by Edward Tatnall Canby
Felix Weingartner/Beethoven. Symphony No. 3 "Eroica"; Leonore Over ture No. 2. Vienna Philharmonic (1936), London Symphony (1938). Vox Turnabout THS 65147, mono, $4.98.
In the later 78 electrical days, Felix Weingartner was one of the big names, for Beethoven. perhaps the biggest. His performance here of the Eroica is a marvelously flowing one, somehow fresher and more aware than the mass-production versions we get too often today. In 1936 Beethoven was indeed fresher himself, still the very king of Romantic music, and this symphony was its very beginning. (He still rates as king, but we are a bit absent-minded about it now; too much else to think about.) Similarly with the rarely heard Leonore Overture No. 2, which was the first version of the more famous and much more concise and dramatic No. 3, the one we always hear; Weingartner's No. 2 makes no apologies, so to speak, and thereby comes out the more forcefully.
Sounds to me as though this Eroica was made at a concert; it sounds remarkably modern in the recording, thanks to a very large reverberation more like that which is normal today than the usual semi-dead sound of the symphonic 1930s. It is that sound of the Grosser Musikvereinsaal in Vienna, fortuitously miked for the 1980s. The sound itself is quite clean and adequately wide range, though as always the louder parts are strained, even at a restricted dynamic range. 1936.
The Leonore music was recorded two years later at Abbey Road in Lon don. The sound is much closer and deader-and, sad to relate, not as clean as the Viennese sound. Not bad, either, just more typically 1930s.
Sound: C+ Recording: B+, B Surfaces: B
Music of Noel Lee: Caprices on the Name of Schoenberg; Convergences; Dialogues. Noel Lee, piano/harps.; Nouvel Orchestre Philharmonique, Marty; Ole Bohn, vl. CRI SD 408, stereo, $7.95.
To put the cart before the horse (the music)--if you want the best surfaces from a standard LP anywhere today, try CRI. No extra price, either. This one very nearly rates the ultimate full A, which means not only quiet but with virtually no rhythmic turning sounds.
Noel Lee has been around quite a while as a prodigious and immensely sensitive touring pianist--it seems he has already made some 90 LPs, world wide, and my attention perked up the instant I saw his name on this album as composer. A first-rate man, representing, in an interesting way, the very last and most homogenized product of the great generations of "modern mu sic" of the first part of this century, from Schoenberg and his followers through Bartok, Hindemith, and the rest--also the famed Nadia Boulanger, French teacher with whom everybody who was anybody just had to study. Noel Lee too, from 1948.
Which to an extent dates him. Child of the old greats! A fascinating record. First side offers a French radio "live" recording of a really big piece, an update piano concerto with Lee as pianist--how often do we hear the composer himself in a major work these days? It is everything that "12-tone" or "serial" means, i.e. music without a key, based on pat terns derived from a tone row, and it is also very much at the mature, sunset end of Romanticism, tempered ever so nicely with what we call "neoclassic"-- that is, a bit of humor and once in a while a beat. Quirky. Lee is an expert instrumentalist who knows every instrument's secret desires as well as he knows those of his own piano (and harpsichord on side 2), and he particularly loves the dialogue--back and forth tossings of short bits of music.
That, I'd say, is the first appeal of this work and keeps it very alive through out its uncompromising length. The work is recent, composed from 1973 through 1975, and this was its first performance.
Noel Lee's artistry, especially in the pair of duet works on side 2 (one with harpsichord), is a thing to astonish the ear. Every sound he produces is exquisite, the phrasing, the exact shaping and tone and rhythm of each idea, is that of a great artist--and shows up all too many of our flashier contest winners for their coarseness of thought. Convergences for flute and harpsichord came just before the mu sic on side 1 and is similar, again full of interesting dialogue exchanges be tween two superbly played and very different instruments. Dialogues is considerably earlier (1958) and per haps for that reason is more emphatically neoclassic, with a Bartok-Hindemith cast and a lot of rhythm--yet this also, as per the title, has that fine sense for a dialogue of dissimilar instruments. An incredible delicacy of piano sound, especially the very soft, and a matching violin performance. If you want to hear how music should really be played, try these.
Excellent live recording by the French radio people on the first side with orchestra, and an equally fine, more ambient job of the two pieces on Side 2, derived from a release originally on the Fona label. And note the ex pert taping and disc cutting-a thou sand silences in these dialogues and not a pre-echo or post-echo in the lot.
Sound: A- Recording: A Surfaces: A-
Trio Sonatas by Fasch, Stamitz, Bach, de Fesch. Los Angeles Baroque Players. Crystal S703, stereo, $7.98.
It's natural that professional "sym phonic" players should want to get into solo chamber music once in a while, between orchestral tours, opera, and so on. Here you have four real pros (including harpsichord) who be tween them seem to have performed in every orchestra from Chicago to L.A.
and back. That, alas, is exactly the way their Baroque (and gallant) sounds. I didn't enjoy it.
Proficient, of course. But hard, not well phrased (the flute is good and so is the harpsichord), and all too often hacked out in a really ugly fashion, bangety-bang. This merely reflects the necessarily narrow, technical-minded background that is a part of this highly competitive and demanding musical trade--who has time to learn styles of Baroque and be a virtuoso too? The sound of this music simply reflects the average conservatory musician's idea of Baroque--they'll do it every time unless somebody tells them no or, on rare occasions, somebody just has a natural feeling and respect for this type of music.
The worst here, actually, is the post-Baroque, the gallant "early-Mozart" style of Karl Stamitz of Mannheim. His frittery stuff, though it can be charm ing if played with sensitivity and delicacy, is powered right into the ground by these three ladies and one gent.
Take it easy, folks--this is music! (But I like their slow movements, where the power output is reduced.) Very loud recording, cut heavily and, I'd say, a bit coarsely. Fits the performance.
Sound: B- Recording: B+ Surfaces: A-
Ve Iss da Mighty Tubadours Ya? Frank Berry, Tim Reilly, David Lusher, Albert Harclerode, Adi Hershko. Crystal S 421, stereo, $7.98.
Some cubists (as they call them selves--players on the tubes) these days go in for very serious contemporary music and do not like to get made fun of, as I have found to my cost. OK--these boys are just being subversive, I suppose? Upholding the long reputation of the tuba as somehow an innately preposterous instrument, a cross between an elephant and a rhino, or maybe a Volkswagen and a diesel locomotive. That is about the way they sound here, and intentionally so, though the playing is very expert and often musical, according to the subject matter.
The subject matter ranges widely, as they say. Beethoven. Bach. Mood Indi go and Down By the Old Mill Stream. The fancier the composer, the more preposterous the sound, and I suppose the acme, in this case, is a fat portion of Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik! It's all extremely blatty and burpy and sounds exactly like the title.
Sound: G? Recording: B+
Surfaces: Forgot to notice.
(Audio magazine, Aug. 1980; Edward Tatnall Canby)
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Also see:
Classical Record Reviews (Nov. 1980)
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