title: I would have easily welcomed twenty more minutes, and two other sopranos

text:
Not that I have any memories of the actual event, but I still have the program leaflet to remind me that I attended the live concert that was given at the Sorbonne, March 18, 1989, a few days or weeks after the work was recorded (February 1989 says the CD booklet, with two different soloists: haute contre Gérard Lesne and tenor Howard Milner made the recording but not the concert). 1988 and 1989 were good years for Gossec, thanks to the celebration of the bicentennial of the French Revolution. Erato published a reference recording of his great and groundbreaking 1760 Requiem in 1988 (it was recorded in April '86), under Louis Devos (see my extended review, [[ASIN:B00000E6T3 Gossec:Requiem]]), and his "Dernière Messe des Vivants"/"Last Mass of the Living", his ultimate choral work, composed in 1813 - whose title may be an ironic (or desperate) reference to the early "Mass for the Dead"/Requiem - got what purported to be its world premiere performance, on April 23 1988, in Chantilly near Paris, and was subsequently recorded, in December 1989, for Koch/Schwann ([[ASIN:B000025PY2 Francois-Joseph Gossec - Derniere Messe des Vivants (1813)]]).

Unfortunately, that spurting of events did not herald a long-lasting revival of Gossec. As for the choral works, other than a spate of later recordings of the Requiem (on Capriccio by Frieder Schernus, [[ASIN:B000001WT7 Gossec: Messe des Morts]], actually recorded in 1980 but released only in 1992, by Diego Fasolis on Naxos in 2001, [[ASIN:B000058UU0 Gossec: Grande Messe des Morts / Symphonie à 17 parties]], and by Jean-Claude Malgoire on K617, 2002, [[ASIN:B0000C8WXH Gossec - Missa Pro Defunctis]]) and a lone Motet (Jean-Claude Malgoire on K617, 2006, [[ASIN:B000F8MH8U Grands Motets]]), nothing was added. A little more than a handful of discs of his symphonies came out (I've reviewed a number of them, by Concerto Köln on Capriccio, [[ASIN:B001UUNBBY Gossec: Symphonies]], Matthias Bamert on Chandos [[ASIN:B00000IYMV Gossec: Symphonies]], Stefan Sanderling on ASV [[ASIN:B0000631BT Gossec: Symphonies 2]] and Guy Van Waas on Ricercar, [[ASIN:B0012Y1J7G Gossec: Symphonies, Op.8]] and [[ASIN:B000088SUT Symphonies Oeuvre Xii]]), but nothing like a comprehensive, complete recording. A biography came out in 2000 in French, [[ASIN:2738496784 François-Joseph Gossec, 1734-1829 : un musicien à Paris, de l'Ancien Régime à Charles X]], by Claude Role, the musicologist most active with his colleague Charles Hénin in the research on and rediscovery of Gossec (hence the RH calalog number of Gossec's works, for Role-Hénin). In fact it was Charles Hénin who was the mastermind behind the revival of both the Te Deum and the Dernière Messe des Vivants.

The "Te Deum" (the complete sentence is in fact "Te Deum Laudamus", "God, we praise Thee") was the Mass performed to celebrate festal occasions and glorious events, military victories, royal crownings or healings and the likes (the Pope had one celebrated on the occasion of the Saint-Barthelemy massacre, when the Catholics mass-murdered the Protestants of Paris, in 1572. These guys sure had a sense of the occasion). Te Deums did not always have auspicious results, though: it is while he was conducting his own, in 1677, that Lully inflicted upon his toe the fatal cane blow that would cause gangrena to propagate and kill him! Given the number of such occasions, an enormous number of Te Deums were composed and performed under the three last Louis of the Ancient Régime. We are not told on what occasion Gossec's Te Deum was composed and performed, only that it had its premiere on June 3, 1779 at Notre Dame. A search on the Internet yielded that the occasion was the birth of Marie-Thérèse Charlotte, daughter and first child of Louis the 16th and Marie Antoinette.

In the text he contributed for the concert and that is reproduced in the liner notes, conductor Jacques Grimbert feels the need to disparage Gossec's Requiem in order to promote the Te Deum. Quote (my translation): "of Gossec's output, only a few works were known until now, "Missa defunctis" [that's the Requiem], "Symphonie à 17 parties" or "Dernière Messe des  Vivants" [that one sure hadn't been know for very long, since it had been premiered only the year before Grimbert wrote this]. Those works, as interesting as they are, weren't enough to establish the composer among the greatest of his contemporaries. Not so with his "Te Deum", a composition of much greater craftsmanship [the meaning of the liner notes, "d'une toute autre lecture", is incomprehensible here, even in French. Referring to the concert program shows that it is in fact a typo. The original was "d'une toute autre facture"] and importance."

That's gratuitous hype. The "Te Deum" is a fine piece, with a few striking moments even, but it doesn't approach the impact, originality and invention of the Requiem. Even the most striking of these moments ,the "Judex crederis" - "We believe that thou shalt come to be our Judge" - with its antiphonal fanfares and thundering timpani, track 8, is directly imitated from the Requiem's Tuba mirum. In turn, it is clear where Berlioz' inspiration for his own Requiem came from.

Grimbert says that he's had to substantially revise and reorchestrate the score. He is quite ambiguous as to whether he worked after Gossec's own manuscript or only a contemporary manuscript copy ("the copy we were given as well as the manuscript we consulted"), and you need to go to his last paragraph to clarify that the only source is a manuscript copy now held by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France that is not in Gossec's hand. Anyway, consulting the manuscript, he says he found numerous "omissions", "weaknesses" and "inconsistencies" which he attributes both to Gossec's haste in providing the music, and his lack of attention to his copyists' work. Says Grimbert, "we often had to rewrite deficient viola parts, correct melodic errors, revise the harmonic background, re-establish the balance of the polyphony, secure the base line which was sometimes misplaced by one or more bars, check rhythms and finally restore the prosodical order and insure thematic coherence, especially in the two great fugues". Woof! One wonders what's left of Gossec in that process, and what gave Grimbert, despite all these weaknesses, the impression that in the Te Deum were "united what had only been found scattered in the other vocal works of Gossec, the splendor, the vocal magnificence, the melodic invention, the irresistible sweep, the continued lyricism of the musical flux" (same untranslated paragraph). The booklet nicely reproduces two examples of such revisions, one involving the bass line and one the prosody (the way the syllables fall on the notes).

The Te Deum is richly scored (large orchestra including clarinets and trombones, five soloists, singing individually or making up the "small chorus" opposed to the "large chorus"), has its suitably grandiose and/or triumphant moments (as the introductory Te Deum or that Judex credevi), its mighty choral fugues with "concertino" ensemble of soloists dialoguing with he choral "ripieno" ("Et laudamus", track 11, and the finale track 13), its beautifully brooding moments ("Te ergo quaesumus", "We therefore pray thee, help thy servants, Whom thou hast redeemed with thy precious blood", wrongly tracked on the CD: it starts at 1:30 in the Judex credevi, track 8), its fine arias  (ofen with chorus), written predominantly for soprano (tracks 3 and 9, and add the duet for two sopranos, track 12) and for baritone (tracks 2, 4, 8), and fine ensembles (track 4, "Te gloriosous", is a very extended one and lasts 8:30) - and they are often accompanied by gamboling woodwind filigree (tracks 3, 4, 10, also in the final fugue track 13). But as enjoyable as these arias and ensembles are, I find them rarely as strikingly unique and catching as those of the Requiem; there are some nice orchestral touches in the aria for baritone and chorus "Te aeternum Patrem", track 2, and wonderful concertante violin and clarinet in the orchestral introduction to the "Dignare dominum" duet, track 12. But don't quite expect here a revelation of equal stature as the Requiem, or Mozart's C-major Mass, or Haydn's Nelson-Mass. But an excellent and enjoyable specimen of late 18th Century vocal/choral music is good enough.

Hard to judge Grimbert's conducting in the absence of an alternative version. His tempo in the "allegretto" track 4 seemed a tad slow compared to the way period-instrument ensembles like Concerto Köln now perform an allegretto, but it didn't hamper enjoyment. I don't know what exactly is the "Orchestra of the University of Paris-Sorbonne", but they sound like professional instrumentalists to me, not students.

Unfortunately soprano Jill Feldman is the one major flaw of this recording - compounded by Gossec's very scoring, which places her in prominent position not only in her arias, but in the ensembles as well. In itself the voice is pretty and she doesn't actually shreek, but her vibrato-less emission seems to lacks support and sounds almost constantly slightly off-pitch, making it not so pleasurable to hear. Frankly, she sounds here like an unexperimented student in singing. Feldman had until then worked mainly with Christie's chamber-sized Arts Florissants, and, I don't know, maybe she simply didn't have the kind of technique necessary to produce those decibels above the Te Deum's large orchestra. Mezzo (more a soprano II, really) Brigitte Lafon is no better in her solo aria, "Aeterne fac" (track 10), and even painful on her high note at 1:23. At least the two are well-matched, so to speak, in their duet, track 12 (Lafon better than Feldman). Too bad.

Another more minor problem is with "haute-contre" (alto) Gérard Lesnes. The CD track listing credits him as a co-soloist in the "Te aeternum Patrem"  (track 2), and I simply DO NOT hear him there. He does appear sonically, though, at 2:15 in the ensuing ensemble, track 4, and in the fugue with ensemble, track 11. Tenor Howard Milner could have stayed home, for what you hear of him in the ensembles (and, as Lesne, he did on the day of the concert!).

Despite those weaknesses, the best tribute I can give to Gossec's Te Deum is that, at 52 minutes, it seemed too short. I would have happily welcomed twenty more (and two other sopranos). There's another entry for the same CD, check it out for availability and best price, [[ASIN:B075BR7QJP Te Deum à grand orchestre]].


title: many felicities, and even a true masterpiece

text:
Although it isn't clear reading the title of this entry, this is Artur Pizarro's Vorisek vol. 1, recorded on Collins Classics in 1995, same as [[ASIN:B000003VZ1 Piano Works]]. Among the four compositions or cycles played here, I'll take my chance and proclaim that the Fantasy op. 12 is a true and unknown masterpiece. I've listened recently to various works by "minor" composers (e.g. composers not usually recognized as "major" ones), like the Sonatas of Cimarosa ([[ASIN:B000027QXY Domenico Cimarosa: Complete Sonatas]]), some of Clementi (those played by Horowitz, [[ASIN:B000003ER0 Horowitz Plays Clementi Sonata Quasi Concerto]]), or the Chamber music of Scharwenka ([[ASIN:B00006RHQF Chamber Music Complete]]) and I've found them very good, deserving much better than their relative neglect; but they always invited comparisons with the music of "major" composers: those of Cimarosa with Scarlatti's, Clementi with Beethoven, Schwarwenka with Schumann and Brahms; and the yardstick of their value is that, to my ears, they were not so inferior to their models.

