by EDWARD TATNALL CANBY
E. Power Biggs. The Organ in Sight and Sound. With book. Columbia KS 7263 stereo ($6.98.)
Eleven years ago, that dashing organist and commentator E. Power Biggs put out a monumentally breathless Columbia album called" The Organ" in which, via his own spoken commentary and musical examples (played by himself) from organs all over Europe, he traced the history and importance of the classic instrument and made clear his very definite feelings about the desecrations perpetrated by nineteenth century organ designers of the Romantic school. As we all know, the Biggs enthusiasm did much to spark the present popularity of the classic, or Baroque, organ. Hundreds of recordings have made it known everywhere. Hundreds of churches know all about it too-they have had to spend thousands on new organs, or extensive re-buildings, in order to give their instruments the current "Baroque" sound.
Now the ever-indefatigible Mr. Biggs has done it all over again. Outwardly it is the same album, covering approximately the same ground in the same way. But I got out my copy of the earlier release and was astonished to find how thoroughly the work has been revised, word for word, example for example. Virtually all of the music is now offered in stereo recordings, though a few useful items out of the old mono set have been included here and there, or perhaps replayed in stereo sound. The big book, too, is extensively revised, using much of the original exhaustive material and illustrative matter but recast in every detail. D. A. Flentrop, the contemporary Dutch organ `builder, writes an expanded text here, and some of the lesser earlier material is dropped out.
Good. (Mr. Biggs' "home" organ in Cambridge, Mass. is, needless to say, a Flentrop.)
In this new album E. Power is just a shade less voluble and effusive than in the earlier opus, which moved at such a pace that one was soon out of breath merely listening. I remember objecting heatedly to the fading out of one musical example after another; perhaps I am more resigned to the technique by now, for it did not bother me as much as before though from a musical viewpoint the excerpts are still outrageously short. Often no more than a few seconds long. At Mr.
Biggs' pace, and with his coverage, longer examples could never suffice! If you want to hear more, then go out and buy organ records, he would surely say. His records. There are plenty of them.
Record and book are well coordinated, each doing for the whole what is best for the medium, sound or the printed page. The record gives a bird's eye view, the book goes into panoramic detail on visible principles of organ construction. Invaluable, I'd say.
Performances: B, Sound: B
Historic Organs of Italy. E. Power Biggs. Columbia MS 7379 stereo ($5.98.)
Mr. Biggs' assorted safari into organ territory continue unabated. He has long since done up the prime organ country, North Germany and surrounding lands including Holland.
Here, he turns to slightly alien ground (from the organ viewpoint) to show us that even the Italians could build nice little classic organs when they put their minds to it. Just like the Spaniards (bigger, more complex instruments), whose products he has recently been sampling.
There are five organs here, one of them dating from unmentionable 1857, about which Mr. Biggs says nary a word. The oldest has a much more distinguished dating, 1471-75; it is one of a pair located on opposite sides of the chancel in the huge Basilica at Bologna. This pair has been extensively recorded before on another label, both playing together in music for two organs. Mr. Biggs samples each separately. Then there is a splendid instrument at Brescia (where Italian motor traffic made the going difficult) and another at Ravenna. The unmentionable "modern" instrument is at Bergamo. It plays only a minute or so.
The music is mostly pre-Baroque, or very early Baroque, such composers as Gabrieli (both) , Frescobaldi, Banchieri, Gesualdo (of the strange madrigals), all Italians of the region. Mr. Biggs' playing is of his familiar somewhat nervous sort, often beautiful but often rather pounding and un-phrased.
He is better at imaginative registration than in the shaping and phrasing of musical lines. The organ sounds are recorded with felicity except the sound of the pair at Bologna where the enormous reverberation lasts seven or eight seconds or more. Perhaps because of this, the Columbia recording is done close-up, the grand effect of that long "echo" barely audible in the background in favor of too much clarity of detail. The double-organ recordings of the same sound on the other label-Westminster, if memory serves--hit it off much more successfully to my way of thinking. There, you can hear both the organs and the reverb.
The other Biggs organs sound just fine.
Performance: B, Sound: B
The Glory of Gabrieli, Vol. III. Choral Music. Gregg Smith Singers, Texas Boys Choir, Smith, Bragg. Columbia MS 7334 stereo ($5.98.)
