Digression No. 21

I wanted to mention a few things that aren't in the nature of a regular post but might be of interest to some of you.

First, a while back I posted Rolf Liebermann's Concerto for Jazz Band and Symphony Orchestra in the Sauter-Finegan/Chicago Symphony-Fritz Reiner recording from 1954. Ricardo (aka Rich) left a comment that he had the rare stereo tape version of that recording, and now he has made it available via the symphonyshare Google group. Rich has kindly consented to let me repost the link. Thanks Rich!

In response to a request over at a usenet classical music site, I recently transferred the New York Philharmonic/Artur Rodzinski recording of Wagner's Siegfried Idyll, from February 1945. The sound on my early LP pressing is fairly rough, so I am not going to make the transfer a regular post at this blog, but here is a link for those who might want to hear the performance, which is quite good. (See label below.) Rodzinski is another musician who deserves more notice - several of his New York recordings are available via this blog.

I did also want to mention that a notable new archive is now on line at CHARM - the AHRC Research Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music, a consortium of several London educational institutions. The new archive makes available about 5,000 recordings by musicians of Britain and Ireland from the first half of the last century, focusing on materials that have not been transferred before.

I have pulled a number of fine items from the site already - Isolde Menges' recording of The Lark Ascending with Sargent conducting, Boyd Neel's recording of a Vaughan Williams Hymn Tune Prelude, and two folk songs in a setting by William Alwyn for harp and viola. I was particularly interested in the latter because I just read an article on the violist, Watson Forbes, in the Classical Record Collector. The transfers of all of these are quite good. I went ahead and redid the latter record to my own tastes, and thought a few of you might be interested. The music is rare and very lovely. The harpist is Maria Korchinska. Here's the link.

Jazz with Fritz Reiner

Tonight we present the world's only 12-tone jazz band symphony orchestra record - the only one in my collection, anyway.

Here by request is Rolf Liebermann's Concerto for Jazz Band and Symphony Orchestra, with the Chicago Symphony, led by that famous jazz hound, Fritz Reiner, in a 1954 recording.

In the goofy wire service article on the back cover (below), Reiner seems to take credit for the idea, but I think the Liebermann piece may have been the idea of the band. Contemporary Billboard articles make reference to the group taking the item on the road for appearances with symphony orchestras, apparently also including the New York Phil under that other noted jazz maniac, Dimitri Mitropoulos.

Eddie Sauter and Bill Finegan were arranger refugees from the swing band scene. Their dual-named outfit was something of a thinking person's band in the 1950s, leaving behind their dance band origins for a (mildly) quirky approach, something to the right of the Stan Kenton stentorian brass sound and to the left of the recidivist Ralph Flanagan-Ray Anthony approach. That said, the Liebermann piece is far away from the sound of their "Doodletown Fifers"; it's closer to Kenton.

Don't be put off by the 12-tone label - this music is actually quite enjoyable and very well put across by the Sauter-Finegan forces, the Chicago band and Fritz "Jazzme" Reiner.

Fritz Reiner and Rolf Liebermann

There are only a few recordings of Rolf Liebermann's music; and this is apparently the only composition of its type from his pen. He later gave up composing for many years and became a well known arts administrator, leading the opera companies in Hamburg and Paris. His 1999 obituary from The Gramophone is in the download; also an article from Down Beat reviewing the concerts that led up to this recording.

On the other side of the LP, Reiner trots out Strauss' Don Juan, something more in his usual line. 

The cover painting appears to have some representational intent among the splotches, and every time I look at it, I try to figure it out - it's either a man playing a saxophone or someone scraping food off a plate into a trash can. Let's go with the first one.

Note (August 2024): Both the Liebermann and the Strauss pieces were recorded in stereo, although not released as such until much later. For this new version I've transferred the first stereo issue of Don Juan, from a 1968 RCA Victrola LP. I don't have the stereo edition of the Liebermann composition, but for this version I've remastered the piece in excellent ambient stereo. However, the stereo version is also available separately. Fourteen years ago, Ricardo (aka Rich) made available the stereo tape version of that recording via this link, which still works. Thanks again, Rich!

LINK to the Liebermann in ambient stereo and the Strauss in stereo