I won't say that Vorisek's Fantasy didn't invite such comparisons. It is somewhere between Mozart's two Fantasies and the best of Beethoven's Sonatas (not that there is much of a "not so best" of Beethoven's piano sonatas), with a romantic turbulence and agitation that evokes Beethoven (the finale of the Moonlight Sonata often comes to mind in the second, agitated section) or the more turbulent moments in Schubert's Impromptus (and Vorisek also shares with Schubert the tragically early death, in his case at 34) and, in the Bellini-like figuration of the right-hand in the slow introduction, whiffs that might evoke Chopin. But very soon, such comparisons seemed otiose, and I listened to the music and its beauties on their own terms.

Although composed after the Fantasy and bearing the opus number 20 (according to some Vorisek specialists it may be his last piano composition), the Sonata is maybe not on the same exalted plane. It is more archaic in form -  it doesn't have a slow movement, its middle movement being a scherzo - and its emotional content points to early rather than late Beethoven or Schubert. It is a fine work in its kind, and hearing it with the score - all the compositions featured here are available on the International Music Scores Library Project, bless them again, although the Sonata is in a slightly different edition than the one played by Pizarro - has only enhanced my appreciation of the work and interpretation; but, as excellent as it is, it doesn't have these unique melodic or harmonic twists that catch your ear in the Fantasy and make you think that you are hearing something really special. The Variations op. 19 have a hard time recovering from the deceptively simple theme that provides their point of departure and melodic underpinning, one that you'd easily expect would have caught the fancy of a 9-year old Mozart, although, listening again with score, that theme is very cleverly varied, and when the piece reaches its end, after 6 variations, it makes you regret that Vorisek didn't write 33, like Beethoven's Diabelli.

Given the Schubert reminiscences in some of the previous works and especially the Fantasy, it is fitting then that Vorisek also wrote a set of six Impromptus, op. 7. Again, on first hearing, some of them might sound deceptively simple and probing no great emotional depth, more superficially playful than Schubert's own impromptus and evidently influenced by Beethoven's Bagatelles op. 33. But in fact, listening again with the score has again entirely changed my appreciation even on those I had found lightweight: for instance, there is, in the first one, a contained, un-flaunted nostalgia that evokes not only Schubert but even the dreamy side of Schumann. The 4th has, with an agitated, Schubert-like right-hand accompaniment in triplets to the main melody, has a delicious "music-box" passage at 4:03, and the 6th starts with a quasi-tremolo of fifths that again evokes the rich harmonic world of Schubert's Impromptus, or the short, hazy shimmer that opens Beethoven's Bagatelle op. 119/7. The impromptus are full of felicities and, with a duration of 6 to 7 minutes (when all the repeats are played, as Pizarro does), there are also substantial works in the form, not just mere trifles.

Artur Pizarro made a few valuable recordings for Collins Classics after his victory at the 1990 Leeds Piano Competition, and now records for Linn Records and Naxos. Here, in Vorisek, his playing is, overall, exceptional. Not only is he extremely precise in his observance of Vorisek's nuances, articulation marks and, most important of all, silences. But, compared to some of the competition (Radoslav Kvapil, a 3-CD set on Supraphon, [[ASIN:B00008UEFF Vorisek: Piano Works]], and Olga Tverskaya on fortepiano, [[ASIN:B00004ZBJP Jan Václav Vorísek: Works for Piano]]), he has incomparably more subtely of touch and poetic imagination. His readings are, truly, revelatory. See my reviews of the two competitors to know why. Only perhaps in his statement of the theme of the variations, taken too slow for this simple music's own good, can Pizarro's sense of tempo be questioned, although he makes up, and by far, in the ensuing variations.

The CD's TT is a generous 74 minutes. Pizarro recorded for Collins a Vorisek vol. 2, [[ASIN:B000003VZI Jan Vorisek - Piano Works Volume 2 - Twelve Rhapsodies for Piano Op. 1 / Le Désir, Op. 3 / Le Plaisir, Op. 4]] or [[ASIN:B000FS4PP8 Vorisek: Piano Works, Vol.2]], and both volumes have just been reissued on a 2-CD set, [[ASIN:B004ROY1TQ Vorisek: Piano Works]].

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title: a major cycle, comparable to no one else's music from then, before or after: Vorisek can be heard on his own merits

text:
The Twelve Rhapsodies op. 1 are a mammoth cycle of over 50 minutes (it would have been much longer if Pizarro had taken all the repeats indicated by the composer), something like Vorisek's Transcendantal Studies. Stylistically they fall somewhere between Beethoven, Mendelssohn, with hints of Liszt and Schumann maybe. All these pieces are notated "Allegro", "allegro con brio", "vivace", "allegro furioso", but all are in A-B-A form, with, usually, a more lyrical and pensive middle section. Their uniformity of architecture may become somewhat wearing after a while, and Vorisek's middle sections aren't always as inspired and winning as his more agitated outer ones. Overall the Rhapsodies may not have the profundity of Beethoven or the inventivity of Liszt: they usually sound more superficial than that - there are even whiffs of the Bellini-inspired Chopin (or maybe it is Czerny) in the right-hand runs of the 6th Rhapsody -, but then, composed in 1812-13, they are the work of a 21-year old: Liszt was 2 years old! But what I find even more remarkable is not only how far away they are from the Classical model of Haydn and Mozart, but how removed they also are from any easy-to-pin-down model: they don't sound like Beethoven, they don't sound like Schubert (the Beethoven-Schubert reminiscences are much more obvious in the companion Vorisek recital recorded by Artur Pizarro, [[ASIN:B000003VZ1 Piano Works]]). The score is available on the International Music Scores Library Project - how can they be lauded enough - and following the music with it has further enhanced my admiration and helped me become aware of beauties that had escaped my attention on first hearing. The superb 3rd Rhapsody, with its agitated and turbulent triplet runs, sounds like it could have been composed by Schumann, and likewise with the magnificent 4th, playful in an unruly manner. The 7th, with its ferocious broken chords, sounds uncannily Lisztian - Vorisek's Mephisto-Waltz, as it were. Listening to the enthusiastic and syncopated 8th and trying to find comparisons that could give the reader an idea of what's in store here, I'd say it is Berlioz' Benvenutto Cellini at the piano. And the 11th sounds like a Chopin study that would have been written by Beethoven.

The titles of Le Désir op. 3 ("Desire") and Le Plaisir op. 4 ("Pleasure") - obviously a diptych, although in real life one is rarely followed by the other, as we all know - are unexplained, but (unless similar titles are found in the keyboard music of Rameau or Couperin) they would be the first compositions with a sexual innuendo before Scriabin. Not that it really translates into the music, or it would mean that the emotions linked with desire and pleasure have radically changed since the early 19th century. Following the music with the scores reveals many fine details of writing, but they don't always translate in the melodic invention. Le Désir sounds like a lengthy (almost 10 minutes) piece of salon music with not much to catch one's ear. Le Plaisir is better, and a charming little piece of Haydnesque wits. Pleasure was still very galant in those years, the exquisite manners of the ancient regime still lingered

Artur Pizarro is a portuguese pianist, born in 1968, who came to attention when he won first prize in 1990 at the Leeds International Piano Competition. He was signed by Collins and made a number of recordings before the label's demise. He now records mostly on Linn. He must be thanked for tackling such obscure repertoire. In addition, he plays superbly. See my reviews of [[ASIN:B00004ZBJP Jan Václav Vorísek: Works for Piano]] and [[ASIN:B00008UEFF Vorisek: Piano Works]] to know how superior his interpretations are from the rest who have tackled Vorisek, and how revelatory they are.

Informative liner notes, where you get some confirmations of what you hear in the music: that Vorisek was a student of Hummel and Vienna and that Beethoven was his God, that he finally met Beethoven in 1814 and showed him the Rhapsodies still in manuscript and that the great master commented that they were "brav bearbeitet" for such a young man (well worked out), that they were published in 1818 by Anton Diabelli as Vorisek's opus 1.

On first hearing, I might have written that, besides its own appeal, the music of Vorisek, like that of Hummel or Moscheles, makes you understand better the soil from which Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Liszt and Schumann emerged and developed. But, after spending a while with Vorisek's music and learning (thanks to Pizarro) to appreciate its many beauties, I can now turn that sentence around: besides making you understand better the soil from which Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Liszt and Schumann emerged and developed, the piano music of Vorisek has much to offer on its own terms. If all the star pianists had an ounce of courage and two ounces of an exploratory mind, they'd impose Vorisek in the concert hall. As it is, we have Pizarro, and on the basis of this and his companion Vorisek disc, he is one of those major pianists.


title: Tomita meets world music

text:
I've been enthusiastic about Tomita (see my reviews of [[ASIN:B000003F2D Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition - Tomita]], [[ASIN:B00003OP6X Debussy: Snowflakes Are Dancing, Prelude, etc / Tomita]], [[ASIN:B0002IJNH6 Ravel: Daphnis et Chloe [Japan LP Sleeve] [Limited Edition] [Remastered] [Japan]]], [[ASIN:B000002W42 Kosmos]]) and I've been disappointed with Tomita ([[ASIN:B000002WBJ Live in New York: Back to the Earth]], [[ASIN:B00000E69L Tomita: Live At Linz 1984: The Mind of the Universe]]). With this one I am somewhere in between. What must be noted from the outset is that it is different from your customary Tomita: not synthesizer arrangements of the popular hits of Classical music, but Tomita's own creations - one important aspect of his output (he's been very active as a composer of film or TV music) but one that is not well represented on CD, at least outside of Japan.

More precisely, this is a creative collaboration, between Tomita, Kodo wich is a Japanese ensemble performing traditional drums, and the Peruvian five-member group Kusillaqta (the quena, the traditional flutes of Peru, are prominent). The disc was recorded in 1994. It takes its title from the huge and mysterious patterns in Nasca (or Nazca), Peru.

