Classical Record Reviews (Aug. 1972)

by Edward Tatnall Canby

César Franck: Symphony in D Minor. Ravel: Fanfare from "L'Eventail de Jeanne." Hilversum Radio Philharmonic Orch., Stokowski. London Phase 4 SPC 21061, stereo, $5.98.

Phase 4 triumphs again. This is an eccentric but remarkable version of the old symphonic war horse, done up splendidly by the engineers in super fi, yet in its musical interpretation projecting a style straight out of Stokowski's youth, say around 1910. Which just happens to be consonant with the neo Romantic stylings now being worked up by our very youngest conductors.

Stokowski's finger on the pulse, once again? Halfway through the second movement a further thought hit me. Why was this style so familiar, whom did it remind of? Of course! Here is the apotheosis of Willem Mengelberg, that genius of the turn of the century whose immensely mannered conducting dominated the scene all the way up to the middle of WW II with his Concertgebouw Orchestra. With a start, I understood that this, too, is a Dutch orchestra, if not the Concertgebouw itself, then a distinguished orchestra in its own area, the radio. Could the old maestro be up to still further ingenuities? I wouldn't put it past him! A sense of history. With all the dramatic trimmings, à la Fantasia.

The Symphony is taken as no conductor under 65 would dare take it.

Slowly, with great hesitations, changes in tempo, lingerings over lovely details, bringings-out of melodic turns and harmonic subtleties-it would be carnage in anybody else's hands (except Mengelberg). Unbelievable, but good, really good! We can only admire the brave Dutch orchestra, which follows the Maestro's baton-less hands (he never uses one) with absolute precision no matter what. Amazing. It is a convincingly "different" performance, and since this sort of thing definitely once was common in musical interpretation, the results are significant, not merely flukey.

You will not credit your ears when you hear the brief Ravel fanfare that opens the first side, before the Symphony. It was resurrected from a 1927 work (very late Ravel), a multi composer children's ballet. The instruments enter in different keys, "modern" as all get-out and very much 1927.

Remember, this was the period when Ravel, in New York, became vitally aware of George Gershwin and of Harlem jazz-a musical influence that is obvious in both his piano concerti, if the performers allow it to get through. (Some of them don't.) Quite a fanfare, and you can put it on for your friends, who'll never guess.

Performance: A Sound: A

Ravel: Bolero; La Valse; Pavane pour une infante défunte. Royal Philharmonic, Claude Monteux. London Phase 4 SPC 21064, stereo, $5.98.

You can't hit every time, even with the best of prognoses. This one, with everything apparently going for it, is a curious dud. Claude Monteux is not only French in background but is the highly musical son of the late Pierre Monteux, one of the finest conductors of our age.

I think I can deduce the story. It happens that, only days before I listened to this record, Claude Monteux, live and in the flesh, conducted the second of two little concerts right in my home town in Northern Connecticut.

The man is a superb musician! And one of the finest flute players I have ever heard. He has a natural stage presence too. He can conduct, talk informally and play flute, all, so to speak, in a breath. (How one can lead an allegro movement of a symphony, then casually turn around and play a flute solo to the second movement, right on the podium, is more than I can understand. Such sang-froid! Such breath control!) So, you see, the man is to be reckoned with.

The problem is one of style. Both the Monteux concerts I heard were of 18th century music. Claude Monteux is obviously a specialist in this area, both in conducting and in playing.

From Bach to Mozart and Haydn, his styling and phrasing is impeccable and wonderful to listen to. But he must make his own reputation, and he does go by the name of Monteux. What would a typical A & R department do with such a name? Of course! Throw some standard French orchestral stuff at him. What else? It just doesn't work. The frenetic and explosive La Valse, with its waves of controlled hysteria, just tries to stay urbanely Viennese as long as it can; the great succeeding climaxes are altogether muffed when they no longer can be denied. Distressful. The Bolero, growing steadily under a rigid pulse, is easier fare for a conductor--but even here Monteux & orchestra hideously miss the whole point of that hair-raising change of key at the end, which hurls itself into madness with the final hoarse, croaking chords (pardon my h's), like the hatchet-type ending of Richard Strauss's opera Salomé. Only the suave Pavane comes through convincingly on this record, and that one's easy.

How about some Phase 4 Haydn or Mozart or Telemann, via Claude Monteux? Please take note, London. That would be really something.

Performances: C + Sound: B +

Harry Partch/Delusion of the Fury. Ensemble of Unique Instruments conducted by Donlee Mitchell, supervised by the composer. Columbia M2 30576, 2 discs plus bonus disc, stereo, $ 11.98.

Here's Harry Partch again, the 70 year-old California genius eccentric who for 50-odd years has been inventing his own art instruments out of all sorts of odds and ends from eucalyptus boughs to abandoned hubcaps and light bulbs, giving them lovely names such as "Cloud Chambers," "Spoils of War," "Boo," and--last but hardly least--composing music for them, all in slithery quarter tones with masses of percussion, vast, stringy twangings, a generally sea-sick pitch-component, and an over-all old-fashioned sense of harmonic vestige from the ripest 19th century! Not unlike Charles Ives, when you come down to it.

The bonus disc, an extra LP, is a valuable account by Mr. Partch himself of each of his instruments, each one sampled for sound; and Columbia has added a vital visual component, color pictures of each of the instruments in the order that they are played and described. The rest of the set, four very full LP sides, goes to the most recent Partch super-piece, an enormous work on a Mahleresque scale in which most or all of the described instruments may be heard in operation.

Those over 30 (and under 70?) would do best to avoid the printed "Delusion of the Fury" story line, which gets bewildering, what with mixtures of Japanese Noh, African folk, U.S. hobo and so on. This is a "live" multi-media work and the story is important if you are watching as well as listening. Since you aren't, forget it. Just listen, and let the twangs and thumps and clangs roll over your ears like a cross between a Raga and a Gamelan, with those oddly faint echoes of California Brahms-out of-tune. It's a weird mixture and, if I may so, very California.