Volume III of the recordings made awhile back in Saint Mark's Cathedral, where Gabrieli (Giovanni) wrote the music around 1600, supplements the first two volumes. Vol. I combined choirs and instruments, Vol. II was all-instrumental, Vol. III is for voices alone. All, of course, featuring music for multiple groups of performers, that being the Gabrieli specialty as of the Cathedral itself, where performers were isolated on balconies surrounding the great pillars that hold the building up. Most of the original music did not specify instruments or voices; the choice was according to taste and circumstance and still is.
Some of the definitely instrumental works are included in Vol. II. The combined choirs, Americans flown over to Venice in grand style for the occasion (the Italians ignore their own heritage in true provincial fashion!) produce here, as in the earlier Vol. I, a somewhat American sound though a suitable one for the music, a bit on the brash and loud side, confident, well-trained, rather muscular and not very subtle in the shaping of words and phrases, the virtuoso boys ( and girls too, if I remember) matching the professional sound of the men. There are no performance indications in the old scores.
Gregg Smith says that his best guide was Saint Mark's cathedral itself, that vast space of distances and reverberation, where the best interpretation is the one that gets through! A good practical solution though hardly an all-embracing guide; composers often write more complex music than their local acoustics can take-witness old Bach, for one. You will enjoy these performances, then, even if some other conductors, in other locations, might well do the same music twice as fast, or maybe only one-third as fast.
Interpretations of such music, minus any living tradition, very wildly. (One of these works is in the repertory of my own Canby Singers. We do it entirely differently, needless to say.) This whole fly-over project, incidentally, was at least in part realized because of the typical enthusiasm of E. Power Biggs of Columbia, who plays the (imported) organ whenever there is a need for an organ, though not in this Volume. It would take a Biggs to conceive the idea of an American musical invasion of Saint Marks by chartered plane!
Note a final oddity. Gregg Smith is listed as conducting his own Singers.
George Bragg, it says, conducts his, the Texas Boys Choir out of Fort Worth. But who conducts the music on this record, especially where there are two or more choirs involved? It doesn't say. Equal billing?
Performance: B+, Sound: B
Beethoven: Ninth Symphony. Soloists, Chorus, Berlin Philharmonic, Furtwangler. Everest 3241 sim. stereo ($4.98.)
Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 ("Eroica"). Recorded 1944. Berlin Philharmonic, Furtwangler. Turnabout TV 4343 mono $(2.98.)
Beethoven: Ninth Symphony. Yeend, Lipton, Lloyd, Harrell, Westminster Choir, New York Philharmonic, Bruno Walter. Odyssey 32 16 0322 (sim. stereo) ($2.98.)
Budapest Quartet-Beethoven, the Six Quartets Op. 18 The Classic 1951 Recordings. Odyssey 32 36 0023 mono, ($8.94.)
Curious. The coming Beethoven 200th year has evidently sparked a number of companies to look into their own archives, or the floating availabilities on the out-of-date masters market, for classic reissue material. They have found plenty, and perhaps significantly. Is the best of 20th century Beethoven playing already in the past? Quite possibly.
The legendary Furtwangler, a conductor of the old school who failed to keep up with those other old men in the longevity race, died before he had a chance to become a Venerated Elder along with Toscanini, Walter, Klemperer et al. His conducting genius was considered eccentric-you may try for yourself in these two Beethoven symphonies, both made far back in the war-time years (though Everest carefully avoids saying when the Ninth was produced, or how-except that it is a concert recording. Coughs) . My thought is that his is not only one of the most moving Ninths I've ever heard but-considering the eccentricities in the piece itself--it rates as definitely un-eccentric. The tempi are not always the accustomed ones, there are some slightly prominent ritards, here and there. But to my mind these are no more than evidence of an older way of thinking, which Furtwangler inherited from the age of William Mengelberg, a time when "liberties" were still taken for granted and unabashed outward sentiment was quite proper, even in orchestral playing.
There are more oddities in the "Eroica," definitely. Some very odd ritards in the scherzo, almost to a dead standstill. They should not bother you to extremes-the rest is superb. And so much of interest in brought alive in the details, music which is mostly just played, so many notes, in a zillion other performances, that there will be more to learn on every repeat as your ear adapts itself to the old recording and acoustics.