The result? Well, you can easily imagine. New age world music. Rythmic and energetic drumming for the adrenalin (plus some raucous Japanese shouts in some tracks), cute Peruvian folk flutes for the prettiness, Tomita adding his synthesized gravy, vocal and quasi-string choruses. It doesn't have, and by far, the sonic imagination of Tomita's arrangements of the classics, but it is agreeable, easy-listening, and should appeal to fans of world music. TT 48:16.


title: despite the elegance of the Swingle Singers' arrangements and realizations, this is sweet and syrupy music

text:
For the complete track listing, see the Mp3 download entry, [[ASIN:B0040MXISK Ferris Wheels]]. This is one of the Swingle Singers' typical collection of arrangements of "easy-listening" music, standards of rock, pop and film music. The original, Paris-based Swingle Singers, the vocal octet founded in 1962 by Alabama-born Ward Swingle, specialized in jazzifying and scatting the standards of classical music, Bach, Mozart, Vivaldi and a few Romantics. Their forays in other genres were occasional: there was an album of Christmas music in 1968 ([[ASIN:B000051W4G Christmastime]]) and of American vernacular in 1969 ([[ASIN:B0006M14E8 American Look]]). Even their collaboration with the Modern Jazz Quartet of John Lewis was Bach-inspired ([[ASIN:B0009ORGWM Place Vendome]]). It is only after the group disbanded in 1972 and Swingle founded a new Octet, now based in London (first called Swingle II, then The New Swingle Singers, then The Swingles, and back to The Swingle Singers) that they started adding to their repertoire and tackling more systematically those arrangements of old standards from Jazz and the Ragtimes, or the standards of they day in rock and pop. That's also when they began to sing the lyrics (with scatted accompaniment) rather than scatting everything, as the original group had systematically done, even in their Christmas album. But the group's "middle" period, from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s, isn't well documented on CD, other than a none too recommendable reissue by Sony, [[ASIN:B002BX4VHM Swing Sing]].

When the group resurfaced on CD in the late 1980s, other than discs devoted to Bach, Mozart (both collated on [[ASIN:B00000632P The Swingle Singers - Bach Hits Back ~ A Capella Amadeus]])... or Irving Berlin ([[ASIN:B00008YGWJ Sing Irving Berlin [Import]]]) and the Beatles ([[ASIN:B000063DFY Ticket to Ride: A Beatles Tribute]], the 2002 reissue by Primarily A Cappella of an album first published on the Swingle Singers' own label, Swing CD 15), most of their albums mixed genres. A good example is the widely circulated [[ASIN:B000002SQL 1812]].

So devoting an album entirely to standards of rock and pop is, for the Swingle Singers, something of a return to a habit which was theirs mainly in the 1970s (another example being the 2002 jazz collection "Mood Swings", ASIN B0000E1WN7, but I'm out of authorized product links).

Well, once again I've learned important things, courtesy of the Swingle Singers. Not that the Swingles' CDs provide the information - on the contrary (although the liner notes of this one are slightly more informative than usually), but they give you the incentive to go look on the internet, where universal knowledge is available in a couple of clicks. Like, who is James Taylor. Sorry, but as an almost exclusive fan of classical music, I had never heard of him. So now I know, and I feel a better man. It's startling to see photos of him now. With his bald head, he looks like an accountant, or like some investor, or an MD going to the opera when he is wearing his tux. Rockers should not be allowed to age. Annie Lennox, who sent the song "No More I Love You's", up the UK charts in 1995, is still there and she's 60 (the song was originally by the short-lived group The Lover Speaks, the David Freeman - Joseph Hughs new wave duet - not that I knew, Wikipedia told me). Well, Nick Drake (had never heard of him either; the Swingles do his song "River Man"), born only three months after James Taylor, died young, at 26. Not that it helped: there are very few photos left of him. OK, it'll be shorter if I indicate what I knew: The Beatles' Eleanor Rigby of course (this arrangement is NOT on the Swingles' 1999 Beatles album referenced above), I had seen the film "A Summer of '42" way back then (that's how old I am - love the condom scene at the local drugstore: "speak up, son!"), and I knew ABOUT Björk, Stevie Wonder, Billy Joël and Brian Wilson (but don't think I had ever actually heard their songs, or it didn't leave an imprint in my memory). What I hear here doesn't really make me want to explore more of the originals.

I'm personally far from bowled over by the music. It is almost universally nice, sweet and syrupy. There is an energy in rock and pop which I can enjoy but that is absent here. This is gentle folk music, love songs, lullabies, ballads that Sinatra could have sung. This is what makes me NOT listen to that kind of music: can't feed on cotton candy every day. But I am aware that this is a minority opinion, and that most people out there feed their ears with precisely that. That said, from listening to the 30-second excerpts of the originals available on this website, I find that the Swingles' arrangements and realizations usually make the songs better (to me) than the originals, with more sensuousness, lushness and silk. And one of the most enjoyable aspect of the transcriptions is the vocal percussion. This is all vocally done, and for some of those sounds it leaves you amazed - at least if you are not familiar with human beatboxing.

But for the Swingles and high-octane energy (and more beatboxing), go to [[ASIN:B000UNMOB0 Beauty and the Beatbox]].

The label by the way is Swing (the Swingle Singers own label), and this is CD 22. TT is 52:21 (the Swingles discs were rarely very generous in that respect).


title: not the most significant Brant. You might find it cheaper...

text: ...under the entry of its reissue by Phoenix, now that the original Newport CD is out-of-print: [[ASIN:B00370ORHM Henry Brant]]. You'll also find my detailed review. The CD collates early and two late works of Henry Brant ("An Era Any Time of Year" from 1987 and "Pathway to Security" from 1990). They are not Brant's most significant compositions and not a first choice if you want to discover the unique voice of this great, outlandish and maverick composer but, for the two later compositions, a welcome complement to other and more significant collections.


title: The disc is 70-minutes long, but it doesn't offer 70 minutes of musical value

text:
Opinions may differ about the musical value of this disc, but at least one thing is indisputable: this recording is only a distant testimony of the live outdoor event that took place in Linz, Austria, on September 8, 1984, "for an audience of 80.000" say the liner notes, "on the shore of the Danube River", employing "13 channels of sound, including one from a helicopter 1,500 feet above the river, multichannels on either side of the river and on a ship that also carried the violinist, Shakuhachi players and a chorus of 100 Austrian Singers". To that, Tomita also added "special lighting, lasers, fireworks and other visual effects" that "enhanced the sound presentation", with Tomita himself controlling the sound from "a specially constructed pyramid suspended from a crane near the river".

In the midst of such fireworks of sonic and visual effects, it is easy to imagine that the quality of the music counts for relatively little. On disc, it is another matter, and what may have been a thrilling live event may turn out as very flimsy based on its musical content alone and its sonic perspective reduced from 13 channels to CD stereo. This has been very much my impression with Tomita's outdoors New York concert from two years later ([[ASIN:B000002WBJ Live in New York: Back to the Earth]]). I'm slightly more positive with this one.

On the negative and frustrating side is that a large proportion of the material is in fact duplicated from Tomita's studio albums, even when some of it comes in new mixes or arrangements. The opening fanfare from Strauss' Zarathustra (of 2001 Space Odyssey's fame) was on the 1978 album [[ASIN:B000002W42 Kosmos]] (in a different arrangement if memory serves) and Tomita used it again (in the same arrangement as here, but slightly better sonics) two years later in New York; the two excerpts from Holst's Planets were on [[ASIN:B000003F1P The Tomita Planets]] from 1976 (and Tomita used again Mars, in a different arrangement, plus another excerpt, in the New York Concert, and again the sonics are better there); The finale of Prokofiev's First Violin Concerto and the excerpt from John Williams' film score for "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (starting with the famous "spaceship communication" 5-tone theme) are on the 1979 [[ASIN:B00005EGBZ Bermuda Triangle]], Ravel's Daphnis-suite No. 2 is from the 1980 Ravel album ([[ASIN:B000VI6KXM Daphnis & Chloe]]) and the finale from Stravinsky's Firebird-Suite is on [[ASIN:B000003F2E Firebird]] (1979) and again Tomita used it the grand finale of his New York concert (in a version twice as long). In principle, it is often highly valuable to have live/concert recordings of material already recorded in the studio by pop or classical music performers, because the live event brings its own special adrenalin that recording in a studio very rarely emulates. However, I'm not sure this applies to Tomita. First, because I don't think his music-making is very permeable to the live concert's adrenalin: from information gathered on the web this is pre-recorded synthesized music that is just being run through the loud speakers by pressing on the play button, with Tomita's only live input being his controlling of the mix. Two, because you loose in sonic/hi-fi quality - a parameter that arguably is essential in the enjoyment of his music.

So the disc's value comes mainly from those arrangements that were new to the disc (and some of these Tomita did not repeat on later discs) - but even there, not all of them are of equal worth: the finale of Beethoven's 9th Symphony is often embarrassingly corny (pop drums and back to the 1970s), but moreover it is almost unlistenable because of the vagaries of the sonics, with soloists and chorus receding in a distance and zooming back in on you, and regularly covered by the sound of the helicopter. Of the Liebestod from Wagner's Tristan & Isolde I think exactly what I thought about it in the 1986 New York Concert - since, on an A-B comparison, they appear to be exactly the same recording, and unlike the other shared pieces, which are usually sonically better in New York, here the sonic difference is so marginal as to make them nearly indistinguishable: "Wagner's Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde is interesting for intoning the famous tune as if from a great distance - the distance of myths perhaps - and drowning it into resonance, as if heard underwater. Then Tomita substitutes organ and washes of quasi-strings (plus soft harpsichord) to Wagner's orchestration. It is not particularly imaginative, and imparts the music with an unsubtle, all-pervading, saccharine new-age atmosphere that obviously tries to make the music sound ethereal but robs it of all its searing passion and tension: here, as an orchestrator, Wagner wins, hands down".

