Behind the Scenes
News on classical recordings, edited by James R. Oestreich
Kozinn ASCAP Award
Allan Kozinn has won a Deems Taylor Award for his 1980 work, including HIGH FIDELITY pieces on the classical record business (April), Segovia (July), and Ruggles (October). The awards, named for the American composer and critic, are presented by ASCAP annually to acknowledge excellence in writing on music. HF Contributing Editor Nicholas Kenyon also received a 1980 award for his pieces in the New Yorker.
We reported in February that Edita Gruberova would be the Queen of the Night in Bernard Haitink's ZauberflOte with the Bavarian Radio forces. And though we mentioned Lucia Popp in an other context, we couldn't have known then that she would be Haitink's Pamina: Helen Donath, scheduled to record the role, was forced to cancel due to throat problems. Others in the cast include Siegfried Jerusalem (Tamino), Wolfgang Brendel (Papageno). and Ro land Bracht (Sarastro). For his first opera recording, EMI afforded Haitink the luxury of some twenty-seven sessions.
More typical is the Decca / London schedule of ten sessions (excluding recitative) for Georg Solti's London Phil harmonic recording of a lengthier Mozart work, The Marriage of Figaro. Popp figures here, too, as Susanna. Other principals are Thomas Allen (the Count), Kiri Te Kanawa (the Countess), Samuel Ramey (Figaro), Frederica von Stade (Cherubino). and Kurt Moll (Bartolo), with Robert Tear, Jane Berbie, Yvonne Kenny, and Philip Langridge in the lesser roles. Our European correspondent re ports that one hour saw an amazing sequence of takes: Moll doing "La ven detta!" twice; Te Kanawa in a stupendous take of "Dove sono"(with recitative) and a couple of retakes: Ramey doing "Se vuol ballare" and the Act II reference back to that number: and then Solti leading the orchestra twice through the Overture, after which he dismissed everyone-some eight minutes early! Solti's other recent recording activity includes the Schubert Ninth Symphony, with the Vienna Philharmonic: Haydn's Creation, with Chicago forces; and the Bartok First Piano Concerto with the London Philharmonic and Vladimir Ashkenazy. Solti was supposed to have joined the pianist at the keyboard in Bartok's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion as well but has given way to Ashkenazy's fast-developing eldest son.
National Public Radio recently celebrated-in somewhat strained circum stances-the tenth anniversary of its first transmission. Heavily dependent upon public funding, the network has been la boring under the threat of potentially disastrous budget cuts, and the issue re mains in doubt as of this writing. There will be a fall season, however, starting the month with a thirteen-part series ranging from sackbuts to synthesizers.
For an early-music series, "Cathedral, Court, and Countryside," HF's Kenyon provides commentary on European mu sic and society from 1200 to 1700, to ac company performances by Joel Cohen's Boston Camerata, the Folger Consort, the Deller Consort, and others. Com poser and conductor Gunther Schuller hosts a contemporary-music series. "RadioVisions." that will feature the first American performance of John Cage's Roaratorio, which created a stir in Europe. Most of the music to be presented was commissioned specially for the series, and much of it exploits such electronic devices as vocorders, synthesizers, harmonizers, and digital delays. In addition, the Peabody Award-winning San Francisco Opera broadcasts are back, now in digital tapings. Other season features include several miniseries of concerts: seven by the Stuttgart Radio Sym phony, with two conducted by Sergiu Celibidache and one by Krzysztof Penderecki; three by the Southwest German Radio Symphony, two under Kazimierz Kord, one under the late Kiril Kondra shin; and three by the Berlin Phil harmonic, under Herbert von Karajan, Seiji Ozawa, and Charles Dutoit.
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Also see:
Classical Record Reviews: Alain plays Alain; Serkin's Emperor:, Schumann symphonies; Critics' Choice; Theater and Film: Altered States; East of Eden; Stunt Man; Elephant Man; The Tape Deck, by R.D. Darrell: HiTech or LoPrice; New Musicmaster Label; Economy-Minded Tape Collectors