradoxically, he did not want the work to be seen as programmatic beyond the sense of being an "Oriental" adventure, and later eliminated the titles.

Well, the music is programmatic to the extent that there is an unmistakable sea-voyage quality to some of the music, and there certainly is a theme that represents Schéhérazade relating her tales. Beyond that, no program is stated nor needed for enjoyment.

Mikhail Fokine and Vera Fokina in the Schéhérazade ballet

That does not mean that others have not added such a program to the work, notably via the 1910 Mikhail Fokine-Léon Bakst production staged by the Ballets Russes, which featured such fare as a "Golden Slave" seducing one of the Shah's wives.

Rimsky's inspiration is well conveyed by the December 1952-January 1953 recording by Dobrowen and the Philharmonia, made in Abbey Road. That said, Andrew Porter in The Gramophone was unimpressed: "Dobrowen has here achieved what I should have thought to be impossible: he makes Schéhérazade, a masterpiece of vivid colour and excitement, thoroughly dull and tedious."

It's true that Dobrowen's tempi can be slow - I checked timings of the first movement, and he takes about a minute longer than some other recordings. The slower tempi don't bother me, but it does dim the excitement.

My LP transfers come from the original US Angel releases, which have English pressings. The sound, as mentioned, is excellent.

Leinsdorf in Cleveland, 1946

Erich Leinsdorf

Erich Leinsdorf was only 31 when named the music director of the Cleveland Orchestra in 1943, in succession to Artur Rodziński. But he had already achieved success as an assistant to Bruno Walter and Arturo Toscanini, and at the Met after coming to America.

Leinsdorf's Cleveland reign was to be short and uneasy. He was drafted soon after his appointment, and by the time he returned, the board and the public had shifted their affections to George Szell, who had excelled as a guest conductor.

There are, however, a number of remembrances of Leinsdorf's tenure in the form of a series of recordings he and the orchestra set down in February 1946 - after Szell's appointment as his successor.

Today we look at two of the longer works they took before the microphone - Schumann's Symphony No. 1 and Rimsky-Korsakov's Antar - together with a three shorter works only issued on 78.

Schumann - Symphony No. 1 (Spring)

Veterans like me who recall Leinsdorf's later, impassive podium manner may be surprised to discover that the young conductor was notably volatile on some of these discs. His reading of the Schumann Spring symphony is nothing if not urgent. I coincidentally listened to some of Herbert von Karajan's Schumann the other day, and that dignitary's grandiloquent air could hardly be different from Leinsdorf's straightforward approach.

Leinsdorf's Schumann has never been considered a competitive reading, but I enjoy a conductor who presses ahead in this symphony, as he does. The orchestra was then in a state of flux due to the war, with turnover of about 50 percent in a few years. Nonetheless, the ensemble does sound in good form. That said, the orchestra had but 84 members at the time, and its strings were considered a relatively weak point.

Rimsky-Korsakov - Antar, Suite for Orchestra

Leinsdorf was known for his interesting programs; here, he somehow talked Columbia into setting down Rimsky-Korsakov's wonderful but even today neglected Antar, a suite for orchestra that Rimsky initially called a symphony. (The conductor had tried to interest the Columbia folks in a George Antheil work, but they demurred.)

The Cleveland performance was to be the second complete recording; Piero Coppola had done one with the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra in 1933. Victor had Pierre Monteux set down a competing version in San Francisco only a few weeks after the Cleveland sessions.

As with the Schumann, Leinsdorf's manner is insistent from the first bar. Where some conductors lean into the exotic qualities of the score and its underlying tale, Leinsdorf's approach is to begin developing tension immediately.

The Clevelanders again play well.

Mozart, Schubert, Josef Strauss

To fill out the program, I've added three works issued as singles. One 78 coupled Mozart's Minuet (K. 409) with some of the ballet music from Schubert's Rosamunde. The second encompassed a performance of Josef Strauss' lovely Music of the Spheres waltz.

The Schumann and Rimsky works first came out in 78 albums. I transferred those works from LPs in my collection. In the process, I discovered that my Schumann 10-inch LP sleeve actually contained a Bruno Walter Beethoven performance, so I resorted to a good-sounding 12-inch reissue from the mid-50s. The Antar comes from the 10-inch LP edition. I remastered the singles from lossless needle-drops found on Internet Archive. The sound is very good on all of these records.

The download includes a variety of cover images, including scans of both 10-inch LPs and the front of the 12-inch album.

Note (July 2024): this has now been remastered in ambient stereo.

LINK

Music for Easter with Stokowski

I was casting about looking for records to present for Easter, and had hit upon a Robert Shaw set to transfer - forgetting that it is missing one of the records. But I also had this RCA Camden LP of "Music for Easter" at hand, so that's our selection for today.

For some reason, during the first part of the 1950s, RCA used pseudonyms for the orchestras featured on the budget Camden label. Here we have the "Warwick Symphony Orchestra", which actually is the Philadelphia Orchestra in famous old recordings led by Leopold Stokowski.

How does he make his hair do that?

Stoki was a very popular personality when these records were made. He not only appeared in a famous cartoon himself (Fantasia) but was well known enough to have been caricatured in another cartoon by Bugs Bunny. I have to admit that for this and other reasons, I am one of the snobs who have a hard time taking him seriously. Many people do, of course, and I yield to them for purposes of this post. (And, of course, who am I to make judgments, considering some of the silly stuff I have offered here.)

The cover says "Music for Easter" and comes complete with a Gothic cathedral facade, but this is not music you will hear in church. Instead we have the Act I Prelude and "Good Friday Spell" from Act III of Wagner's Parsifal, together with Rimsky-Korsakov's Russian Easter Overture.

The sound here is quite good (although there is a bit of noise on my pressing), especially when you consider that the Rimsky goes back as far as January 1929. The Parsifal excerpts are from November 1936, when Stokowski was beginning his withdrawal from Philadelphia.