So what's left?  The Japanese traditional "Cranes in their Nest" with solo Sakuhashi (the Japanese traditional flute), very atmospheric, although Tomita's "space" accompaniment is perhaps a little too much spinelessly "space" (but it quite organically segues into Ravel's Daphnis). Vaughan Williams' Lark Ascending, which sounds like it could be another folk-based composition, Japanese or not, but with violin replacing the Shakuhachi (but the ending is unfortunately marred by the sound of the helicopter's rotors); incidentally, credit for the music's fascinating beauty should really be given to Vaughan Williams rather than Tomita, since the original composer's complete solo violin is kept untouched, with Tomita only subsituting his discreet "space" electronic accompaniment to Vaughan Williams' acoustic orchestra (which anyway was always subservient to the solo violin in the first place) and, if my ears serve, putting a halo of resonance around the violin. The Dance of the Young Girls from Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, to make one rue that Tomita didn't do the complete Rite (the music frustratingly fades out after 3-minutes): I've read somewhere that RCA once announced that Tomita was working on it, but apparently the project never came to completion.  Finally, there is, for me at least, Tomita's brilliant and imaginative "re-orchestration" of the finale of Prokofiev's First Violin Concerto - granted, not a new piece, since it was on the Bermuda Triangle album, but new to me, since I don't have that album, and it makes me long to find it at a reasonable price.

So: 4 tracks totalling circa 23 minutes out of the CDs 70: this ain't such a long record after all.


title: Mussorgsky's Pictures sound great played on the accordion

text:
Any transcription, e.g. playing a composition on another instrument or instrumental ensemble than the one it was conceived for by the composer, is legitimate as long as it is effective. A transcription brings new timbral colors to familiar compositions, in a way that can be ear-catching and even revelatory and more convincing even that the original. Bach played at the piano is a transcription, or even Beethoven played on a modern grand, and the customary arguments in defence of the new instrument seem to me pure twaddle: that Bach or Beethoven would have composed for the modern grand if they had known it, that Beethoven composed for an imaginary instrument that transcended the limitations of the fortepianos of his days, and what not. Fact is, we don't know what Bach or Beethoven would have done if they had known the modern grand, and fact is, what they composed for and what their compositions were played upon were the instruments of their days. So what makes playing Bach or Beethoven on the modern grand entirely legitimate is not those spurious reconstructions, but simply that the music "works" on the modern instrument, which brings to it a range of color and expression that (but I am aware that not all the admirers of the harpsichord or the fortepiano will agree with me on this one) does transcend the sonic limitations of the original instruments and that is entirely convincing and gratifying in its own right. And if it worked played by a kazoo orchestra, then the kazoo orchestra would be as legitimate as anything.

But there is, other than those general considerations, a special legitimacy to transcribing and playing Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" on other instruments.

Mussorgsky's cycle, originally composed for the piano in 1874, is so descriptive, graphic, evocative and, well, picturesque, that from the outset it seemed to call for more colors than (thought many, although I don't include myself with those) the piano could provide. Orchestrations were essayed about as soon as the work was published, among which Ravel's is the most famous, but neither the first, nor the last. But many other instrumental possibilities were explored, from solo instrument (organ galore, as an introduction see my review of [[ASIN:B003TVTS2I Anne Chollet Plays Bach, Liszt & Mussorgski]], even guitar - there is a version by Kazuhiyo (sometimes spelt Kazyhito) Yamashita, available on CD on the Japanese sister company under ASIN B000V2RWLM; I haven't heard it, but I'm rather sceptical about the instrument's ability to add and vary color) to brass ensemble ([[ASIN:B00000DRSO Pictures at an Exhibition: Night at the Bare Mountain]]), chamber ensemble ([[ASIN:B002FAXFK0 Ravel: Le Tombeau de Couperin / Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition]]), synthesizer (Tomita's famous version, see my review of [[ASIN:B000003F2D Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition - Tomita]]). I'm not sure it was ever done with a kazoo orchestra, though.

The concert accordion (or, as here, its Russian version, the Bayan) is one of my favorite instruments. It shares with the keyboard instruments (piano or harpsichord) the sharpness of articulation and attack and the digital virtuosity, but it draws from the woodwinds a continuity of breath and ability to sustain tones that the piano, with its strings struck by felted hammers, and the harpsichord with its pinched strings, can only simulate. It has more bass clarity than the organ and is more capable of conveying polyphony and counterpoint. Its eerie and reedy timbres may not be to everyone's taste, but I find that it conjures a great variety of colors, and they seem particularly appropriate for Mussorgsky's depiction of Viktor Hartmann's gaudy Russian pictures.

Because of the reminiscences of the barrel organ it conjures, the accordion returns "Pictures at an Exhibition" to their popular/folk roots. The Old Castle is particularly effective in its evocative wistfulness, and Lips' Market at Limoges evokes memories of Petrushka's fair. The shrieks of the Unhatched Chicks are graphically depicted, and  Catacombae are suitably evocative of the organ. The instrument may lack a touch of power in Gnomus, Goldenberg or The Great Gates of Kiev, but this is more than compensated by its timbral ear-catching originality, that I find totally appropriate to Mussorgsky's picturesque evocations.

The instrument is one thing and the performer is another. Born in 1948, Friedrich Lips is one of the great virtuosos of the Bayan, the author of the fundamental textbook "The Art of Bayan Playing" and he is also a fine interpreter. His Promenades do not attempt at probing for great depths of expression - they are lively and joyous, and obviously the promenader is tremendously enjoying his visit at the Hartmann exhibition - and his Bydlo doesn't quite trudge as your fantasy of a ponderous oxencart, but he commands the full range of expression called by Pictures, from the meditativeness of The Old Castle to the whimsicality of the Unhatched Chicks and the fury of The Hut of Fowl's Legs. Fans of Mussorgsky's Pictures should not miss this.

I don't have much to say about Leon Boellmann's Gothic Suite from 1895, originally for organ, as I don't even know the original. But the timbral richness of the accordion is ideally suited to the acoustic explorations of contemporary music and has inspired many contemporary composers, of which Lips has been an indefatigable champion. Two fine specimens are offered here, Gennadi Banshchikov's Sonata No. 1 for Bayan from 1977, evocative and dramatic although still rooted in some sense of melody, and Gubaidulina's stunning De Profundis, a study in the instruments eeriest sonorities.

TT 70:20, and this is a great disc. See the comments section under my review of [[ASIN:B0000525L7 Vivi felice! Accordion Music by Domenico Scarlatti]] for a discography of classical accordion.


title: the concept is tantalizing, but the result is somewhat disappointing

text:
On paper it seemed like a good idea.

I was curious to hear Busoni's Chaconne played on the organ. Of course, the Chaconne isn't, originally, Busoni's: it is a transcription for piano of Bach's Chaconne from the solo violin sonata No. 2. But playing it on the organ seems particularly appropriate since, unlike Brahms (who retained the lean textures of the solo violin by transcribing Bach's Chaconne for left hand only), Busoni clearly has in mind not the violin but the organ, on the model of the numerous piano transcriptions he did of Bach's organ compositions. His transcription of the Chaconne, then, is less a transcription of Bach's original violin composition than of the imaginary organ piece Bach might have composed if he had written the Chaconne for the organ. So, here, Anne Chollet is really re-creating the imaginary Bach original work of which Busoni's is the the transcription.

As for Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, composed for the piano in 1874, they are so graphic, descriptive, evocative, colorful and, well, picturesque, that they seem to call for more colors than the piano can provide - in fact, orchestral colors. And many composers over the years have done exactly that - Ravel's orchestration, made in 1922 on a comission of Serge Koussevitzky, is the most famous, but neither the first, nor the last. But the symphony orchesta is not the only medium to which "Pictures" has been transcribed: it's been done, among other things, for guitar, accordion(s), brass band, chamber ensemble, synthesizer (Tomita's famous realization, see my review of [[ASIN:B000003F2D Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition - Tomita]]), to say nothing of Emerson-Lake-and Palmer's Rock realization. And I wasn't aware how OFTEN it had been played on the organ. Type "Mussorgsky organ" here under the "music" category and it will yield... 130 entries! OK, most are not "Pictutres" and not organ, but still, the first three pages (I then ran out of patience) brought out seven different versions - and the two by Jean Guillou weren't even included (see links in the comments section). Anne Chollet, a Swiss pianist and organist born in 1967, plays her own transcription and, as she explains in her liner notes, it was less a matter of adaptating the musical text than choosing sonorities, registrations and orchestration on her instrument.

But, however tantalizing the project, I find the result somewhat disappointing, maybe because my expectations were too high. In her "orchestration" of Mussorgsky's Pictures, Chollet commendably varies timbral colors, and her interpretive approach is always sound, but still I find that the instrument remains more mono-chromatic than the orchestra and almost greyish and bland (and I personnaly never found that the piano lacked colors), while also loosing much of the sharpness of attack of the piano, as well as some of its digital virtuosity, which is especially perceptible in Gnomus or the Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks; because, also, of the long decay time of the church acoustics, the instrument tends to solemnize the music too much and somewhat "muddy" the textures. While "Bydlo" or "Goldenberg and Schmuyle" benefit from the change of medium, try and forget both the original piano version and the orchestral versions, and "The Old Castle" or "Cum Mortuis in lingua mortua" played on the organ sound like meditative church music, something Franck or Widor might have written: and I'm not sure the music gains. "Catacombae" doesn't sound out of place on the organ, but it isn't nearly as terrifying as on the piano or with the orchestra.  "Gnomus" and "Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks" sound more modern than Franck or Widor: maybe Jehan Alain - but they still sound like organ music rather than like evocative pictures. Likewise, "The Hut of Fowl's Legs" sounds like a big organ toccata, and The Great Gate of Kiev like a grandiose and solemn final peroration for organ. The problem is, I think, that hearing "Pictures" on the organ, you (well... I) never can forget that you are in a church. The images that come to me are those of the nave and transept and the organ pipes - not of a gnome, not of an old castle, not of Czarist Russia on Easter Day with the full bells ringing, not of old Russia's gaudy imagery. It would be best if one could forget both the piano original and its orchestral transcription and take this as a pure organ cycle with no underlying descriptive program... but of course that can't be done. I am happy to have heard it, but based on this version I don't find Pictures played on the organ nearly as convincing as on the piano, with the orchestra or even with accordion(s) ([[ASIN:B0002IN1I8 Pictures At An Exhibition (Mussorgsky, Boellmann, Banshchikov, Gubaidulina) - F. Lips (The Stars of Russian Bayan)]] or [[ASIN:B000002SFD Duos for Classical Accordions]]), which have sharper attack and clearer textures.