The "Eroica" is plainly dated 1944, and its sound is utterly unlike the undated Ninth. Which came first? The "Eroica" was perhaps made on early Magnetophon tape; it is clean, wide range, with a prominent and quite tubby bass. The Ninth, however, is not only limited in tonal range but lacks any bass at all, though it is not a distorted sound by any means. The energetic kettledrum in the Ninth sounds like a large dishpan being whacked with a ladling spoon! Presumably the very same drummer (same orchestra, anyhow) in the "Eroica" thumps a fat, ponderous elephant drum set, soft and soggy. Quirks of recording technology.
Furtwangler
Whence this superb and heartfelt Ninth, such a movingly sincere portrayal of the Beethovenian brotherhood-of-man sentiments? Most probably it was a fine "Nazi" chorus, and very probably the Berlin audience included, if not Herr Hitler himself, then some of his well-known henchmen. Strange! One can only suggest that music in its all-embracing emotions carries men with it, the misguided along with the wise. We may discreetly avoid wondering just what Herr H. was thinking, if he did in fact attend that concert-no matter. What matters is the music that was produced, and it is superb, even if the recording is marginal.
As for Bruno Walter's Ninth, that elderly gentleman embodied a more classic restraint, another aspect of Germanic performance that we also inherit in the piano playing of Artur Schnabel (all the Beethoven piano sonatas and concerti). Chaste, dignified, ineffable, marvelously sincere, sometimes, though, a bit on the ponderous side--that's Bruno Walter. His Ninth is now available in two incarnations, this being the older mono set; the newer one is in stereo with the California-based Columbia Symphony.
To have both of these on hand (and any others you may wish to try for comparison) is a fine thing, I'd say.
Nobody has ever had the sole rights to the meaning of this big work.
As for the classic 1951 Budapest Beethoven Quartets, they are all that the ecstatic reviewers said of them in 1952, and more too. The Budapest set Beethoven standards for these last 25 years of performance-which is about as long as any performing concept is likely to remain valid and current. The Budapest also, I should add, has certain mildly irascible playing idiosyncrasies that tell against them now and then (and in favor of other less-high-voltage but smoother playings); their performances are so intense that the sound is often scratchy and wiry, or bumpy and thumpy, for extra-strong accents. Definitive-yes (and there are 1951 recordings of all sixteen quartets). But I remind youngsters that before Columbia got hold of the Budapest, RCA Victor released some of the most gorgeously youthful Beethoven and Mozart performances you can imagine, by a smoother, more polished youthful Budapest Quartet. Those 78s I have always thought were musically superior to all later counterparts. I have only a couple of albums-that's enough to tell the story. They were pre-war recordings. The Budapest goes that far back.
Joseph Woelfl: Three Sonatas. Vladimir Pleshakov, piano. Orion SFM 6901 stereo ($5.00.)
Rediscovered composers are a dime a hundred these days, but here's a good one, and from an unusual period--the time of Beethoven. Many parts of the big C Minor Sonata on this first LP side could be mistaken for Beethoven himself. Moreover, the interpreting pianist here is a splendid musician and a highly communicative artist. Perhaps Woelfl wouldn't seem quite as good without Vladimir Pleshakov's sympathetic playing.
Woelfl was born in 1773, three years after Beethoven, and died in 1812, at the height of Beethoven's years of composing fam. His background is interesting--study with Leopold Mozart, Mozart's pedagogue father, and with Michael Haydn, younger brother of the Haydn, both of these gents in residence at Salsburg, where Woelfl came out of musical background very much like Mozart's.
No wonder his piano works are in good taste and well made! He evidently went so far as a pianist as to compete with Beethoven himself in one of those ever-popular virtuoso contests that happened all the time.
Woelfl wrote prolifically, some 125 sonatas. Evidently one must pick and choose-a good deal of his music is said to rate nearer the insipid salon level than that of Ludwig van B. These three are a good choice, then.
The big one is really a most congenial work of the Beethoven period, and not at all un-modern for the time. I'd say, here at least, Woelfl easily stands up to such as Spohr, Hummel, Dussek, Clementi, others of that musical background. The two sonatas on the second side are somewhat lesser works, one of them clearly an earlier opus, the other again fully up to early middle Beethoven in its new Romantic styling. If you love the "Appassionata" and the "Moonlight" sonatas or any of the others of that vintage, you'll be enthralled to hear what another and unknown composer of the time could do with similar material.
