by Edward Tatnall Canby
Carl Nielsen: Symphony No. 5. L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Kletzki. London CS 6699, stereo, $ 5.98.
Periodically, I come back to Nielsen to see whether I can realize in my own perceptions the qualities of greatness which Nielsen enthusiasts point out.
He has a hefty following, no question about that, if enthusiasm is heft. The liner notes on this record are full of words like "genius," "colossal," "no post-Beethoven symphony has surpassed (its) dramatic power" and so on. Either you are a dedicated Nielsenite or you aren't.
I'm not. So turn to another magazine if you are, and no offense, I hope.
Each to his own. To use the familiar youth phrase, I simply am not turned on by Nielsen, however dramatic he may be. He leaves me with a feeling of utter objectivity. Yes, a very fine orchestral sound, excellent melodic sweep, skillful, professional layout, an enormous canvas and much evidence of vast cosmos, some enormous spiritual ethos, which is very obviously being projected by the music. Par for the course in Nielsen's day, as of Mahler, Scriabin, et al. But in Nielsen it pushes too hard. I find the musical effects overblown for their content of musical language, repetitious to a degree I can't take, overextended, and most of all, somehow stylistically fuzzy (though of course it is "all Nielsen," I will be answered). One minute it's Impressionist, the next cautiously, rather self-consciously, dissonant, then straight back to Brahms. Oh, well.
Why say more? (Play me 10 seconds of old Franz Berwald, another Scandinavian, and I'll swoon with joy, though he was no Beethoven. Play me an hour of Mahler, or two hours, and I'll listen, nor will my attention wander. Play me the same by Bruckner and I'll sleep. I even love Sibelius, now that I'm grown up. I used to think he was old fashioned.) For all of that, I think I can state that this is a good performance, as good as they come, in spite of a few minor string blemishes of ensemble under London's familiar close-sounding string microphoning. Full of strong feeling and good phrasing.
Performance: B, Sound: B
Beethoven: The Late Quartets (Op. 127, 130, 131, 132, 133, 135). The Yale Quartet. Vanguard Cardinal VCS 10101 /4, four stereo discs, $ 11.92.
A sad rumor from New Haven says that the Yale Quartet is no longer playing. If so, it is a crying shame, for this unpretentious local group, attached to Yale University, has put down some of the finest Beethoven on records anywhere. And this even though the personnel of the group is not entirely the same throughout the recordings.
This collection contains all the famed late Quartets, including the Grosse Fuge, the Great Fugue, originally the enormous-too enormous-last movement of Op. 130. Beethoven wisely detached it and wrote a smaller and more appropriate ending for the same spot. Never has the almost unplayable intensity of this Fugue-with-episodes been so accurately and smoothly performed, yet with all the expressivity it needs. (The work too often gets hopelessly scratchy and squawky, as the players try to encompass its incredible "drive" and play the notes right too.) Note that the Yale Quartet recordings are also available separately, on single LP discs, to your choice.
Performances: A, Sound: B +
John Williams/Raphael Puyana Music for Guitar and Harpsichord. (Jordi Savall, viola da gamba coñtinuo). Columbia M 31194, stereo, $5.98.
Here's another of those discs that combine a classical guitar with something else (like, say, another classical guitar). The sound mix here is mellifluous and the music pleasant, but I found that the three Sonatas by one man, Rudolf Straube, born 1717, were just too much. His .prettily tailored music is of the middle 18th century, early-Hayden sort, and after one Sonata you can guess the rest. Minimal content.
However, there's a nice semi-modern piece by the Mexican composer Ponce, brilliant neo-classic, and a really worthwhile Sonata, at length, by the annotator of this record. Stephen Dodgson. It is beautifully styled for the two instruments with a real sense of each of them and an impressive knowledge of both guitar and harpsichord history. This work might be called neoclassical, as of 1970; its roots are in the eclectic modern of the 1930's, all Baroque-ish and bouncy. It is played continuously but the shape is of a Baroque Sonata, slow/fast, the slow segments all florid ornament, free style (like a Bach Fantasia), the fast movements full of slightly acid counterpoint, very Baroque in texture. I like the way Dodgson can write real harpsichord music for the harpsichord, while writing equally guitar-ish music for that instrument, the two combining with the greatest of ease.
Buy this disc for the moderns, then, not for the classics. If you get tired of modern, you can always fall back on old Straube.
Performance: A, Sound: B
Jesus Christ Super Star (Eight complete excerpts). First All American Cast Album, Fleetwood FMS 4, one 7-in. stereo disc, available at some supermarkets.
As per our recent editorial page, this is one of a new series of seven-inch discs that somehow cram a full 12-in. LP into an unprecedented closeness of lines and length of play on the little 7-in. platter. The records play on normal equipment.