For all its complexity and immensity, I can't help feeling that Harry Partch's music, like that of Charles Ives, is less well jelled than the sounds put forth by many a lesser but more stylized contemporary composer. For me, at least, the visual and pragmatic beauty of his unique instruments is more important-they are totally fulfilled and wholly original, whereas the music is maybe two-thirds baked, full of undigested 19th century stuff. Not so the visuals! They are astonishingly beautiful, these Partch creations.

Partch himself is California at its zany best.

Performances: A+ Sound: A

Gilbert & Sullivan: H.M.S. Pinafore. D'Oyly Carte Opera Co., Royal Philharmonic Orch., James Walker. London Phase 4 SPCA 12001 (2 discs), stereo, $11.96.

Lordy, Lordy, what they've done to G & S! Come, come, now, you Phase 4 people (and you newest generation of D'Oyly Carte singers), I was a Brrritish Sailor Lad in "Pinafore" at 16 and sang out with the best of them; moreover, I collected a brace of the very first D'Oyly Carte 78 albums, "Trial by Jury" and this very opera included--recordings which have long been Sancti Pied among Savoyards as the authentic G & S tradition for all time. I know every note by heart. They don't sound like this.

Harrumph. I think maybe I like this better. Even tho the old guard will rip out its sparce, graying hair if it ever dares to listen.

This version, at last, brings G & S totally up to date in terms of modem recording techniques, complete with multiple stereo effects and startling mix-downs of sound never imagined either by G or S. Sea gulls! After all, aren't we at the shore? Ranks of sailors marching about. Scads of people all over the place (especially if you listen via four-channel), a perfect pageant of sonic scenery into which the familiar G & S tunes and patter fit as though they'd always been there. This is no staged opera! We are right on the deck of the good ship Pinafore, for fair, and anything goes, so long as it adds to the decor. Imagine it! Almost before the Overture is done, we are in the midst of crowds of people, and the hustle and bustle keeps us right on that famous deck, with sailors, sisters--cousins--and aunts, and all the familiar principals around us, from Poor Little Buttercup and Captain Corcoran to the famed Sir Joseph Porter, K.C.B. And phew-you should hear the scene when Sir Joseph, the ruler of the Queen's Nay-vee (not Nah-vee) is elaborately piped on board, bosun's pipes shrilling, orders bawled out, sailors snapping to attention down there on the dock, and all those lovely sisters and cousins and aunts fluttering about the great man just the way you always supposed they would. Absorbing.

Equally fine is the spirit of the performance, once again fully alive, after too many years of tired G & S-the old mannered style gradually losing its force. (It was splendid in its day but that is no longer.) These are more musical singers than in the past and they sing (and act) in a new way, straightforwardly, almost casually. This goes well with the new sonic naturalism of the scenery; indeed, it's a necessity.

The soloists fit into the surrounding stereo with entire ease and naturalness.

As for the chorus, sailors and cousins and-aunts, it positively bounces with eagerness, a very pro sound but with the enthusiasm of a high school glee club. The Philharmonic is 'way ahead of the old theater orchestras we used to get. And the dialog! It's there at length (not the short, stilted excerpts common in earlier recordings) and put to superb effect-preposterous, but ever so human.

At last, the spoken element catches up with the music.

In all truth, I say, this is the dawn of a new life for G & S; assuming that the series continues. It had better. Live performers: You'd better study this one too. Lots of new ideas.

(Note an earlier London D'Oyly Carte series also done with the Royal Philharmonic. This new series is clearly marked Phase 4 stereo, and has a different conductor. There is a single disc of excerpts. Buy the whole two-record show. Decidedly.)

Performance: A; Sound: A

Ballet Tchaikovsky's Greatest Ballets. (Nutcracker/Swan Lake Suites) Boston Pops, Fiedler. RCA LSC 4002, stereo, $5.98.

Evenings at the Ballet. (Les Sylphides, Carnaval, Sylvia, Coppélia, Giselle). Philharmonia Orch., Robert Irving. Seraphim SIC 6069 (3), stereo, $8.94.

Ballet music is excellent reissue material. Its message is essentially entertainment-that is, background for the visible dance on the stage-and it makes equally good high-level background music for all sorts of other activities, un-envisioned by Tchaikovsky et al. So what if the recordings are some years old, and maybe not super hi-fi? I listened to Les Sylphides as background for cooking up a huge spaghetti meal one night; Schumann's Carnival took me straight through the eating of the same, with pleasurable results. And so it goes.

Price differentials these days are outrageously hardboiled. Sales curves, fame-charts, appearances, where & when--that's what counts, not the music, not the fi nor the performance. You will note that the Boston Pops, which RCA no longer records, still commands top pricing, maybe because it always has and the legend must be preserved, or maybe just to meet the present competition in Boston (Deutsche Grammophon). The Boston Pops Tchaikovsky is of the expected warm, somewhat unbuttoned sort, not very high voltage and good for spring beer drinking. The sound is perfectly OK but not really top fi by present standards. Don't ask me to figure when it was recorded. On Seraphim the date is implied by the Orchestra, which became the New Philharmonic 'way back. The Angel sound, whatever the date, seems cleaner and smoother to me, and the interpretations with Irving are top dance stuff, tighter, more precise more expressive than the Boston efforts. To be expected; Irving is an experienced conductor of live ballet. But this album goes at half price! It's a bargain, decidedly. Better music, better sound than on RCA.

Performances: B, A; Sound: B-, B

(Audio magazine, Aug. 1972; Edward Tatnall Canby)

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