Performance: A, Sound: B
Rameau: Ballet Suite from Les Indes Galantes. Collegium Aureum. RCA Vic trola VICS 1456 stereo ($2.98).
C. P. E. Bach: Harpsichord Concerto in D Minor; Oboe Concerto in E Flat. Gustav Leonhardt, hps., Helmut Hucke, Baroque oboe, Collegium Aureum. RCA Victrola VICS 1463 stereo ($2.98).
I trust I'll be pardoned for allowing my personal enthusiasm to get into these columns-it's bound to happen one way or another! Here is one-the current output of RCA's low-price division on the Victrola label, the music licensed from the incomparable Harmonia Mundi label in Germany.
This conductor-less Collegium Aureum is far and away the best Baroque group I have ever heard in its playing of the late Baroque and the still later music that led on into the "classic" school of Mozart and Haydn.
Authentic performance, of course, is a German specialty just as is the whole science of musicology, which was born and bred out of a Germanic attitude towards musical research. But too often extreme scholarship has meant extreme un-musicality. Scholarship can so easily be correct-and stodgy. The really sensitive artist deplores such slothfully accurate music making, all science and no art. But the easily reached conclusion is nevertheless wrong, that a real artist of temperament is above such things. The Collegium Aureum, thus, combines the impossible. Systematic German scholarship in every detail. Imaginative, lively, artistic performance. It can be done! The Rameau recording, music by that arch-French antithesis of the Germanic approach, is here a model of correctness in the all-important ornamentation--natch, the Germans wouldn't flub that important element in French style. But unlike many an earlier German performance of French music, this one is no heavyweight, plodding travesty of all that is French! Instead, it has the true French elan, ornaments and all, as lively and stylish as you can imagine. In that respect, these new German players are astonishingly un-Teutonic. (Some of them, by the way, would seem to have Dutch connections, perhaps via Gustav Leonhardt, the harpsichordist.) The Collegium Aureum is in the avant garde of super-authenticism, carrying that principle beyond any former conception. Their instruments as a matter of course are "authentic" for each period, either actual old instruments or newly made replicas.
The oboist plays a Baroque oboe in the C. P. E. Bach concerto, again as a matter of course. No fancy keys and mechanical cross-finger links,, as in the modern oboe. Just a row of holes, like a recorder, and a double reed of obstinately penetrating quality. Only a few years ago, this instrument would have been thought unplayable in any seriously artistic fashion. Just listen, now! Thank the Lord that C. P. E. Bach, the middle Bach son and patron saint of Hamburg music and, earlier, of Frederic the Great's Potsdam circle, is now coming back into performance.
He is not a "great" composer but he was enormously influential in a period of transition, and more important, a deep thinker whose music is never frivolous, often extraordinary. The two concerti on the Collegium Aureum record are worlds apart, one from Potsdam in 1748 (two years before old Bach died) , the other from 1765.
In both we hear the outward Baroque format,, solo and tutti passages all on one complex of themes, marvelously transformed into proto-Mozart in the details of melody and expression.
Keep tabs on RCA Victrola. It is the top label in the "low price" category as far as older music is concerned.
Performances: A, Sound: B+
Mozart: Lucio Silla, K. 135. Soloists, Angelicum Orch. and Polyphonic Chorus of Milan, Cillario. RCA Victrola VICS 6117 stereo ($8.94).
RCA's Victrola label, via its European affiliate, has been exploring some marvelous little-known music by big composers, offered in marvelous performances--Vivaldi, Handel, now more Mozart.
This stylized Italian opera of the classic sort, all formal recitatives and arias laid out in the timeless symmetry of the late Baroque age, was composed, all in a fever, by a seventeen-year-old Mozart, out to impress the Italian bigwigs. He did. And the opera itself, outwardly derivative to the last note (that was Mozart's intention, to write the Italians a better Italian opera than they could manage themselves) is nevertheless delightful, and astonishingly Mozart. You'll spot him in seconds if you are a Mozart fan. Classical or no, the music is full of youthful verve and enthusiasm, yet, as always in Mozart, it is disciplined and expressive, professional to the nth degree, technically masterful.
