[6/4/2011] Catching up on our overtures (2) (continued)

Here's the Seraphim CD that contains those five Leinsdorf performances plus four by Felix Slatkin and Miklós Rózsa.

ABOUT THE CD "VALUE-ADDED" OVERTURES

We've heard Rossini's William Tell Overture a fair amount -- conducted by Neville Marriner, Arthur Fiedler, and Fritz Reiner. So I'll just say that Felix Slatkin does a fine job with it.

With regard to Franz von Suppé's Poet and Peasant and Light Cavalry, if I haven't already, let me say that they fall in the category of Music Without Which It May Technically Be Possible to Live but What's the Point? In a July 2010 all-Suppé post we heard outstanding performances of the dramatic Poet and Peasant by Leonard Bernstein and Paul Paray (from his spectacular Mercury Suppé LP, which has been issued on CD with several Auber overtures thrown in), and wonderful performances of the wonderfully scampish Light Cavalry by Paray and Zubin Mehta. (I've had a lot to grumble about in Mehta's career, but the fact that he could produce as good a disc of Suppé overtures as he did with the Vienna Philharmonic counts heavily in his favor in my book.) But there's nothing to apologize for in Slatkin's performances.

SUPPÉ: Light Cavalry Overture

Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra, Felix Slatkin, cond. Capitol/EMI, recorded c1956

SUPPÉ: Poet and Peasant Overture

Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra, Felix Slatkin, cond. Capitol/EMI, recorded c1956


HERE'S HOW THE SIDES OF THE
LEINSDORF OVERTURE LP BROKE DOWN

It's just as the Paperback Classics jacket (which by the way wasn't even cardboard, just heavy paper) listed them:

side 1:
Wagner : Die Meistersinger
Rossini: L'Italiana in Algeri
Weber: Oberon
side 2:
Mozart : The Marriage of Figaro
Beethoven: Leonore No. 3
Verdi: La Forza del destino

The only one of the six overtures that's been left off the Seraphim CD is Meistersinger, and I can just about accept that. Not that Leinsdorf's performance isn't up to snuff. It's on a par with the others, which again is to say competitive with the best on records. Still, it seems arguably a tad extraneous -- it's easy enough to find perfectly good performances in any number of Wagner overture collections. (We heard the Meistersinger Prelude just recently, smartly conducted by Mariss Jansons on EMI.)

I suppose you could say the same thing about Leonore No. 3 being readily available in Beethoven overture collections, and yet somehow I'm glad the EMI compiler chose not to omit it. For one thing, Leonore No. 3 doesn't turn up all that often in "general" overture collections, and for another, the performances you'll find on those Beethoven overture collections aren't necessarily all that wonderful -- probably not nearly as good as Leinsdorf's. You don't believe me? Okay, here it is.

BEETHOVEN: Leonore Overture No. 3, Op. 72b

Philharmonia Orchestra, Erich Leinsdorf, cond. EMI, recorded c1958

I suppose it's possible that the Leinsdorf Meistersinger Prelude has turned up on some other CD; I haven't checked. I thought the least I could do, though, was to plug this particular gap. This is my own dub from my copy of the Paperback Classics LP.

WAGNER: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg: Prelude

Philharmonia Orchestra, Erich Leinsdorf, cond. EMI, recorded c1958


IN TOMORROW'S SUNDAY CLASSICS POST:
Fun with Rachmaninoff's Isle of the Dead


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