The same comments can be made with Chollet's Bach-Busoni Chaconne, although it may be less a problem here, because the church-like atmosphere, the solemnization of the music are here part of the very concept: re-creating the imaginatry Bach organ work upon which Busoni based his piano transcription. Still, paradoxically, I find the Chaconne played on the organ, despite all the instrument's registrational possibilities, ultimately more colorless than at the piano, for a number of reasons, all of which I am not sure can be ascribed to the instrument rather than to the interpreter. Generally speaking, there are the muddy and undefined basses (regrettable when some important counter-melodies go unnoticed) and the general mellowness of attack. More specifically, Busoni's careful layering of dynamics, his seguing from forte to piano, is completely lost in the opening pages, where Chollet's organ remains in a constant  mezzoforte. Likewise with Busoni's precisely notated variety of touch: again, in the opening pages, there is no true "staccato" or "staccatissimo" (try for instance at 3:29, here replaced by changes of registration); I would have been ready to ascribe it to the instrument's long decay time, but then, later on, things get better, and the passage starting at 4:56 (played in the instrument's treble and flute-like registers, which probably has something to do with it) is effectively and atmospherically done. Finally, because a church provides much more acoustic space to fill with decibels, some of Busoni's climactic moments fail to make the same impact as with Busoni's piano (like the passage starting at 9:08); but it has to do with Chollet's interpretive choices as well, as when, at 13:08, she elects to play much of Busoni's final climax piano rather than the written double forte.

Again, as with Mussorgsky's Pictures, I am happy to have heard it on the organ (a dream of mine fulfilled), but if Bach had indeed written his Chaconne for the organ and Busoni transcribed it, I'd definitely prefer the transcription. Again, I find it much more convincing when played on the accordion, because the textures always remain clear and the attacks and articulation sharp (see my review of [[ASIN:B00000E74E Christine Rossi Accordéon de Concert]]).

I'm not as familiar with Liszt's original Totentanz for piano and orchestra (Chollet based her transcription also on Emil von Sauer's two-piano transcription) and, possibly by way of consequence, I find the organ transcription more convincing. Liszt's variations on the Dies Irae are so... varied, and imaginative, they lend themselves well to being played on a single instrument, and their 17:40 minutes never sound long-drawn-out.

A curio then, recommended as such despite my personal reservations as to the results. TT 72, no complaint on that side.


title: mystery solved: this is "Anyone For Mozart, Bach, Handel, Vivaldi?"

text: OK, from the track listing available on the Japanese sister company, I know what this is. Not that I read Japanse, but I take my clues from the various K. numbers or W.F and C.Ph. indications. Well, it is [[ASIN:B0000046Y7 Anyone For Mozart, Bach, Handel, Vivaldi?]], the circa 1990 Polygram reissue of two Swingle Singers albums from the early 1960s: the 1964 "Going Baroque" and 1965 "Anyone for Mozart" (aka Swinging Mozart), minus one Handel track from the former, God knows why (there would have been ample space to include it). You will find it cheaper on that entry.


title: another entry for the same CD

text: same Cd as [[ASIN:B000002SQC Bach Hits Back]]. See my detailed review and others thereunder, where at the time of writing the CD also sells cheaper.


title: the original issue of a CD later given greater circulation by Virgin

text:
Judging from the track listing this is the same content as on the CD published in 1995 by Virgin records, [[ASIN:B000002SQL 1812]]. Indeed it makes sense of the fact that the Virgin CD indicates that it was recorded in 1988 and 1989. I suppose then that the Swingle Singers self-produced the recording and first released it on their own label, Swing (the present entry), and then subsequently sold the copyright to Virgin when they signed with that label, a collaboration which began in 1991 with their Mozart CD, [[ASIN:B000002SND A Cappella Amadeus - A Mozart Celebration]], and their Folk Song collection, [[ASIN:B00004VFZX Folk Music Around The World]], and resulted also in a Bach album, [[ASIN:B000002SQC Bach Hits Back]], itself apparently the completed reissue of a self-produced CD published earlier, [[ASIN:B000NC0NEI The Bach Album]].

I refer you to my review of the Virgin release for a detailed comment on the recital, which mixes live and studio, scatted and sung, classical and pops. At the time of writing, it is also sold cheaper there.


title: Despite Singher's supreme elegance of diction, the music ranges between third rate opera comique and the film music of Honegger

text:
Though much of his career, starting in 1943, was spent in the US and particularly at the Met, Martial Singher was French and a pure product of a school for which elegance of diction was paramount. I knew him through a few recordings, his pioneering Ravels with Piero Coppola ([[ASIN:B00000G2BO Collection Piero Coppola Volume 2 - Conducts Ravel (recorded 1927-1934) - Introduction & Allegro; Scheherazade; Rhapsodie Espagnole; Pavane pour Une Infante Defunte; Valses Nobles et Sentimentales; Alborada del Gracioso; Tombeau de Couperin; Bolero; etc.]]), his Mephisto from Berlioz' Damnation of Faust with Munch ([[ASIN:B00000E6GM Berlioz - La Damnation De Faust ; Debussy -La Demoiselle Élue (2 CD) (RCA Victor)]]) and his untypical but great role of the Devil in Stokowski's conducted Soldier's Tale of Stravinsky (which he and the rest of the cast, Madeleine Milhaud and Jean-Pierre Aumont, recorded in two versions, in French and English, [[ASIN:B0000023EE Stravinsky: L'Histoire du Soldat (The Stokowski Collection)]] and [[ASIN:B0002XL1ZS Stravinsky: L'Histoire du Soldat (The Soldier's Tale)]]).

So I thought it might be fun to hear him in these French folk and patriotic songs. Turns out it wasn't, not so much. These are simple songs, if not simplistic, repetitive in the verse-refrain form, the songs every French kid knows, but only the titles and first words (and that includes the Marseillaise!). They don't sit very well with the arrangements for symphony orchestra and the opera-comique kind of diction. It makes them sound exactly like that: opéra comique, and rarely of the best musical quality. They loose much of their lightness and unsophisticated freshness. That said, Singher sings with supreme elegance and clarity of diction, and witty humor in "Tout Va Très Bien Madame La Marquise" ("All is Well Lady Marquise"), one of the two modern, 20th century songs of the recital, and one from the music hall. The selection and arrangements also became slightly better starting with Frère Jacques (track 10), here sung in canon with a tolling bell ostinato: from that point the arrangements evoked rather the film music of Honegger (track 16, "Ça Ira", is in fact a modernization of the old revolutionary song by Jean Françaix on words by Sacha Guitry), and quaintly smacked of bygone pre-war France. Note that half the songs are in fact sung not by Singher, but by the anonymous chorus under conductor and arranger Anton Paulik. They sing competently, with a timbre which overall sounds a bit nasal and with an accent, which I am not sure if it is American or German - I'd incline for the latter.

The disc was originally released in 1961 under the title "Best-Loved French Songs". The sonics are still excellent by today's standards.


title: a mixture of classical, folk/traditional, pop and jazz/Broadway. Too short for its worth

text:
The Swingle Singer's early, Paris-based years (1963-1973) are well documented on CD - all their albums have been reissued, except, alas, their recording of Berio's Sinfonia made for CBS with the New York Philharmonic under the conductor's baton, and their last album, "Bitter Ending" (how ironic!), a composition by the French jazz composer and critic André Hodeir (see my review of [[ASIN:B000BU99I8 Best of]] for details and links). Their "late" period (starting at the turn of the 1980s/90s when they moved to the label Virgin) is also abundantly documented on CD, even if most of the albums published on the Swingle Singers' own label, Swing, that were NOT licensed and reissued later by labels like Virgin, Signum or Primarily A Capella, are not listed on this website and some hard to find.

But the "middle" period, after the original, Paris-based group had disbanded and founder/arranger Ward Swingle had moved to London and re-formed a new group, called alternately Swingle II or the New Swingle Singers before reinstating the name Swingle Singers, has not been well-served on CD. CBS and EMI/Moss Music Group, the two labels they principally recorded for, have not done a good job with reissues. Only the Sony CD, "[[ASIN:B002BX4VHM Swing Sing]]", is a reissue of the LPs "Rags and All that Jazz" (CBS 1976, reissued complete) and "Lovin' You: Words and Music vol. 2" (CBS 1976, 7 tracks out of 10), with two additional tracks from the six of "Words and Music" (CBS 1974) and one (the BeeGees Medley) from "No Time To Talk" (CBS 1979).

But albums like "Love Songs for Madrigals and Magriguys (CBS 1974), "Words and Music" (CBS 1974) other than its two reissued tracks, "Baroque" (CBS 1976, with transcriptions of Bach and Haendel), "Pieces of Eight" (CBS 1977), "No Time to Talk" (CBS 1979), "Swingle Bells" (Moss Music Group 1978), "Swingle Skyliner" (MMG 1979) and "Folio" (MMG 1980), as well as RCA's "English and French Part-Songs" from 1977, all seem confined to LP oblivion. [[ASIN:B004A4AV6A Audio CD. Swingle Bells. Swingle Singers. (MMG1124)]] purports to be a CD, but it isn't: that album was never reissued in CD form, and it is exactlty the same as this, [[ASIN:B004SY4D1G The New Swingle Singers: Swingle Bells (Christmas) [VINYL LP] [STEREO]]].

Among those that were recorded in the 1980s before the Virgin years, some have been released on CD but are hard to find, and even more at reasonable prices: [[ASIN:B00286BCFQ The Swingle Singers Compilation Album (Reflections & Live at Ronnie Scotts)]], the first album released on the Swingle Singers' own label, Swing (CD 1/2) compiles two recordings, the 1985 "Reflections" and 1987 "Live at Ronnie Scott's" (minus three tracks from Reflections that were played live at Ronnie Scott's two years later), but the Polydor album "Instrumentals" (recorded in 1986) has not been reissued.

So it's good to have this "Live 1982 in New York" CD, it helps bridge the gap between the original Swingles and the later ones from the 1990s onwards. Ward Swingle was still a member of the group (he retired in 1984, although he retained the position of musical adviser and sometimes arranger) and on the cover photo he is starting to look, well, maybe not like the grand pop' of the rest (and the rest look like they've just come out of adolescence), but certainly as their dad. But it certainly isn't something you hear, although we are not told which tenor takes the long solo part in Stevenson's Romance and the shorter one in Shakespeare's song (tracks 4 & 5). Apparently the CD was released as late as 2006 (that's the date that also appears on the group's own website) on the ensemble's own label, as SwingCD R01. There may have been an earlier release in the form of a cassette tape, but I have no clear evidence of it.

