Ghost of Sunday Classics: "Kaleidoscope" -- a fondly remembered LP happily holds up under decades-later scrutiny

HOW DO WE GET FROM POINT A TO B TO C?

Point A, the opening of the piece (as heard last night):

Later we'll hear how we get from there to Point B:

However, Point B leads directly into Point C:

London Symphony Orchestra, Charles Mackerras, cond. Philips-Mercury, recorded July 1961

by Ken

Last week I reported my discovery of a hidden treasure trove (free!) of overtures, F. Reeder's Internet Archive compendium of "Overtures - Recorded 1926-1847)" -- 33 mp3 transfers of 29 overtures conducted by 18 conductors, most of them legendary (e.g., Barbirolli, Beecham, Furtwängler, Mengelberg, Mitropoulos, Reiner, Rodzinski, Toscanini, Walter, Weingartner). That helped nudge me into an overtury mood. I recalled that a happy heap of my listening over the years has been to recorded collections of overtures and related short orchestral pieces.

As I mentioned, this mood inspired me to finally order CD issues of material that had once been part of my "go to" listening material. As a result, we're not going to do much with the Reeder treasure trove this week, but we'll come back to it. Also, I should mention that in a February 2011 post I already flashed back to one of those treasured overture discs, the Capitol Paperback Classics reissue of Erich Leinsdorf's wonderful c1958 catchily titled Opera Overtures LP with the Philharmonia, augmented on CD with some fine overture performances by Felix Slatkin and Miklós Rózsa.

Another of those LPs sprang back to life with the arrival of those ordered CDs: a Mercury Living Presence CD reincarnation of sorts of Charles Mackerras's Philips LP Kaleidoscope. What we heard in last night's preview was the music that more than anything made me fall in love with the original Kaleidoscope. The CD isn't the original Kaleidoscope, exactly. On it material from two LPs is smooshed together (from the Kaleidoscope LP everything is here except two additional Brahms Hungarian Dances, a minimal loss), all recorded at the same time by the legendary Mercury "Living Presence" team of Wilma Cozart Fine, recording director; Harold Lawrence, musical supervisor; and C. Robert Fine, chief engineer and technical supervisor. The domestic Philips LP was in effect a "Living Presence" LP, which explains why it sounded so good. Unfortunately as with the general run of domestic Philips pressings, it could be, well, problematic -- my copy came badly warped.

But that didn't stop me from listening to it a few zillion times, especially the piece we began hearing last night. What we heard was the hushed, haunting opening -- "Point A" in the A-to-B-to-C sequence above. Now here's the whole thing, starting with the Mackerras recording. Then we have that wise old German hand Robert Heger (from a complete Merry Wives recording) and vintage Herbert von Karajan, plus a dip into the F. Reeder overture grab bag, turning up a conductor now hardly known, Nikolai Sokoloff (1886-1965), who does a pretty nice job while squeezing the thing onto one 78 side.

NICOLAI: The Merry Wives of Windsor: Overture


London Symphony Orchestra, Charles Mackerras, cond. Philips-Mercury, recorded July 1961

Bavarian State Orchestra, Robert Heger, cond. EMI, recorded 1964

Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. EMI, recorded c1959

[trimmed (and rushed) to fit on one 78 side] Cleveland Orchestra, Nikolai Sokoloff, cond. Brunswick, recorded May 1927 (digital transfer by F. Reeder)


A CONDUCTOR NOT SO EASY TO "TYPE"

The Kaleidoscope LP was one of my early exposures to Mackerras -- that and his famous Vanguard big-baroque recording of Handel's Royal Fireworks Music, which made such a wonderfully joyous sound. Later, after decades of dreary exposure, I came to think that I had wildly overrated him. I came to think of him as a conductor without any real sense of phrasing,  musically reliable but without any informing zest.  Returning to Kaleidoscope turns out to have been a happy rediscovery, starting of course with that Merry Wives Overture -- hardly the last word on this magical piece, but getting a lot more of its multifarious dimensions than most conductors who tackle it and trust the magic to happen on its own.

Here's another example. Unfortunately the July 1961 Mackerras-Philips sessions included only one of the three dances Smetana added late in the composition of The Bartered Bride, which long-time readers know is some of my most cherished music. (We dealt with it most expansively in the November 2009 post "It's not for nothing that Smetana was dubbed 'the father of Czech music'"), then in December 2012 listened to native Czech Rafael Kubelik conduct this suite:

BEDRICH SMETANA: The Bartered Bride:
Overture; Polka; Furiant; Dance of the Comedians

Philharmonia Orchestra, Rafael Kubelik, cond. EMI, recorded 1951

Now here's Mackerras doing the "Dance of the Comedians."

SMETANA: The Bartered Bride: Act III, Dance of the Comedians


London Symphony Orchestra, Charles Mackerras, cond. Philips-Mercury, recorded July 1961

Not bad, not bad at all.


AS FOR SENSITIVITY IN PHRASING --

Mackerras also holds his own -- against some real competition here -- in s a beautiful piece I don't believe we've heard before in Sunday Classics: the Overture to Ambroise Thomas's Mignon. I wasn't prepared to choose between the Toscanini versions, so I thought I'd let you do so, while noting that for whatever reasons Toscanini did wind up recording the piece twice.

