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(Marguerite Long - Grande Dame of the keyboard and controversy to match)

Two short works tonight. First up is the 1931 recording for French Columbia of the Ballade for Piano and Orchstra by Gabriel Faure featuring pianist Marguerite Long with the Paris Conservatory conducted by Phillipe Gaubert. Long was a close friend (for a time) with Gabriel Faure as well as Maurice Ravel. It was her recording of the Ravel Piano concerto, made weeks after the premier that was considered to be the definitive performance, since the recording was also billed with Ravel as conductor (which was not the case as conductor Pedro Freitas Branco did the honors). And the concerto was dedicated to her (presumably with twisted arm). Her relationship with Faure went on for many years, and Long was responsible for premiers of many of his piano works, including this one.

The next piece is something of a bonus, the forgotten conductor Volkmar Andrae leading the Zurich Tonnhalle in a 1930 recording for Swiss Columbia of the Feruccio Busoni arrangement of the Overture to The Abduction From The Seraglio by Mozart. Andrae was active into the lp period and his recordings of the early symphonies of Anton Bruckner have been long sought collectors items on the vinyl market. However, his fame did not really extend past the European continent and he is almost completely unknown here in the States. Andrae was a devoted interpreter of the music of Bruckner and was one of a handful of conductors who regularly programmed his symphonies at concerts, bringing an awareness of a composer not easily understood during the early part of the 20th century.

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. . and don't forget . .

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(Oskar Fried - Mostly forgotten today - but did introduce Mahler to Russia)

Since everyone is more than familiar with The Nutracker Suite (not to mention hearing it adnauseum during the holidays), I thought I would offer two historic recordings of the same work. One by the legendary, but largely forgotten conductor Oskar Fried and the other by the more well-known-but-getting-obscure-by-the-minute Paul van Kempen. Both were conductors who were well established in their day and whose recordings have been sought after by collectors for years.

First up, a 1927 (early electric so it could be 1926) recording featuring Oskar Fried and the Berlin State Opera. I believe one of the first recordings of the Nutcracker done by the electrical method. And the second, a 1939 recording featuring the Dresden Philharmonic conducted by Paul van Kempen. Both recordings were made for the Deutsche Grammophon (Polydor) company. The Fried was issued in the States on the Brunwick label and the van Kempen was probably not issued overseas as war broke out shortly after the recording was made.

(Paul van Kempen - less obscure but no less collectable)

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Two recordings with two different points of view - both from the 78 rpm period.

Enjoy and don't forget to hit the "donate" button at the bottom. Pennies, nickels and dimes are welcome. We slaved for hours over these things. . . sort of.

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(Fernand Oubradous - did for the Bassoon what Landowska did for the Harpsichord)

Fernand Oubradous had a long and celebrated career throughout France and Europe. In addition to his work on Bassoon, he was also an accomplished clarinetist as well as conductor and led his own orchestra in a series of award winning recordings for French Pathe` in the 1950s.

So we're posting something a bit more familiar today - Mozart: Bassoon Concerto K. 191 with Fernand Oubradous, Bassoon and an unnamed chamber orchestra conducted by Eugene Bigot. Recorded in Paris for HMV, June 23, 1936. This particular recording is from Victor set - M-704, as it was released in the U.S.

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(Maurice Ravel - if you're only going to write one string quartet, make it immortal)

Heading over to more familiar music this week. The String Quartet in F by Maurice Ravel in one of the first recordings of the work (I think the first electrical recording was by the Capet Quartet), by the Krettly Quartet of Paris. Recorded for the French division of His Master's Voice in Paris on March 22, 1929.

Over the years this work has been recorded hundreds of times by a whole range of outfits, and certainly people who are familiar with it have their preferences. But it's always nice to be reminded of when a work was relatively new and its first performance was not that far in the past. And even though the Quartet in F first came about in 1903, "new music" took its time to get public acceptance going and no doubt a lot of people heard this recording for the first time when it was issued in 1929, some 26 years later.