Of course you will not find the extreme concentration of late Mozart, nor the very modern characterization of the late operas, the depths or meaning, the tragedy and humor mixed together. This is easygoing, sprightly music for the most part, its tragedy mostly of a formal sort. You'll let it slide easily past the ears, all melody and sparkle, without strain. But it is Mozart-no less. Which means that on second and third and nth playing it will continue to grow upon you.
Where do they find such imaginative and musical singers as these, all out of Italy, all of a sort and the same tradition, blending together in a team as very few opera companies now bother to do, what with the international star system. This is extraordinary singing (and much of the music is technically beyond most of the great stars-too taxing). An extraordinary performance, even to the excellent and lively orchestra.
I wouldn't take a dozen big-name expensive opera albums for this single inexpensive box. See others in the same RCA Victrola series, both operas and oratorios.
Performance: A, Sound: B+
Szell/Wagner. Great Orchestral Highlights from the Ring of the Nibelungs. Cleveland Orchestra, Szell. Columbia MS 7291 stereo ($5.98).
George Szell is becoming more and more a sort of second Fritz Reiner. Utterly different in personality (and in shape, one pudgy, the other thinnish), they share a number of conductorial characteristics. First, a fanatical perfectionism as to orchestral technique, the art of precise, perfect professional ensemble. Second, a tendency towards high tension in the playing, and to high speeds, especially in the more popular standard items of the conventional symphonic repertory.
Thus there are many passages in these excerpts from the Ring which are pushed hell for leather at speeds I've never heard before. Don't know what old Richard W. would think of them, but they surely make for a "different" sound, as compared to the leisurely, almost torpid pace of much Wagnerian unfolding a generation or so ago.
My reactions were, in fact, quite mixed. I like the old slow-motion style -provided I don't have to listen to it for too many hours. (Like, say, five, at the usual complete opera performance.) For my generation Wagner, the once-revolutionary, was already comfortable and almost old fashioned; no point in trying to make him modern at the expense of expansiveness.
On the other hand, Wagner today is old fashioned, far more so even than Brahms. At this point he must be restyled for relevance, the music as well as the Wagnerian staging, which has been wholly modernized since the last War. And so--to sum it up--I enjoyed listening to Szell, though occasionally I squirmed in discomfort.
A good selection here, well thought out. The first side is all from the last late music of the Ring, Gotterdammerung, and the latter part of Siegfried, where the language is grown extraordinarily concentrated and even astringent, though built largely on the themes of the early operas. Side 2 is entirely from those first operas, composed many years earlier, where the same themes are first heard in much looser, simpler formations full of youthful confidence. A very interesting contrast.
Performance: B+, Sound: B+
Stokowski-Khachaturian: Symphony No. 3 with Organ and 15 Trumpets; Rimsky-Korsakov: Russian Easter Overture. Chicago Symphony. RCA Victor LSC 3067 stereo ($5.98).
For its first five minutes and more, this heady Khatchaturian Symphony same composer as the famous Gayne Suite, all-time hi-fi noisemaker of a decade or so ago-makes an impressively novel and. enormous sonic impact, worthy of the best equipment you can muster on which to play it.
Fifteen trumpets! They play fanfares against the orchestra, and their number allows Mr. K. to write some brilliantly dissonant chords that amount to a grand New Sound in trumpetry.
But after that things rapidly deteriorate. The organ comes in with a long, frantic, and somewhat Baroque solo. The introductions over, so to speak, what next? Plenty of noise but the corniest, most derivative noise you can imagine. Watered-down, heppedup Rimsky Korsakov in semi-modern dress. I found it so dreary I forgot to listen to the fi for the last half.
Next to this brilliantly contrived tour de force of nothing very much, the old and familiar Russian Easter celebration by Rimsky himself sounds clean and classical. But its sounds are in themselves so familiar that once again I waxed absent minded and sort of gave up halfway through.
You don't have to expect the same reaction, and if you are likely to enjoy RCA's brilliant recording on your own fancy equipment, you will find ancient Maestro Stokowski at his incredible best--nobody puts on a better show in this kind of music.
Performances: A, Sound: A-
Carl Nielsen--Piano Music. Arne Skjold Rasmussen. Vox SVBX 5449 (3 discs) stereo ($9.95).