AMBROISE THOMAS: Mignon: Overture


London Symphony Orchestra, Charles Mackerras, cond. Philips-Mercury, recorded July 1961

Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Paul Paray, cond. Mercury, recorded November 1960

NBC Symphony Orchestra, Arturo Toscanini, cond. RCA-BMG, recorded live in Carnegie Hall, March 19, 1942

NBC Symphony Orchestra, Arturo Toscanini, cond. RCA-BMG, recorded live in Carnegie Hall, July 29, 1952

AS LONG AS WE'RE HEARING THE MIGNON OVERTURE

I thought we should pause two listen to two of the opera's most famous numbers (along with the Overture), Mignon's Act I romance "Connais-tu le pays?," and the glittering Act II showpiece "Je suis Titania."

For reasons that I hope will be musically and dramatically obvious, in my dub of the excerpt including "Connais-tu le pays?" from the 1977 CBS Mignon I've left in Wilhelm Meister's set-up question leading to Mignon's romance. I should probably also have left in Wilhelm's post-romance guess that the country she is remembering is Italy (she doesn't know), but hindsight is better than foresight, and I wasn't about to redo the whole damned thing. As for "Je suis Titania," I thought we'd hear an actual French soprano (not all that glittery, I'm afraid) before proceeding to superstar territory. For music lovers who know only the later Beverly Sills, this vocally luscious as well as limber performance from her 1977 Westminster French-aria LP (conducted, you'll note, by Charles Mackerras, though this is the more prosaic Mackerras I became accustomed to) should be a revelation. And for all that you wouldn't expect the 1961-vintage Maria Callas (from the first of the "Maria Callas in Paris" LPs) to fare terribly well in a coloratura showpiece, I'm surprised how well the performance holds up.

AMBROISE THOMAS: Mignon: Act I, Romance, Mignon, "Connais-tu le pays?"

The gypsy MIGNON has told young WILHELM MEISTER that she has only one childhood memory: of being abducted by a group of men one summer evening by a lake.

WILHELM : Tell me of what distant shores
your soul has kept a memory,
and if my hands could break your chains,
toward which beloved country
would you wish to come back?
MIGNON: Do you know the land where the orange tree blooms?
The land of golden fruit and red roses,
where the breeze is gentle and the bird lighter,
where in every season the bird forage,
where shines and smiles like a gift from God
an eternal spring under an ever-blue sky!
Alas, that I may not follow you
toward that happy land from which fate drove me.
It is there! It is there that I wish to live,
to love, to love and die!
Yes, it is there!

Do you know the house that awaits me there?
The hall with golden furnishings, where marble statues
call me in the night and hold out their arms to me!
And the courtyard where one dances in the shade of a great tree,
and the clear lake on whose waters glide
a thousand light boats just like birds!
Alas, that I may not follow you
toward that happy land from which fate drove me.
It is there! It is there that I wish to live,
to love, to love and die!
Yes, it is there!

Alain Vanzo (t), Wilhelm Meister; Marilyn Horne (ms), Mignon; Philharmonia Orchestra, Antonio de Almeida, cond. CBS-Sony, recorded 1977

["Connais-tu" only] Frederica von Stade, mezzo-soprano; London Philharmonic Orchestra, John Pritchard, cond. CBS-Sony, recorded c1975

["Connais-tu" only] Risë Stevens, mezzo-soprano; orchestra, Frieder Weissmann, cond. Columbia, recorded in Hollywood, 1941

AMBROISE THOMAS: Mignon: Act II, Recitative and polonaise, Philine, "Oui, pour ce soir" . . . "Je suis Titania"

PHILINE: Yes, for this evening I am the queen of the fairies:
Here is my golden scepter
and here are my trophies!
THE ACTORS: Already twenty lovers
are crowding around the beauty!
Everything is for her, flowers and praise!
I am Titania, the fair,
I am Titania, daughter of the air!
Laughing, I roam around the world,
livelier than a bird, faster than lightning!
I am Titania, the fair, ah!
I roam around the world, ah!
Livelier than a bird, faster than lightning, ah!
The frolicsome band of sprites
follows my flying chariot and in the night
vanishes! in Phoebus' dawning rays!
Among the flowers blossoming in the dawn,
past woods and meadows,
on we go! On the waves covered with foam,
in the mist I can be seen, dancing lightly, spinning on!
Dancing lightly past woods and meadows,
and in the mist I can be seen, spinning on!
Ah! There is Titania! Ah!
Laughing, I roam around the world,
livelier than a bird, faster than lightning!
Ah, I am Titania, daughter of the air!
ALL: Brava! Ah! Glory! Glory to Titania!

["Je suis Titania" only] Andrée Esposito (s), Philine; Orchestre du Théâtre National de l'Opéra-Comique, Jean-Claude Hartmann, cond. EMI, recorded c1971
0.
Beverly Sills, soprano; Ambrosian Opera Chorus, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Charles Mackerras, cond. Westminster-EMI, recorded May 1969

[without chorus] Maria Callas, soprano; Orchestre National de la Radiodiffusion Française, Georges Prêtre, cond. EMI, recorded Feb.-Apr. 1961


JUST ONE MORE SELECTION -- TINY BUT DELICIOUS

We've heard Carl Maria von Weber's great grand-scaled Overtures to Der Freischütz and Oberon, both giants in the overture repertory. (You can hear both in a February 2013 "Remembering Eugen Jochum" post.) Kaleidoscope includes the little curtain-raiser for the comic opera Abu Hassan, a Mozart-Rossini offshoot that's so delicate, it can melt to near -nothingness. The Mackerras performance seems to me quite delectable.

WEBER: Abu Hassan: Overture


London Symphony Orchestra, Charles Mackerras, cond. Philips-Mercury, recorded July 1961

Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Rafael Kubelik, cond. DG, recorded Mar. 23-26, 1964

Philharmonia Orchestra, Neeme Järvi, cond. Chandos, recorded, Apr. 30, 1990

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