We think of 26 years now as an eternity - but things moved a lot slower when the Ravel Quartet in F was new.

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(Cecil Leeson - Adolph Sax would no doubt approve)

A seldom played Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano by a seldom heard composer tonight. Edvard Moritz is almost totally unknown today, but was one of the "up-and-comers" in the early part of the 20th century. He migrated to the U.S. at the outset of Hitlers rise to power and settled in New York where he pretty much remained until his death in 1974. Truths to tell, I haven't seen any other works written by him recorded or even played in public, so I'm a little in the dark as to what his other works are like. I know this one is quite good and it makes me wonder what else we're at the risk of missing.

This recording, made in 1941 for Decca Records (U.S.) features Cecil Leeson, the American sax soloist who did a lot to further the cause of the saxophone in the concert hall. A number of works by his contemporaries such as Paul Creston were dedicated to him and he enjoyed a long career before his death in 1989.

So jumping into some old and unfamiliar territory tonight via the 78 player. Sundays are just like that.

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(Bohuslav Martinu - put Czech music into the 20th century)

I've always been a big fan of the music of Bohuslav Martinu, ever since my teenage years when Manny Aron (of Aron's Records in L.A.) turned me on to an lp of his Sinfonietta Giocosa (coming up in the next few weeks). Although in the 60s Martinu was still largely obscure in the U.S., his reputation has grown steadily to the point where he is now pretty much acknowledged as one of the real beacons of 20th century Czech music.

So I thought today I'd post one of his earlier works, his String Quartet Number 2, composed in 1925. This recording, an Ultraphon set of 78s recorded in 1947 (or 1948, I don't have the exact date) is, I think the first recording made of this work. It features the String Quartet of The National Theatre of Prague. I am pretty certain this hasn't seen the light of reissue anywhere, but there are several more recent recordings if you want something without the age factor attached.

Some people just aren't crazy about 78s.

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(Heitor Villa-Lobos - Composer and Poolshark)

Last week I posted a work by Morton Gould as an American ode to Latin American music. This week, I thought would take it the other way around and play a work composed by a Brazilian Composer and played for the first time to American audiences.

In 1940, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Commissioner General in Brazil co-sponsored a series of concerts featuring music by new Brazilian composers.

One of the better known was Heitor Villa-Lobos, a name that is pretty familiar to most audiences around the world. Villa-Lobos was a major force in 20th Century classical music. Subsequently, when RCA Victor decided to release a set of recordings from this concert series, they chose the music of Villa-Lobos as the most representative. That's not to say the music of Francisco Mignone, M. Camargo Guarnieri and Oscar Lorenzo Fernandez wasn't any good. It's just as Villa-Lobos had name recognition.

From the set recorded in 1940 and issued in 1941, I've included Bachiana Brasileira Number 1. Everyone is familiar with the Number 5 Bachiana, but not so much with the others. This one is scored for eight cellos and was composed in 1932. The piece is dedicated to the conductor Burle Marx, who is conductor on this recording. The group is The Brazilian Festival Orchestra (cellos). I am not sure, but I think this was reissued on lp in the early 1950s - but hasn't seen any CD reissue as far as I know.

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(Morton Gould - Americana took up the cause of Latin Americana before World War 2)

In all fairness, Aron Copland did create something of stir and an interest in music of Latin America when Serge Koussevitsky introduced his El Salon Mexico to Boston audiences in 1938. It did get American audiences listening to what was going on with music south of our border. I'm sure it also helped that the coincidence of our increased interest in South America as a potential hotbed of Nazi sympathizers and potential government overthrows had a little to do with it as well.

All that said, it didn't hurt that American composers were eyeing the music and rhythms of South America as a fertile field of interesting ideas. One of those composers was Morton Gould who is probably best known now as an "easy listening" composer/arranger, former President of ASCAP and occasional writer of Broadway musicals, rather than a "serious" composer of orchestral music.