Other than their 1968 Christmas album ([[ASIN:B000051W4G Christmastime]]) and their collaboration with André Hodeir, the French Swingles had more or less specialized in Classical, or Jazzified classical. Even their encounter with The Modern Jazz Quartet in "[[ASIN:B0006M14EI Place Vendome]]" was Bach-inspired. Only in their album "[[ASIN:B0006M14E8 American Look]]" had they strayed in the direction of popular music, singing arrangements of Negro Spirituals, country music, patriotic songs, Stephen Foster and Gershwin.

The new, London Swingles became more systematic about it, taking on the jazz standards old and new, the ragtimes, Broadway, the pop music hits and famous film themes. So here, in 1982, culled from two nights, on 15th and 16th October, at the Village Gate in New York, you get a mixture of Classical, folk/traditional ("Country Dances", track 14), pop (Judy Tzuke's "For You" from the 1979 album "Stay with me till Dawn", [[ASIN:B00005NUSS Stay With Me Till Dawn: Very Best of]]) and Jazz/Broadway: Cole Porter's "It's All Right With Me" (the arrangement has great verve) and "Just One of Those Things", Gershwin's "Fascinating Rhythm" (Swingle's brilliant arrangement for voices of the Big Band arrangement made by Bill Russo for the Stan Kenton band of the George and Ira Gershwin song, with new "vocalese" lyrics by Jon Hendricks expanding on those of Ira - no kidding!), Count Basie's Lil' Darlin' (again in Jon Hendrick's "vocalese" lyrics, from the album "Sing Along With Basie", but I've run out of authorized product links, you'll find it under ASIN B000002UX8 or B001G79Q1K), Al Jarreau's Blue Rondo a la Turk, from the album "Breakin' Away" (ASIN B000002KMG), after a composition of Dave Brubeck.

The Classical selections are Bach's Fugue BWV 578 (it became one of the group's favorite standards - I've located 5 different recordings of it, including the one sung with personnel entirely changed and in a denser arrangement in their Virgin Bach Hits Back CD, ASIN B000002SQC), a song of King Henry VIII, Rimsky's Flight of the Bumble Bee (also a favorite of theirs in those years, found also in the "Folio" and "Reflections" albums) and Debussy's Clair de Lune, that sounds in the arrangement like it could be titled "reverie". There are also three original compositions of Ward Swingle, entertaining and jazzy, after poems from Marlowe ("Come live with me and be my love" - and the Swingles conspicuously do NOT rime the verses "And if these pleasures may thee move / Come live with me and be my love"), Stevenson's Romance (and a check on Google confirms that this is indeed Robert Louis) and Shakespeare's "It was a Lover and his Lass".

Because most of these tracks are arrangements of songs rather than of instrumental music (the classical pieces are the exception), there is less of what is the Swingles' unique trademark: vocalizing instrumental music. Here, they sound more like an outstanding a capella group, something like the King's Singers, when the King's Singers tackle the pops - not so unique, then. Nonetheless all the arrangements display extraordinary verve, beat and swing, and the live circumstances (applause at the end of each song) make the group's customary razor-sharp precision of pitch and ensemble all the more remarkable. TT is a scanty, LP-determined 43:58, and it isn't nearly enough. No texts of songs (but those can be found on the net), no information about the sources - for that too I had to do some hunting on the internet.


title: This is so good, there is simply not enough of it, and Philips/Universal are really milking the cow here

text:
First, let me vent my frustrations: this is so good and entertaining, why so little of it? The original LP - recorded and released in 1965 according to the apparently well-informed Wikipedia entry, although the CD bears a copyright date of 1967 - was short even for an LP: 28 minutes 35. This was the fourth album of the original, Paris-based Swingle ensemble, that had burst into the limelight in 1963 with their chart-making "Jazz Sébastien Bach" ("Bach's Greatest Hits" in the US, [[ASIN:B00004UFOL Jazz Sebastian Bach, Vol. 1]]). Two members had changed since the original album: one mezzo and one bass. Not that you can hear any difference. The Paris-based Swingles used a jazz drum and double-bass accompaniment section - here, Guy Pedersen, also Michel Legrand's double-bassist, and Daniel Humair at the drums, who became (and still is) one of France's top jazz drummers. When the group reformed in 1973 in London, they became a purely "a capella" group; not that they dispensed with the jazz accompaniment: they now sung it.

And then there's this "original jacket collection" type of thing by which Philips or Universal or whoever holds the copyrights on these recordings (both are indicated on the CD's back cover)  reissue the original LPs "straight", short timings and all. Now come on, what's the point!?? Getting the glands of nostalgia of the older generation of listeners to salivate? Short thinking. The more you go, the less of the older generation there will be to salivate anyway, and personally I don't buy nostalgia, I buy music. And there aren't even any substantial liner notes from the original LP that might justify it, as sometimes with Sony/CBS' original jacket collection reissues. So why give us the scanty 30-minutes minus, when two of the original LPs would easily fit on one CD? And this is indeed what Polygram did in the early 1990s when they started reissuing the Swingles' original recordings: the two Bach albums from 1963 and 1968 were reissued as [[ASIN:B0000046WP Jazz Sebastian Bach]], and the 1964 album "Going Baroque" was paired with the 1965 LP "Anyone for Mozart?" on [[ASIN:B0000046Y7 Anyone For Mozart, Bach, Handel, Vivaldi?]] (except, who knows why, for one track, that could have easily fit). So really, this 1965 album, "Getting Romantic" (released in France under the title "Les Romantiques") should have been paired with, say, the Swingle's next from 1966, "Rococo A Go Go/Swingling Telemann" (see my review of [[ASIN:B00005V9SM Swingling Telemann]]). Anyway, as it is, find it priced accordingly.

And there's this habit of the Swingles to play only snippets: the finale of Beethoven's 5th Violin-Piano Sonata (the "Spring") but not the rest - the first movement in particular has a gorgeously lyrical theme that would have been ideally suited to the Swingles -, Mussorgky's "Market of Limoges" from "Pictures at an Exhibition", but why not more ? All the more frustrating as, in the original, "Market of Limoges" leads directly, by way of a great crescendo-accelerando, to the awesome and funeral Catacombae. In fact, why not the complete Pictures ? Two Etudes and a Waltz from Chopin, fine, great, but are you telling me that in 50 years of existence (personnel constantly changing, of course) the Swingles never found the time to adapt and perform Chopin's complete Preludes, Etudes and Waltzes ?!!! The andante from Schubert's 13th String Quartet, but where's the rest, and where is "Death and the Maiden", Schubert's awesome 14th String Quartet?

In fact, the Swingles' arrangements and realizations are so enticing, entertaining, illuminating, that I crave for complete traversals of everything: Schubert's complete quartets and two quintets, Scarlatti's 555 sonatas, Mozart's and Beethoven's symphonies, concertos  and piano sonatas (in fact the only complete works the Swingles have recorded in their 50 years of existence is, if I am not forgetting anything, although in abridged form, are Mozart's Kleine Nachtmusik in the "Anyone for..." album mentioned above and 40th Symphony, in [[ASIN:B000002SND A Cappella Amadeus - A Mozart Celebration]], a 1981 recording), Bach's Goldberg Variations and Well-Tempered Clavier, Vivaldi's complete Four Seasons, and.... Oh, well, everything.

I've written a number of reviews of the Swingle's discs recently, and I've contended that the fascination and entertainment of their arrangements and realizations derive from the fact that they elevate to the status of high art what we all do, almost inadvertently, without even thinking about it, in a very rudimentary form, walking on the street, washing the dishes, vacuuming and ironing - and, of course, under the notorious shower: humming our favorite tunes. But the Swingles are to our shower humming what a Picasso is to your kid's drawings. And I've also opined that by so doing, they return instrumental music to its very origin and essence: the human voice - as, presumably, all these great composers, Bach, Mozart, Vivaldi, Handel, Beethoven, Chopin and all the rest first hummed these tunes for themselves before committing them to the music sheet. Consequently, it is asked of and expected from a pianist playing Chopin (or Beethoven, or Schumann, or Schubert) to make his instrument SING, even if (or precisely because) its acoustical properties are radically different from those of the human voice: no sustained out-breath, but the vibration of a struck chord that will start decaying as soon as it is produced.

The Swingles' arrangements and realizations are great. You get here their customary mixture of the dazzlingly virtuosic (the two Beethoven, Chopin's Etude op. 25/2 with great tossing of the melody between the two sopranos, Mendelssohn's Song without Words "Spinner's Song/Spinnerlied", here titled "La Fileuse", Mussorgsky), and the sensuously caressing soprano(s) over the silky tapestry of the vocal accompaniment (Chopin's Etude op. 10/6 and Waltz, Schubert's Rosamunde).

But 28 minutes! It took me longer to write the review: not a good ratio. It's an enthusiastic five stars for the music, a frustrated two for the disappointing timing. I love the music so much, I'll flunk my maths and average it to four. For more on/of the Swingle Singers, see my comprehensive discography on Listmania! (links in the comments section).


title: the lesser of Schnabel's three recordings

text:
This is the second of the three studio recordings Arthur Schnabel made of these two concertos, and it was done on July 22 (5th) and 24 (4th), 1942. Schnabel's first go-round was the seminal recording he made in 1932-33 with Malcolm Sargent conducting the London Symphony Orchestra (5) and London Philharmonic Orchestra (4). I have them in a now hard-to-find Schnabel-Dante 14-CD box, [[ASIN:B00000G405 Sonatas & Concertos]], but they are now easily accessible on Naxos (check on the European sister companies for better prices), in transfers by sonic wizard Mark Obert-Thorn: [[ASIN:B00005K3PG Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 3, Piano Concerto No. 4]] and [[ASIN:B002JP5V5S Schnabel - Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 5/Cello Sonata No. 2 (rec. 1932 & 1934)]].

Not that they were recording premieres (Backhaus had recorded them both already, with different British conductors and orchestras, [[ASIN:B000001ZFR Plays Beethoven]], and even he wasn't first), although Schnabel-Sargent were indeed the first to record the complete cycle (1 & 5 in 1932 with the LSO, the rest the next year with the LPO, although Dante faultily attributes them all to the LSO). But those versions were immediately recognized as THE classic ones against which all previous and subsequent ones were to be gauged - and often dismissed - at least until Schnabel's post-World War II remakes: he re-recorded them in 1946-7 with the Philharmonia Orchestra under Issay Dobrowen (4) and Alceo Galliera (5), in what might have been a new complete cycle but, for reasons that I don't know, never included the 1st (and the 3rd wasn't released until 1957; to know why, see my review of  Testament's reissue, [[ASIN:B000003XI4 Piano Concerti 3 & 4]]; the Emperor is on [[ASIN:B000003XI3 Piano Concerti 2 & 5]]).