I am not sure what a "First All American Cast" might be (is there a part-American cast?) nor will I expound on the now-familiar music except to say that it strikes me as something less than sensational, considering the subject matter and the enduring popularity of the show. All that matters here is that there are four complete numbers on each side, eight in all, and three of these range from 4:00 to 5:12 in their timing. A lot of music in a small space.
Yes, it is, a technical feat. The sound is reasonably good, and the crucial inner grooves aren't bad at all (though the. sound mercifully fades out in slow motion at the ends, which undoubtedly helps!). A bit dull in the overall, and definitely a lot less loud and coarse than many a current short-type 45.
Also, the residual noises, minor clicks and bumps, do show up a bit and some of them tossed my ultra-light pickup a few grooves. But definitely a passable disc, at least in the high-production pop area. However, I think the real implication here has been overlooked.
It isn't that our jukes will now fill up with half-hour sides, all of a sudden.
Instead, as I read the message, Fleetwood is saying to us that there is a large amount of useful leeway between this disc and the present full-size standard LP. No-not for a renewed 10 in. size, though that is technically possible. Nobody wants the 10-in. back.
Rather, for an RCA-type discrete full sized disc, quadraphonic, improved.
If Fleetwood can do this well with somewhat reduced levels and a drastically smaller size-then it seems reasonable to think that the compromises now necessary for the discrete quadraphonic disc may in the end be successfully minimized. Times change and so do technologies, as Invention, so to speak, continues to be the Son of Necessity. RCA's present difficulties with lowish levels and shortish playing time are ,of the sort, you must admit, that--given time--our industry has usually been able to solve. Fleetwood is a side-indication of what might be coming. So it seems to me.
Franz Berwald: Piano Concerto in D Major (1855); Theme and Variations in G Minor; Rondeau-Bagatelle in B Flat; Tempo di Marcia; Presto feroce. Greta Erikson, piano; Swedish Radio Orchestra, Westerberg. Genesis GS 1011, stereo, $5.98.
Lovely. Anything by Franz Berwald is worth a listen, though the old Swede, formerly unknown to musicians as well as listeners, tends to write the same sort of music in all his late works. It is so delightfully quirky, so good humoredly jittery, nervous, high-tension, yet as honest and unspoiled as Schubert-who was younger than Berwald but died many years earlier. He isn't a great, universal composer, but surely he is one of the finest of the in-betweens. His music "fits" our own nervous temperaments as thoroughly as it riled the people of the 1840's and 50's, who couldn't stand nervousness.
This is a good all-Swedish performance, nice in the piano, a bit less than accomplished in the orchestra but definitely in the right spirit. Those who have tried Berwald will enjoy it, without question.
The solo piano pieces are revealingly uninteresting. They all date from the composer's youth, 1819-20, except one, the Presto, which is again, characteristic mature Berwald. The young Berwald wrote salon music, let's face it. Pretty empty stuff, if well put together. The more remarkable that he grew so much, in almost total musical solitude, in the long years that followed before his death in 1868.
Performances: B, Sound: B
Handel: Judas Maccabeus. Harper, Watts, Young, Shirley-Quirk; Amor Artis Chorale, Somary. Vanguard Cardinal 10105/6/7, 3 stereo discs, $ 8.94.
Judas Maccabeus is one of the three big, late-period oratorios that include Messiah, and you will hear many an echo of that slightly earlier work in this one. But each of the Handel oratorios has its overall pace and mood-this one is relaxed and yet impressive, full of the drama of celebration. It was composed as a musical analogy to rejoice upon the defeat of "Bonnie Prince Charlie," the last of the serious Stuart pretenders and grandson of James II. (Remember? Then came William & Mary out of Holland, in the "glorious revolution" of 1688, if my mind is in the right gear. . . .) A political showpiece, a device which Handel could always use to perfection in support of the glorious Establishment.
The Vanguard recording is the only current offering of the work by Englanders, in English, but it can stand up on any grounds of comparison you wish to choose. Somary, I'd say, has at last proved that in Handel we can be "authentic" to 18th century performance standards without being dry, dogmatic and dusty. His Handel moves along in modern style, briskly, naturally, with all proper details like continuo with harpsichord, more or less the original instrumentation, plenty of added trills and cadenzas (taken for granted in Handel's time), and a smallish chorus. His tempi are easily right, if fast-paced, and he "gives" to his singers, allowing them the grace of their own best expression, rather than dragging them along unmercifully at the new faster tempi which replace the dirge-like "oratorio" style of the past.
Indeed, the only necessarily less-than authentic element, here as elsewhere, is that of the vocal stars, who sing very much as of today and not necessarily in the manner of Handel's time. They adapt variously well, but all of Somary's are good and leaders in the British singing art. As usual, Heather Harper, the soprano, comes out best, her voice still pure, simple, and flexible. It takes singing of a sort still rare today to bring out the rapid-fire runs and trills and roulades which were merely normal in vocal art in the 1740's.