But early on he was. And throughout his life he turned in an impressive cataloge of some serious works.

The Latin American Symphonette probably isn't one of them. It's light, tuneful and rhythmic with lots of nods to Latin dance forms, but it's not a trailblazer and the musical world did not fall over itself at first hearing. It was written in 1940 and had its premier in 1941. This recording, the first, was made around 1943 and issued in 1944 by Victor and featured the Rochester Philharmonic conducted by the Spanish Pianist/conductor Jose Iturbi. It has not been reissued, even on lp.

In the coming weeks I'll post some examples of what was really going on in Latin American music at the time. But for now here's something historic and light at the same time.

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(Ernest Bloch - big believer in writing good and sincere music)

Back to the early 20th century this week. Swiss composer who settled in the U.S. early on, Ernest Bloch was prolific, though possibly less known today than many of his contemporaries. Much of his work was based on religious themes, with Schelomo for Cello and Orchestra the most well known.

The Concerto Grosso for String Orchestra and piano began life while he was living in Santa Fe New Mexico between December 1924 and April 1925. It was premiered at the Cleveland Institute of Music in June 1925 and recorded shortly after by the Philadelphia String Orchestra for Victor. This recording, made in 1931 also for Victor, is a revised version and features the Curtis Institute Chamber Ensemble led by Louis Bailly. Both are firsts and I don't think either have been reissued in any form.

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(Max von Schillings - composer as conductor)

Some Robert Schumann this week. Music from the dramatic poem Manfred, from which the overture is the best known work. There have only been a few recordings made of the entire play with music and this is about the only recording of just the music I've heard that includes the entr`acte (the pause after the overture).

Here is a recording made for German Parlophone (issued in the U.S. first on Columbia and later on Decca) in 1928 featuring the Berlin State Opera Orchestra conducted by the composer Max von Schillings.

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(Dmitri Shostakovitch - every new note was anticipated)

One of his most popular Chamber pieces, the op. 57 Piano Quintet had its premier in Moscow in November of 1940, with Shostakovitch at the piano and The Beethoven String Quartet, the group he dedicated the work to. Within weeks, the manuscript was in New York and had it's American premier with Vivian Rivkin at the piano with the Stuyvesant String Quartet. This recording was made on May 7-8 of 1941 and there is some controversy whether this recording was the world premier or the recording made by Shostakovitch himself with the Beethoven Quartet was the world premier. It's sort of a moot point, considering there was a war going on and records were something of a luxury commodity at the time, and access to Soviet recordings was never easy anyway.

In any event, this recording was made shortly after the U.S. Premier and strangely, it's never seen the light of reissue, even as a historic document. It's been recorded scores of times since the premier, with no doubt infinitely better interpretations. But with all that said, this is the first one, or the first Western one and it was the only recording for some time. And a lot of people formed their first impressions on the piece based on this interpretation.

So imagine you've never heard this work before.

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(Paul Hindemith - complicated relationships)

This week's batch of 78's is the Violin Concerto written in 1939 by the German composer Paul Hindemith. It was slated to be premiered in Germany that year, but fate and the Nazi's had other plans and it was finally performed in Holland in 1940, with Hindemith having migrated to Switzerland in 1938 and eventually living and working in New York by 1940.

This recording, made in Paris for French HMV in 1948, features the violinist Henri Merckel with the Lamoureux Orchestra led by Roger Desormiere.

Don't quote me on this, but I think this is the first commercial recording of the concerto.

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(Enrique Fernandez Arbos - helped put Albeniz on the map. Spain went along too)

Composer/Conductor/Violinist conducting his arrangement of a friends composition. Happens all the time, right? Enrique Fernandez Arbos was a talented composer in his own right, but he was also a very talented musician who also held the post of Music Director of the Madrid Symphony from 1904 until 1936.