Comparing Schnabel's three recordings, the most remarkable feature is how unchanged his conception remains. The tempos in the outer movements of the 4th Concerto and the finale of the 5th are within seconds of each other; the first movement of the Emperor is slightly more spacious in 1942, but that has to do with the conducting of Frederick Stock, not the conception of Schnabel (more about that hereunder). Those who would be tempted to equate that notion of "the classic" version with "middle-of-the-road", or who'd expect from Schnabel's grandfatherly figure an amiable and gentle approach, are in for a big shock. At Schnabel's hands the 4th, past the statement of the theme and the orchestral introduction, is no kin to the Pastorale, no gentle and lyrical work in the vein of the Violin Concerto: it is brisk, thrusting, romantically turbulent, with an exuberant finale (marginally more than in 1947, and marginally less than in 1933, but these differences are perceptible only on close comparison). Despite Stock's tendency to hold back, the Emperor is also a thrusting, powerful and martial perfromance in its first movement, almost brutal in its pounding energy in the finale, which doesn't preclude a great delicacy in the passagework at 3:35 (although Schnabel never here quite approached the otherworldly lightness of his 1932 recording). Truth is, this was very much the performing style of those days, in these works. I've encountered the same kind of brisk and turbulent approach in just about every version I've heard from those years, Josef Hofmann (in concert with Ormandy in 1938 and a stupendous performance, volume 7 of the Philadelphia Centennial collection, regrettably not listed on this website), Giesking (in the 4th with Böhm in 1939, in the Emperor with Walter in 1934 and Rother in 1944/5), Serkin (in 1941 with Walter in the Emperor), Marguerite Long (in the 5th with Munch in 1944), Robert Casadesus (in the 4th in 1947 with Ormandy, and as late as 1955 in the Emperor with Mitropoulos), Horowitz in 1952 in the Emperor, even Rubinstein in the 4th with Beecham in 1947 (due to Amazon's limited number of authorized product links, I'll give them in the comments section). Among those, Schnabel is the fastest only in his finale of the Emperor in 1932.

One of the most widespread cliches about Schnabel is that he wasn't interested in digital perfection, and was happy to let pass a few slips, if the music making was up to his standards. Yet I hear none of this in any of his three recordings: on the contrary, the digital fleetness and precision are awesome, and the very few finger slips (and this is 78rmp era and no tape splicing) are miniscule.

Not that any of this conveys a sense of breathless suffocation - not to me, at least, but not only, I think, because I've heard so many similar and even more radical versions. Certainly, when he thursts forward, Schnabel doesn't look back; but he also knew how to breathe and sing, and his readings unfold with a true sense of naturalness and evidence. In each of his recordings, the slow movement of the Emperor is imbued with a wonderful feeling of interiority. The one with Stock is the most expansive of the three - again, as in the first movement, because of Stock's very slow opening tempo, eliciting something of a Mahlerian "time-suspended" impression; but when Schnabel enters, he plays at his customary and slightly more flowing tempo and with his incomparable delicacy of touch, enhanced by the bird that starts chirping at 2:16 as if in response - that's the kind of little bonus I love to get in a recording.

Where Schnabel's 1942 recording does differ to a significant degree from his others is in the slow movement of the 4th. It is not just a question of the more spacious tempo - with Stock it unfolds in 5:23, against 4:49 with Sargent and 4:54 with Dobrowen: it is the whole character and expression that sound very differently. Stock has his Chicagoans utter their calls with such stentorian power (and church-like resonance) you would think it were the call of God Almighty. In relation, the piano sounds distant, as if recorded in another room. The effect isn't uninteresting, but I prefer the more delicate intimacy of the two other versions.

Overall, Schnabel's three versions of each of these concertos are so similar to each other that it is difficult to recommend one over the other, but still I find that this one with Stock is the least preferable of all three. The 1932-33 recordings, in my Dante transfers, may have a loud surface swish (and, given Obert-Thorn's reputation, I'm sure things are improved on Naxos), but I don't find it any more obtrusive than the dim but constant scratching surface sound of the RCA recordings, and for all the sonic limitations of the earlier recordings (although the piano is always very clearly defined), the interpretations have this hair of added zest and youthfulness to them over the two subsequent ones. Furthermore, whether because of the original recording or the transfer, the Chicago Symphony has, at least in the 4th PC, a slightly harsh sound in the tutti, altough one gets easily used to that too. At the beginning of the 4th the piano also sounds dim and muffled, although that improves later, maybe due to the better 78rpm sides used thereafter by RCA for their transfers. What doesn't improve is the metallic edge on the piano, resulting in a few phrasings that on first hearing struck me as almost brutal, and less of a sense of intimacy in the slow movement. Those sonic defects didn't bother me as much in the Emperor, maybe only through the old "getting used to" effect.

I'm not so convinced with Frederick Stock's conducting either. I've had some arguments with Santa Fe Listener - a strongly opinionated stalwart reviewer on this website - over the merits of Sargent, and SFL praised Stock, calling him a true musician (see the comments under my review of [[ASIN:B000003EWT Violin & Piano Concertos]]). Well, his conducting of these concertos don't meet some of my criteria of a keen-eared musican, like the ability (or the simple willingness) to obtain a true, snappy staccato from the orchestra, and clear arrticulation from the strings in their 32nd-note runs. The orchestral textures are thick in the finale of the 4th, compared to Sargent's or Dobrowen, and, in the tutti, verging on the elephantine. The slightly cavernous sonic perspective doesn't really help either: it makes the orchestra sound "bigger", but less disciplined. Likewise the pounding chords of the Emperor's first movement are more powerful than really biting. I've also already hinted to the fact that, in the Emperor, Stock seems to have his own ideas about tempo, and they don't always seem to accord with Schnabel's. In the orchestral introduction, one feels him tempted to adopt a more held-back approach that, in comparision with Schnabel's two other recordings, sounds heavy-footed and almost sluggish - fortunately Schnabel soon takes back the upper hand. But one is dogged by the impression that Stock is trying to use every lyrical section as an opportunity to slow down and muse, thus quenching the forward thrust. Of all Schnabel's versions it is the one with the widest tempo flexibility, but to me it sounds also like the least cogent of all three.

The overall sonic values of the later, 1946/7 recordings, while far from entirely satisfactory even given the vintage (and with a piano that sounds excessively muffled in the finale of the Emperor), probably make the Philharmonia versions the ones to have for those who have only one (but that entails buying two CDs instead of one, and at the prices now demanded for them on the secondary market it can make a difference), but I retain a soft spot for the marginally more dazzling finales of 1932/3; the 1933 3rd being also marginally better than the 1947 remake, the ideal combination becomes Naxos for 3 & 4 and Testament for 2 and 5.

The liner notes to Testament's reissues quote Schnabel's response to the question whether he adhered to the school which makes you play in time or the one that let's you play as you feel: "can't one feel in time?" I love the philosophy, and it defines my ideal of supreme music making: freedom WITHIN discipline, not at the expense of it.


title: Another entry for a convenient collection of early Ormandy recordings, ALL pirated from original transfers made by other labels

text: See my review of the same box under [[ASIN:B000057O6M Ormandy: Maestro Brillante (Box Set)]] or [[ASIN:B00005AU51 Ormandy: Maestro Brillante (Box Set)]].


title: Among the most essential recordings of the 20th Century

text:
Wow! What a gem! What a bargain! I chanced upon this disc, Dante HPC133, volume 3 of Dante's Walter Gieseking series, on one of my outskirts to the "real" used-record store - I'm lucky to live near a big capital which still has those. This CD was selling for a sum that the website's screening softwares might censor, but less than the number of fingers God or Nature gave you to help you with your arithmetics. I hesitated - I already had Gieseking's Emperors with Walter in 1934 (on a valuable Dante Lys 2-CD set devoted to Walter's pre-American Beethoven recordings, [[ASIN:B000026CK9 Bruno Walter, V.7, Overtures, Symphony #6, Violin Concerto and Emperor Piano Concerto.]], but the same recording can be found on various labels, including APR, often noted for its good transfers: [[ASIN:B000025U2O Gieseking: His First Concerto Recordings, Vol. 2]], and now Naxos, [[ASIN:B000H4VZ80 Gieseking Plays Beethoven: Piano Concerto Nos. 4 & 5]]) and Karajan in 1951 ([[ASIN:B000006319 Herbert von Karajan: The London Years 1948-1960 (Piano Concerto No. 4, Piano Concerto No. 5 "Emperor")]]), so what were Arthur Rother - certainly not recognized as an international or historical star of the rostrum like the two others - and the "Big Radio Orchestra of Berlin", recorded, claims Dante, in October 1944, going to add? With the fact that I was in a Beethoven concerto listening cycle (that seems to be a permanent, or at least permanently recurring condition), the deciding factors were the 1939 4th Piano Concerto with Böhm (I thought it would make an interesting comparison with Gieseking's 1951 remake with Karajan), and the price.

Oh, to think that I could have skipped it!

First, the sonics. Whatever their interpretive merits (and they are great), Gieseking's studio recordings of the Emperor mentioned above suffer from their inferior sound, even the 1951 recordings with Karajan, with the pianist's left hand often inaudible and even the right hand sometimes reduced to mere background coloring in the tuttis. Very frustrating.

This 1944 Emperor is in STEREO!

Stereo in 1944? You bet! Although Dante is silent about this, only mentioning "first essay of stereo engraving", I've been able to gather some information online and it turns out that this is one of the rare remaining testimonies of Telefunken's  and sound engineer Helmut Krüger's experiments with stereo magnetic tape (which makes Dante's "engraving" inaccurate - this was not pressed or engraved on disc) at the end of WWII. There's nothing "experimental" about the results. Dante, with its sub-labels devoted to historical reissues, Lys and HPC/Historical Piano Recordings, is not always noted for the quality of their transfers (but I'm a staunch opponent of the Dante bashing that seems to prevail with some collectors of historical recordings); but here, the recording sounds stupendously great, with just minuscule left-right dropouts in the first introductory run of the piano (that you hear only with headphones), and an odd jump in the piano placement at the beginning of the short first movement cadenza; other than that, there is minimal tape hiss and fantastic presence of piano and orchestra. There's no telling where Dante sourced it from: it was first published on LP by Varèse Sarabande in 1979, VC 81080 (the orchestra was called "the berlin reichsender orchestra"), but from German Hi-Fi forums I gather that second generation tapes are kept in some archive, somewhere. There were CD reissues, especially by Music & Arts, prior to this one, in 1990 (Music & Arts CD-637, [[ASIN:B00008FG81 Piano Concerto 5]], no pairing) and 1994 (CD-815, [[ASIN:B000001OG6 Wartime German Radio Recordings]], with Schumann's Concerto conducted by Furtwängler), and there too I don't know Music & Art's source. Anyway, the recording sounds like it had been made 15 years later. Such sonic splendor lends the performance an incredible presence and reality. It's like bringing Gieseking back from the dead.