Carl Nielsen: Flute Concerto; Clarinet Concerto, Op. 57. Paul Pazmandi, fl., Joseph Deak, Cl., Philharmonia Hungarica, Maga. Vox Turnabout TV 34261 stereo ($2.98).
Just as there are plenty of people who buy up Bruckner with passion, or Scriabine, or Harry Partch, so there are Nielsenites all over the place these days. As for me, I'd prefer that old Swede Berwald any time to this more recent Dane (d. 1931) but that isn't to say I don't find Nielsen interesting.
He is one of those odd twentieth-century Romanticists, along with Sibelius and Rachmaninoff, Howard Hansen, and Samuel Barber and, for that matter, Richard Strauss himself in old age, who carried on in a nineteenth-century manner right through the age of jazz and twelve tones as though nothing (well . . . hardly anything) had changed.
For my ear the trouble with Neilsen is that he tried obstinately and too often to work into atonality and dissonance-but fell back again and again to the old familiar consonance.
He is better on the older ground. That dichotomy of style is a thing only Sibelius could really do with a flare.
The Nielsen dissonance and non tonality just wanders, awkward, insecure, until it finds itself back, say, in a safe D major.
I sampled through the Complete Piano Music-six sides of the same and was defeated by just this aspect.
Work after work in the general sound era of Grieg, out of Chopin, yet full of harmonic aberrations that don't fit Grieg or Chopin. Not new enough, for my ear, yet not comfortably old either. However, if you are likely to hear the music in a different way you will find that the Danish pianist Arne Skjold Rasmussen is a first rate artist who is dedicated to this music, a fine choice for the job. The Vox recording, too, does justice to a splendid piano sound.
The pair of solo concerti on Turnabout make a more interesting buy for the general listener. The Clarinet Concerto, the last of Nielsen's major works, at long last finds a really congenial idiom that combines the older Romantic approach with a perky, somewhat astringent touch of dissonance, stylishly consistent and musically secure. This work I really liked and so will you. Especially with such excellent clarinet playing, and such top-drawer recording too. You do not have to he a Nielsenite (nor belong to the Carl Nielsen Society of Amer ica) to enjoy such music! The Flute Concerto on the other side is equally well recorded and played, but a slightly earlier work, it still suffers from that harmonic double vision described above, never quite one thing or another but somehow uneasily flitting from this to that, neither modern nor old. It is, of course, the more typical Nielsen. Too bad that he did not live another decade, to turn out a definitive cycle of works following the Clarinet Concerto. To my way of thinking, he had at last found himself there, at the end of his career.
Performances: A, Sound: A-
The Edge of the Meadow. Narration by James Baird, Peter Kilham. Droll Yankees DY-22 mono.
The Frog Pond. Narr. Lawrence and Peter Kilham. Droll Yankees DY-21 mono.
Deep Sea Fisherman. Narr. Capt. C. H. Westcott and Peter Kilham. Droll Yankees DY-20 mono. (Mail order: Droll Yankees, Inc., Providence, R.I. 02906.)
Here are the latest three in a considerable series of unique "wild life" LP recordings, promoted by an indefatigable Yankee (listen to his voice) , Peter Kilham of Providence, Rhode Island. Peter, if I am right, has long been totin' around a Nagra recorder, and has made himself into a skillful tape editor. He records birds, frogs, sea captains, then edits the results into a smooth sequence with all but imperceptible joints and excellent continuity. On top of the sounds he adds--later, of course-a running commentary in dialogue form that purports to be on the scene itself. A useful device, if a bit transparent as far as fooling us sophisticates of the loudspeaker.
"What's that I hear," says Peter, "could it be a stormy petrel?" (Or words to that effect.) "Yes, Peter, it is a stormy petrel," answers his fall man, who is invariably a superb naturalist with a dozen relevant anecdotes ready at tongue tip to eke out the stormy petrel's song. Nice idea. Good listening for young and old.
Even better, in most cases, is Kilham's standard side 2, the sounds themselves minus the narration. Solves the problem of too much anecdote repetition and lets you do your own homework on birds, frogs or sea captains.
Mr. Kilham's birds are the best sounds he offers. "Edge of the Meadow," supplementing a number of earlier recordings of birds in various locales-forest, field and so on-is a bit stiff-jointed in the narration but not unpleasantly so and the material, as always, is quite fascinating. Much unexpected and interesting bird lore.