He's probably best known as the orchestral arranger of a set of piano pieces composed by his friend Isaac Albeniz. An arrangement that has probably done more for Albeniz' career than anything else. And it helped establish Iberia as a staple in the concert hall (at least in the first half of the 20th century).

This 1928 recording, made for Spanish Columbia was part of a series of recordings Arbos made of Spanish composers that helped create an awareness of just how rich the vein of talent was in Spain, rather than always depend on French composers and musicians to take the honors for Spanish themed works. Arbos did a considerable amount to further the cause of Spanish culture to the rest of the world. One that was gaining considerable momentum before Civil War broke out in 1936. Arbos died in 1939. It wouldn't be until well after the end of World War 2 that it would resume. By that time a whole new generation of musicians and composers appeared.

And they probably owe a small debt of gratitude to Enrique Fernandez Arbos for getting the ball rolling.

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(Charles Martin Loeffler - Late Romantic era Americana)

I think I wrote about this before - the vast amount of virtually unknown music by American (or Americanized) Composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries - sometimes with works recorded once, if at all, and gone unnoticed for decades.

You can add the name Charles Martin Loeffler to the list, even though he did achieve an amount of notoriety during his lifetime, he is almost completely unknown today and, with the exception of his most famous piece "A Pagan Poem", practically all the recordings made of his other works in the 1930s and 40s have not been reissued.

So there is a void - one void among a literal field of others.

This particular recording, Music For Four Stringed Instruments was recorded for RCA Victor in 1938, three years after Loeffler's death. It features the Coolidge String Quartet who were, for years responsible for many first performances of American composers and founded under the auspices of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, a wealthy benefactor who was responsible for championing and promoting the cause of "Modern American Music" during the early part of the 20th Century.

And here is one of them.

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(Hermann Abendroth - something of cult figure in recent years)

Recordings of European orchestras during wartime have always been high on the list of most record collectors. For one, they were never readily available and were usually pressed in small quantities. For another, most of them represented a dark period in cultural activity. Particularly for countries that had fallen to the Nazis.

Certainly, when France surrendered to Germany in 1940 one of the biggest pluses in the Propaganda front was the flood of German musicians appearing on French concert stages and recording with French orchestras.

One of the great orchestras of the time was the Paris Conservatory, with a rich history going back over a century. So naturally, practically every German musician performed, broadcast and recorded with them from 1941 until early 1944.

One recording, which hasn't seen the light of reissue very much was the Mozart Variations by the late German romantic composer Max Reger. The conductor, Hermann Abendroth was not much of a household name outside of Germany until actually after the war when the majority of his performing and recording career took place in East Germany and around the former Communist Bloc countries. Prior to the rise to power of the Nazis he was a regional conductor who had a good but not international reputation. He more or less played second string to the likes of Erich Kleiber and Bruno Walter. But when Walter was forced to relinquish his posts and leave the country, Abendroth was placed in the spotlight and took over a number of positions formerly held by the banished musicians. In short, was Abendroth a Nazi? The short answer is yes. Was he a virulent Nazi? No. Was it perceived as a wise career move to join the party in order to get better positions? Yes. Did he willingly join the party in 1937? Not entirely. Let's put it this way - he knew which side his bread was buttered on so he went along with the flow until the war ended and then settled in what became East Germany and enjoyed a flourishing career throughout Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

Looking at all the twists and turns of his career, one could say he was guilty of opportunism. But so could a lot of them.

As is the case with many, if not most musicians living and working in Germany during the war, the lines aren't clear and the motives are probably more career oriented than idealogical. There are many books written on the subject, covered in much better detail than I could ever offer.

My reason for offering this recording today is not so much an assessment of the man and his politics as much as the man as musician, which he was quite good. It is an example of a rare recording made under adverse conditions by an orchestra of a defeated country.

So. With that said - This recording was made in Paris on December 9, 1941 featuring The Paris Conservatory Orchestra conducted by Hermann Abendroth.