"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis
Thursday, November 27, 2014
Have a happy Charles Ives-accompanied Thanksgiving!
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"Certainly one of the things Ives wants to do is to provoke us, to challenge us to think about music in ways we never have," says Michael Tilson Thomas as he talks about and performs Charles Ives's Holidays Symphony with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra in their PBS series Keeping Score. You can watch the Ives show here.
by Ken
We've done it before, and by gosh, we're going to do it again: celebrate Thanksgiving with the symphonic poem the American original composer Charles Ives (1874-1954) created to depict Thanksgiving, which formed part of his Holidays Symphony (or New England Holidays), made up of Washington's Birthday, Decoration Day, The Fourth of July, and lastly Thanksgiving, which fall somewhere between independent pieces and movements of a collective whole.
A hundred years ago, Charles Ives composed a portrait of a year in New England. The Holidays Symphony veers between tender sentiment and savage chaos, a sonic three-ring circus. Beautiful and provocative, the composition, like the rest of Ives' music, encourages the listener to think about sound in new ways.
The poet Walt Whitman makes an interesting comparison with Ives. Both men experimented with their art forms, juxtaposed serious themes with frivolous beauty, and spent decades editing and revising their masterpieces. Also like Whitman, Ives imagined various musical strains from around the world merging into a single song of mankind, but whereas Whitman used music as a metaphor, Ives used music as his medium.
The emotional material for Ives' music came from his experiences growing up in the town of Danbury, Connecticut, the son of the town bandmaster, George Ives. George had been a Union Army bandmaster in the Civil War and had a playful relationship with music that he that he passed on to his son. Once, George had two bands march toward each other while playing different songs, just to know what it would sound like.
Ives wrote most of his music between 1900 and 1920, a period in which the United States became a world power. He worried that prosperity was leading Americans to lose touch with their values. In an attempt to enshrine the America he cherished, Ives composed four movements that trace boyhood memories of seasonal celebrations, an American "Four Seasons." This was the Holidays Symphony.
NOW WE HEAR TWO PERFORMANCES OF THANKSGIVING,
including one conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas -- an earlier recording with the Chicago Symphony. Along with the performances we have the Keeping Score Web commentary on Thansgiving.
IVES: Holidays Symphony:
iv. Thanksgiving and Forefathers' Day
Baltimore Symphony Chorus and Orchestra, David Zinman, cond. Argo, recorded September 1994
Chicago Symphony Chorus and Orchestra, Michael Tilson Thomas, cond. CBS-Sony, recorded 1986
The Thanksgiving movement can be traced to Ives' college days at Yale. Music originally written for the organ at Center Church in New Haven was reworked into the final movement of the Holidays.
Thanksgiving illustrates the changes that occur when ideas confront one another. Once again Ives divides the orchestra into groups playing hymns in two opposing keys. Most prominent is the traditional Thanksgiving hymn, "The Shining Shore." Again, the bottom drops out, and we hear the swing of a scythe—either the harvest or the Grim Reaper has arrived. The ultimate question is asked again and as the music picks up again toward celebration and noise, the listener expects a confrontational crunch.
Instead, Ives surprises us. A large chorus sounds out Thanksgiving hymns. The choir sings a round and the whole procession passes into the distance. The different songs merge into one universal hymn of mankind.
Recognition came late to Ives. Thanksgiving was first publicly performed at the premiere of the complete Holidays Symphony in April of 1954, just a month before Ives' death.
Happy Thanksgiving! (And also Forefathers' Day, though that's not till December 22.)
Happy Thanksgiving! Don't eat too much, and if you're traveling, travel safely!
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Marilyn Horne sings three of Aaron Copland's arrangements of Old American Songs -- "Simple Gifts," "Long Time Ago" (at 2:20), and "At the River" (at 6:00) -- with James Levine conducting the New York Philharmonic, at the 1991 Carnegie Hall Centennial Gala.
by Ken
The way "holiday weekends" have been inexorably broadening, I expect that many people will already have started their Thanksgiving holiday, back in, oh, October. Still, with the actual day now upon us, all of us here at DWT hereby wish a happy and safe holiday.
You no doubt have your own mode of celebration, but if you're still weighing your options, here -- in case you've missed it -- is this year's breathless "this Thanksgiving will be different from all others" story, as scooped by the Washington Post ("Some Americans rethink food-centered Thanksgiving").
We'll be here all weekend, doing, you know, what we do. I can tell you that Howie has something really special planned for Thanksgiving Day. (I don't want to spoil the surprise. Let me just say that it involves a really special guest.) Noah, meanwhile, who just this morning did his salute to pepper spray, the new fascists's best friend, in addition to wishing "a Happy Thanksgiving to all Progressives and those who are thinking of converting to the more open and just Progressive Lifestyle," notes that he'd --
like to see a picture of the Pepper Spray Cop attending the annual Presidential Turkey Pardon Ceremony and maybe one of the waiters (dressed as Puritans) going around to restaurant tables with the now iconic Pepper Spray cans instead of pepper mills. Of course, Newt won't be in attendance. There's a big weekend sale at his favorite emporium:
Finally, I've got a bit of music to offer in the click-through, starting of course with that crusty old New Englander Charles Ives's, um, idiosyncratic take on Thanksgiving and Forefathers' Day, from his Holidays Symphony, and then returning to the Copland-arranged Old American Songs.
