Mewton-Wood, Part 1

I have wanted to share the music of pianist Noel Mewton-Wood for some time. Mostly forgotten today, he wasn't even that well known in his own lifetime, which ended at age 31 in 1953, and at his own hand.

The Australian pianist did leave behind quite a few excellent records, many of them made for the budget label Music Masterpiece Society.

Mewton-Wood (note that the MMS releases for some reason dispense with his first name) had achieved some success in England and on the Continent by the time of his death. The story goes that he committed suicide because he blamed himself after his partner died of a burst appendix. There was a contemporary newspaper article with the blunt headline "Dying Pianist Dashed Poison Glass at Wall."

But now I am going on about the artist's sensational death, rather than concentrating on his sensational talent, and that is quite unfair to him. Listen to this performance and you will hear what he could accomplish with a pickup orchestra that's a little thin in the strings, a sympathetic conductor (Walter Goehr, who also died young), and very little rehearsal time.

The so-called "Netherlands Philharmonic" was generally composed of players from Dutch radio orchestras. (Note that there is now an actual Netherlands Philharmonic, formed in 1985.) MMS actually could produce a nice product - this is a pretty good recording of a pretty good orchestra on pretty good vinyl, and the piano playing is better than that. The "prestigious" cover with all the scrolls, geegaws, and composer cartoons - maybe not so good.

More to come on Noel Mewton-Wood here.

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Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

This one was a request from Mindy over at Sallie and Mel's Golden Age of Hollywood.

Jane and Marilyn were both excellent singers, so there is no vocal dubbing here, as least as far as I know. There are classic songs from Jule Styne and Leo Robin ("Bye Bye Baby," "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend") and two good ones from Hoagy Carmichael and Harold Adamson.

Marilyn and her best friends

This is quite the short LP, but is nonetheless a wonderful reminder of an amusing movie and two great stars at their best.

Note (October 2025): this has now been remastered in ambient stereo and has complete scans.

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Enescu Plays Schumann

I had a grand plan to share the recordings composer/violinist George Enescu made for Remington about mid-century. Except I can't find the Bach record. And this Schumann sonata has a pressing fault causing noise throughout most of the first movement. (Note: the 2019 remastering almost completely removes this noise.)

Ah well. I wish I could say the performance makes up for it, but the great man's work here is distinctly human. Pianist Céliny Chailley-Richez, however, plays well and the sound is pretty good, except for the noise, that is. (Note: ten years later, I'd say the performance is very fine indeed; the fallibilities are minor.)

I'll be back later with Enescu conducting his own music - and the Bach, if I can find it.

Serving the Mass

This LP on Serving the Mass is helpfully dated as December 15, 1954. It doesn't say where it was recorded, but it certainly seems to have been somewhere in Washington, D.C.

The album is supposed to be instructive for prospective altar boys (and they were all boys at that time), although I can't imagine that hearing a few songs, a potted version of the Mass, some quick Latin phraseology, and a set of directions would be very helpful to the novice. At that time, the altar boy had many duties, including standing in for the congregation in providing many responses to the celebrant in Latin, moving things around the altar, ringing bells, and assisting with holy communion, with all activities connected by some fairly stylized movements, bowing, etc.

Those who are not familiar with the Catholic lingo may wonder about the terms "Nihil Obstat" and "Imprimatur" on the LP cover. The Nihil Obstat is provided by a religious person who acted as a censor who made sure there was nothing in the item proposed for publication that was against church teachings. The Imprimatur is then the bishop's approval for the item to be published.

This record will give you a fair sense of what the Latin rite sounded like back then. The celebrant has what I think is a very Italianate pronunciation of the Latin words. Perhaps he trained in Rome. He sounds impatient with the altar boy's respondents. Probably in a hurry to get to the sermon.

This record was not an inexpensive item, by the way. It cost $5 in 1954, which would be almost $40 today.

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Crawford in Torch Song

Torch Song is one of the great camp movies of all time. Or so I read on the various film sites. Me, I haven't watched it, although I did happen to see the clip of Joan Crawford galumphing around that appears in That's Entertainment III. I seem to have a horrible memory of it being done in blackface, which must have been in bad taste even in 1953.

Dear Joan plays a famous singer-dancer in this festival of unintentional comedy. She is quite the temperamental diva - that is until she is redeemed by the devoted love of a blind pianist played by Michael Wilding. They couldn't have been serious about this.

On to the music - this 10-inch LP presents songs from the movie as played by Walter Gross, who dubbed Michael Wilding's piano playing. Three tunes are performed by India Adams, who did the vocal dubbing for Crawford. The album doesn't say whether these items are from the actual soundtrack, but it doesn't sound like they are. The other musicians are guitarist Dave Gilbert and bassist Bob Shevak.

The music on this record is by a variety of people, including music director Adolph Deutsch and Walter Gross. Gross' big hit was Tenderly, which is one of the items here.

Elie Siegmeister

What you are seeing above is actually not the cover of the 10-inch LP that contained Elie Siegmeister's Ozark Set. It is the cover of the original 78 rpm album that came out in 1945, and is a much better example of cover artist Alex Steinweiss' work than the LP. It also is more evocative of the somewhat idealized version of rural America celebrated by this music – and other conservative music of the time.

Like Aaron Copland, who was eight years older, Siegmeister was born in Brooklyn and studied in Paris under Nadia Boulanger. It's too bad that Siegmeister's music is largely forgotten today. This is quite well done, and the quieter moments are very beautiful and evocative. There is much to enjoy here for enthusiasts of Copland's Americana pieces, even though the performances by Dimitri Mitropoulos and his Minneapolis troupe are neither subtle not especially well played. With this ensemble providing the music, "Saturday Night" in the Ozarks seems quite a hectic experience. One wonders if the barn survived the barn dance. A harsh recording and typically rough pressing are not helpful, either.

Also included on the 10-inch LP is the overture to Lalo’s opera Le Roi d'Ys, which sounds less like Ys and more like Liszt in this performance.

The cover of the LP that yoked the yokels with the Ysians is below. As you can see, the Ozark mountain on the 78 set has been reduced to a Ozark pimple down in the right-hand corner of the LP. Another interesting difference is that the liner notes for the 78 set quote an enthusiastic Russian review of the music, but by the time the LP came out in 1950, the Cold War had begun and the Russian commentary is nowhere to be found. Possibly a coincidence – who knows.

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Barber Conducts His Second Symphony

While there is nothing identifiably "American" sounding about Samuel Barber's music, this work at least had a patriotic basis.

The composition originally had the title, Symphony Dedicated to the Air Forces. Barber was a World War II flyer when he wrote it.

Samuel Barber with the score of his Second Symphony

This recording is unusual on a couple of counts. It is conducted by the composer, who made only a few other recordings as a conductor, including the Medea ballet and Cello Concerto, both at this same time as this recording. (He also recorded some of his songs.) Also, it is of a composition that Barber later suppressed and actually destroyed. Hard to understand why—it is a beautiful and evocative score.

There are a few modern recordings of the piece now, but this was the sole version for about 40 years. It was unavailable for most of that time, although it was reissued for a time on Everest records. This is a fine performance and good recording. [Note (September 2023): this has now been remastered in ambient stereo.]