The chorus? It has a definitely familiar and very pro sound, replete with healthy vibrato and brimming with energy. "Amor Artis," I suspect, is now another name for that ever available British professional vocal pool that appears in all sorts of recent recordings under names convenient to the moment. It's the same in New York, where all professional chorus work is turned out by virtually the same singers, no matter what the designation. In any case, this group is tireless and efficient, if perhaps not quite as spiritually dedicated as might be hoped for. What more can you do under expensive recording circumstances? It's a job, but a job well done.
Since the parallel Vanguard recording of Messiah is out in SQ, you will probably find this one, eventually, in the quadraphonic offerings. If so, get it, even at a premium.
Performance: A, Sound: B +
Lewenthal Playing and Conducting Funeral March for a Papagallo and other Grotesqueries of Alkan. Columbia M 30234, stereo, $5.98.
Pianist Raymond Lewenthal rediscovered Alkan, a French Jewish piano genius and recluse of the Wagner-Liszt Verdi era who lived in Paris, played like a fiend but wouldn't play in public, composed voluminously, studied the Talmud-and was killed when the Talmud fell on him. An eccentric bird, of a sort not uncommon in Francenote Erik Satie, many years later.
Lewenthal has made himself the world's Alkan specialist. His first recording, chez RCA, brought out the heaviest Alkan piano armament; this one sheds light on the quirky side of the composer, and it does have its moments.
A lovely, bland little piece, for instance, jarred out of its complacency by sudden grotesque tone clusters, a century before Henry Cowell. A heinously difficult little Etude, one hand playing both a legato melody and a staccato broken-chord accompaniment--then both hands at once doing both things. A brace of assorted mood-pieces, apt to explode suddenly into the grotesque. Most interesting of all, a bigger item for voices and wind group, a mock-serious funeral march for a parrot on an endlessly repeated French equivalent of "Polly want a cracker?"
-A-tu déjeuné? and further, Et de quoi? (What did you eat?). It's done here by a batch of heavy-voiced Met singers for a vibrato-ridden sound of awesome vocal proportions, conducted by Lewenthal, who adds a croak of a bass for his own special grotesquerie! I suppose I'm an unimaginative clod, but Mr. L.'s enthusiastic imagination makes these little pieces more important in his written descriptions than they seem to sound in the pianistic flesh.
They are cute, well written, quirky, just as he says. But the texture and harmony is bland, a sort of mild Beethoven watered with semi-Chopin, not too exciting. In spots the writing is "virtuoso" all right, but more on the Beethoven model than say Liszt; incredible tangles of swift movement but without that showy brilliance which makes Liszt sound even more spectacular than it is.
As of the mid-century, I'll admit, these works must have seemed pretty far-out, to the few who heard some of them. That would give Mr. L. his talking point. But they'll appeal mainly to modern ears who enjoy Satie and the like, the real esoterics.
Performances: A, Sound: B +
Percy Grainger plays Grieg. Klavier KS 101, stereo, $5.98. Ignaz Friedman Concert II. Klavier KS 115, stereo, $5.98.
These are via Duo-Art, the earlier American system, competing with Ampico in the latter days, before records and radio killed the whole type of reproduction. (The Welte system was the first, back at the turn of the century in Germany, and these three fought it out for artists and for quality right up to the end.) The trouble-for our ears-with many of these old programs is that the music is now so insipid and old fashioned.
Modern ears, even those that are totally untrained in "classical," nevertheless are attuned to dissonances of a kind unheard-of back then. The minor recital works, and many of the major works too, no longer have the musical punch they once had; we simply cannot hear them as they were then heard, except by a severe exercise of imagination.
Yet a potent performer, like Percy Grainger, can give you a pretty good idea as to the way he felt about them.
Grieg's music nowadays seems all perfumed and over-juicy, with much drama about effects that seem to us pretty small potatoes in musical terms.
But they were both modern and radical in their day, and this quality is brought out dramatically (if you can stand it) by Grainger's playing-he knew Grieg personally. Horse's mouth. Grainger was always a mannered, slightly foppish pianist even in his own day, and he still sounds so. His piano-only reduction of the familiar Piano Concerto (Side A) may amaze a few, but mostly it will pall, with all its tired effects. But the solo piano pieces of Grieg on Side B are much more interesting and truthful.
I found Ignaz Friedman's minor Tchaikovsky, his Weber, Paganini, pretty insipid and old fashioned, for all his rep as a piano giant. But Fried man's own works, mostly waltzes, are much more interesting-richly lush things, somewhere midway between Fritz Kreisler and Maurice Ravel, so full of notes you think of a music box, and-of course-very difficult to play. What else! A whole side of these, and very pleasing listening if you like good dessert music.
Performance: A, Sound: B +
(Audio magazine, Sept. 1972; Edward Tatnall Canby)
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