But it is not just the sound. It's also Arthur Rother. From the little information I've been able to collect on the German side of the famous people's processed internet encyclopedia, the man made all the choices you hate after 1933 (but apparently that did not cut short his career after the war). But man, this is intense and fiery conducting, the most intense and fiery of Gieseking's versions, together with his final 1955 recording with Galliera, which I finally acquired after this one ([[ASIN:B00000DO2A Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 4 & 5]]). Not that this was was unencountered back then. On the contrary, urgent tempos in Beethoven's Concertos and the martial approach of the first movement of the Emperor were the norm until the early to mid 1950s. In all his versions except Karajan's, Gieseking reached the cadenza in 16:30-1 or less, and so did Schnabel with Sargent in 1932, Serkin with Walter in New York in 1941, Marguerite Long with Munch in 1944 (at 16:15, she's the fastest I've encountered), Schabel-Galliera in 1947, Horowitz-Reiner in 1952, Casadesus-Mitropoulos in 1955; for comparison the, by modern standards, urgent Fleisher-Szell, Katchen-Gamba, Serkin-Bernstein, all recorded in the first half of the 1960s, or the recent historically-informed Bronfman-Zinman all got there in between 16:45 and 16:55, and Barenboim-Klemperer reached it in an egregious 19:36 (product links in the comments section).

But here it is not so much a matter of tempos - this falls within seconds of Walter's recordings, both with Gieseking and with Serkin in 1941, [[ASIN:B00000G2AQ Bruno Walter Vol 1 His First US Records of Beethoven 1941-1942 Symphonies 3 5 8, Piano Concerto 5 (2 CD) (Lys)]] - as of bite (more here than Walter's 1934 Vienna Philharmonic) and sonic impact (more than Walter's 1941 New York Phil). The Big Radio Orchestra of Berlin (if I am not mistaken it became the Radio Orchestra of East-Berlin afer the war, not to be confused with Fricsay's famous RIAS/West Berlin Radio Orchestra) is no second-rate ensemble; I've read comments online (can't retrieve them now) that the orchestra had, by the time this recording was made, been depleted of many of its permanent musicians, sent off to war. If so, even the reserve team was absolutely top-notch.

And it's Gieseking. The beginning says it all: he was never one to linger and finick over details in the introductory cadenza and the runs in the various cadential points of the first movement; here, he dashes through with even more gusto and no-holds-barred spirit. It all sounds wonderfully dynamic and impetuous, but never rushed, because the performers know how to relax and dream in the more lyrical moments (not something Serkin or Casadesus, with their more percussive and crystalline touch, really do). When he reviewed the third Music & Arts reissue of the same performance in 2005, CD-1145 ([[ASIN:B00064AF7S Gieseking Plays Beethoven Concertos for Piano]]), Colin Clarke from the online Musicweb International said of the finale that is was "dour", "undynamic", "never exultant". It's jawdropping how the objective parameters of that finale could have given way to such widely off-the-mark subjective impression. The finale is one of the swiftest I've heard on disc (it's in the league of Horowitz, Katchen and Fleisher, and only a few seconds longer than Schnabel with Galliera in 1947), and the impression is, precisely, dynamic and exultant. But always, in the Finale as in the first movement, in the runs played in piano dynamics, Gieseking plays with extraordinarily refined and delicate touch. In 1934 with Walter, Gieseking unfolded an approach of the middle Adagio that wasn't entirely convincing: taken at an unusually swift tempo, it lacked a touch of interiority and dreaminess. Not here with Rother, and already the more interior and dreamy conception better known through the 1951 recording with Karajan is present, but in much better sound, and a silky carpet provided by the orchestra's strings and woodwinds. One more remarkable feature - awe-inspiring, even: there is no perceptible audience noise (given the experimental nature of the recording I bet it was done without an audience), but there are a few extraneous noises that you first think are stage noises. However, if you listen carefully, especially in the short first movement cadenza, at 16:40, you realize that they are detonations in the distance, like firecrackers on the 4th of July. Fire crackers? This is Berlin, October 1944 (Music & Arts says 23 January 1945). I'll let you imagine what kind of firecrackers these are.

No stereo of course in Gieseking's and Böhm's 1939 recording of the 4th Piano concerto (originally released on 78rmps by Columbia) but in the transfers used by Dante the sound is good for the vintage, with some surface noise but many orchestral details coming through and great clarity in the piano - more so than in Gieseking's 1951 remake with Karajan. Moreover, interpetively, this is equally outstanding as the 1944 Emperor and remains one of the most remarkable and convincing renditions of the Concerto that I have heard. The main reason is that Gieseking and Böhm adopt a uniquely swift tempo in the first movement. Again, far from being an exception, this was the interpretive norm before the mid-1950s, although Gieseking-Böhm are at the top end of that norm: they reach the first movement cadenza in 12:09, to be compared to Hofmann-Ormandy's 12:21 in 1938, Serkin-Toscanini's 12:37 in 1944, Palenicek-Ancerl's 12:39 in 1951, Hofmann-Mitropoulos 12:44 in 1943, Rubinstein-Beecham's 12:48 and Casadesus-Ormandy's 12:54 both in 1947, Schnabel-Dobrowen's 13:01 in 1946, Schnabel-Sargent's 13:16 in 1933. To give a point of comparison, the "classic" Fleisher-Szell in 1959 reached it in 13:31 which was also the timing of Gieseking-Karajan (and Gieseking-Galliera added two seconds to that), the "classic" Pollini-Böhm in 1976 took 13:53, and Barenboim-Klemperer in 1967 another egregious 15:38.

Listeners grown on the more expansive tradition examplified by Wilhelm Kempff or Pollini-Böhm and believing that the Fourth is one of Beethoven's uniquely pastoral and lyrical works, together with the Triple Concerto, Violin Concerto and Pastoral Symphony, are likely to be shocked by the thrust and ebullience of this earlier interpretive model, which unexpectedly pulls the Fourth in the direction of the Emperor. It only shows that this pastoral and lyrical character that we so associate with these works isn't intrisic to them, but only a matter of interpretation. I find the ebullient and thrusting approach absolutely irresistible; the urgent tempos of the pre-1950s translate, to my ears, in no loss of lyricism whatsoever. Instead, they fill the lyricism with a sense of exultant joy, which I find a far more exciting and ingratiating musical experience than the lazy-feeling and majestic stateliness and meditativeness of many modern recordings.

Gieseking-Böhm's finale is also swift but that is not unencountered today. However, they never sound rushed or high-strung; on the contrary, thanks largely to Gieseking's mellow touch and superb digital control, the approach sounds entirely natural, and totally convincing: it is lively and dynamic, filled with a sense of good humor, even elated joy, rather than (as can happen at more held-back tempos) feeling laid-back and bucolic (as in Gieseking's remake with Karajan), when not languid (as in Karajan's remake with Weissenberg, [[ASIN:B000002S7X Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4 - (3) cadenzas / Triple Concerto, Op.56 (Karajan Edition)]]). The passagework (as well as the trills and appoggiaturas in the finale) acquires a unique and marvellous watery, rippling quality; I don't think I've ever heard anything quite like it in this work. Yet, as in the first movement, while it gains much in dynamism and excitement, it looses nothing of its lyricism. Only in the middle andante do I find that there is room for more depth and interiority than Gieseking and Böhm's forward moving pace and strict tempo allow for - something I also remarked with the slow movement of Giesekin's 1934 Emperor with Walter. Another remarkable feature is that Gieseking plays not the customary Beethoven cadenza in the first movement, but another one, that will probably sound as unknown to most listeners as it sounded to me (the liner notes are silent about it) and maybe even not genuinely Beethovenian. Don't make hasty judgments! It is indeed by Beethoven, his "other" and seldom played cadenza for the Piano Concerto (he provided two). That's also what he plays with Karajan.

These are essential recordings then, certainly the ones to have over Karajan's or Gieseking's earlier Emperor with Walter if you have only one Gieseking version of these works, although the later 1955 remakes with Galliera, which despite the early vintage come in glorious stereo, are strong contenders. Furthermore, in the case of the Emperor, the fact that it is the first stereo recording of a large-scale work makes it truly, literally, one of the most important and significant recordings of the 20th century; its interpretive excellence doubles that. With Dante now gone - whether it was killed by its critics or its own mis-management, I don't know - every music lover can look upon the unavailability of this disc as a personal tragedy. In its absence, the same Emperor can be found on various other labels and notably on the Music & Arts reissues mentioned in this review; I have their latest reissue as well, CD-1145 (where the recording date is given as 23 January 1945 instead of Dante's October 1944), and I can hear no significant sonic difference with Dante's Emperor, other than the fact that Music & Arts runs one percent slower. The pairing is Gieseking's 1948 recording of the First Piano Concerto with Kubelik leading the Philharmonia; it is also a great version, with very much the same parameters and qualities prevalent in the two concertos here: dynamic, ebullient, youthful. So the choice can be to add the Music & Arts release and the Naxos reissue mentioned in the first paragraph which pairs Gieseking's 1939 4th with Böhm and his 1934 Emperor with Walter; if you insist on stereo in all things, then Gieseking's 1955 stereo remakes with Galliera are the top choice: the Emperor may not be as historically significant as the one with Rother, but interpretively it is as good and despite the early vintage the stereo is even better; but the 4th is more "mainstream" and less remarkable than the 1939 recording with Böhm.

This record sent me on a listening spree of many early recordings of both works and, in July 2014, after listening to the Music & Arts CD, I've extended this review. There's another entry for the same disc, ASIN B00000HZG1, and if you are lucky you will find it offered by some marketplace seller, though likely not anymore at an affordable price. I've provided the missing product links of the various versions mentioned here in the comments section of the same review posted under that other entry.