The birds come through beautifully too, not too distant and diffuse, nor too close. Some of our fancier scientific bird men make such literal-minded recordings of their birds, via huge parabolic reflectors around the mike, that the birds sound totally unnatural, performing from a seeming couple of feet away and minus the all-important sonic background that gives their songs authentic meaning.
"Frog Pond" brings together vast numbers of frogs and two Kilham brothers and here the little drama of the narration breaks down amusingly.
Peter tries hard to keep up the pretense of being on the spot, right in the frog pond. But Lawrence, obviously the realist of the family, doesn't go along with all this dramatic tomfoolery and keeps making salty remarks about the frogs you're going to hear nextas if you could know ahead of time on the scene! As for "Deep Sea Fisherman," it is another of Peter's worthy attempts to put mechanical ship sounds and ocean or river noises into the bird-song format, not entirely successful simply because the sounds aren't very amenable. The good ship Roann here takes off into the fishing waters to the accompaniment of various clanks, squeaks, groans and diesel engine noises, not very informative to the ear.
The occasional gulls, at least give an ocean effect. Capt. Westcott and Kilham work genially to bring it alive, via a running commentary of questions and answers concerning all sorts of strange trawler or dragger gear and fishing operations as the huge net is dropped overboard and towed through the water (more clanks and bumps and rattling chains) . But, after all, you can't hear the fish being caught, even with a Nagra recorder.
At the end, Mr. Kilham almost edits himself out of the picture. "Well," he says briskly, ending the interview, "Thank you Captin' Westcott, I'll be seein' you" and-apparently-steps over the side into the icy midwinter Atlantic. "Come again," says the Captain heartily. (In the taped interview Kilham must have forgotten that according to his sound continuity the boat was still out to sea! Side 2 offers more fishing sounds, this time not identical with side 1 and including a good deal of spoken conversation, genuine and unrehearsed, on board the actual boat-mostly off mike and in the background. Some of the contrived questions on side 1 obviously originated in the real queries heard on side 2, on location. A slightly mixed-up record, this, but rewarding even so.
These and other Droll Yankee discs by mail. Address above.
Performances: A+, Sound: B+
David Frye--I Am the President. With supporting cast. Elektra EKS 75006, stereo ($5.98).
Richard the 37th; the Agnew and the Ecstasy. Bob McFadden and supporting cast. Vanguard VSD 79309 stereo ($5.98).
Well, a new President always asks for it! I don't know which of these two rival discs scooped the other. It doesn't matter. Both of them feature a batch of slightly poisonous skits based on the sound of the President's voice, mimicked, and the equally intriguing sound of the Presidential surrounders, from Mr. Johnson and Hubert right on to Julie Eisenhower and Trish, not to mention Finch (do you know his authentic voice yet?) and, of course, Agnew. Couldn't leave him out.
Like all skits of the sort, the humor doubles you up but the padding simultaneously leaves you pretty bored.
Each record has perhaps fifteen minutes of solid stuff and the rest is just TV-style guff. But what counts most here is the fact that this is a new form of an ancient art satire. Here, it has a new base not pictorial resemblances, as of the recent past when photography made famous faces (but not voices) familiar to all; nor based, as of earlier periods, on word-resemblances, when famed people were known only through what the printed word told us they said. Now, it is the actual sound of their voices that conveys the personality-and the satire. Who remembers what Harding or Wilson sounded like? It's a new art, this vocal satire.
Imagine Abraham Lincoln taken off by the sound of his voice alone! Which record to try? Both get a Nixon-ish sound and both parody plenty of familiar nonsense from all hands. But David Frye's vocal imitations are far, far ahead of Bob McFadden's. Indeed, Frye is all but uncanny; he is Nixon, down to the last vocal chord, and he also is Johnson, and an astonishingly real Hubert Humphrey.
I have never in my life heard such incredible mimicry as his. Thus even the most longwinded script material in the Frye Electra album manages to keep your interest, if only for the sound of the voices, all coming out of that one imitating throat.
In comparison, McFadden's Nixon is only outwardly correct. In this particular medium, he just ain't in the running.
(Audio magazine, Mar. 1970; Edward Tatnall Canby)
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