Sunday Classics on Monday: Our all-American revival concludes with Copland, Ives, Gottschalk, and Bernstein
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"I like to be in America":Above, the cast of the current bilingual Broadway revival of West Side Story performs "America." Below, we hear it from composer Leonard Bernstein's 1984 DG recording of the show -- with, heard first, Louise Edeike as Rosalia, then Tatiana Troyanos as Anita:
On now to the concluding installment of our "expanded encore presentation" of these "American Treasures," begun Saturday with Copland and Gershwin, and continued yesterday with Gershwin, Grofé, et al. -- Ken
* * *
AARON COPLAND (1900-1990)
"Hoe-Down,"
No. 4 of Four Dance Episodes from "Rodeo"
Utah Symphony Orchestra, Maurice Abravanel, cond. Westminster, recorded December 1958 St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Slatkin, cond. EMI, recorded October 1985
We already had our Copland sendoff Friday night. While Copland wrote a generous amount of interesting music, like a lot of music-lovers I find I listen mostly to the "Americana" works, which represent a small portion of his output. We already heard the Fanfare for the Common Man, and a bunch of the Copland-arranged Old American Songs. The great ballet Appalachian Spring, one of my very favorite pieces of music, I want to reserve for consideration on its own -- beyond the "Simple Gifts" finale, that is, which we've already heard. This is how we wind up at the Four Dance Episodes from "Rodeo." "Hoe-Down," the last of the four episodes, has been absorbed into the American musical vocabulary; is there anyone who didn't recognize it?
Here's the complete Rodeo suite, conducted first by -- who else? -- Leonard Bernstein. As we noted back when we heard Aaron Copland conduct Lenny's Candide Overture in Prague, the two had a close relationship, and there was no more effective champion of Copland's music than LB. Eventually, of course, the composer himself developed into one of his own most effective champions, and so we're going to hear his version too.
COPLAND: Four Dance Episodes from "Rodeo"
i. Buckaroo Holiday ii. Corral Nocturne iii. Saturday Night Waltz iv. Hoe-Down
New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia/Sony, recorded 1960
London Symphony Orchestra, Aaron Copland, cond. CBS/Sony, recorded Oct. 26, 1968
* * *
CHARLES IVES (1874-1954)
Symphony No. 2: i. Andante moderato
Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Neeme Järvi, cond. Chandos, recorded Apr. 29 and May 1, 1995
After hurling Ives's Thanksgiving and Forefathers' Day at you on Thursday (even in David Zinman's remarkably sympathetic performance, it doesn't seem to me one of his more approachable works, but heck, what are you going to do on Thanksgiving Day?), I wanted to plunge you into the composer's sound at what seems to me its most "grabbingly" appealing. Unfortunately, I've never heard anybody but Leonard Bernstein really "get" this potentially haunting opening movement of his Second Symphony, which adds the usual Ives mélange on top of that bedrock of full-throated New England hymn-singing.
I don't doubt that that wonderfully musical Estonian-born conductor Neeme Järvi understands the music, but like so many conductors, he seems afraid to really dig in and make those broad singing lines really sing. Lenny B made it sound like the easiest, most obvious thing in the world, and I won't mind if you cheat and sneak down to his complete 1958 recording of the Ives Second, to my hearing one of the loveliest things he ever did, and listen to just the first movement.
Hey, I'm not the audio-file police. If you want to listen to more than the first movement, who's going to stop you? Especially since Ives meant the broad opening Andante moderato to proceed without interruption into the spirited second-movement Allegro. As it happens, the Allegro had an extra frisson for me, as I got to know the piece amid the granite of New Hampshire as a Dartmouth student. I expect you noticed in the first movement that Ives was very free about incorporating tunes from various walks of American (and sometimes non-American) life. The lovely second theme of the Allegro, played so caressingly by the pair of flutes [first heard at 1:58 of the Andrew Litton performance below], is the old Dartmouth song "Where oh where are the pea-green freshmen?"
SIDEBAR: THE DOPIEST COLLEGE SONGS IN ACADEME
At least in my time, Dartmouth was known, at least to its students, for having the dopiest songs in North American academe. The worst example, in those pre-coeducation days, was the first stanza of our "school song," "Men of Dartmouth," which drew to an, er, rousing close with the lines:
They have the still North in their hearts, The hlll winds in their veins, And the GRANITE of New Hampshire [yes, the music actually spat out the word "granite"] In their muscles and their brains, And the GRANITE of New Hampshire In their muscles and their brains.
Is it any wonder there was so much alumni resistance to going coed? What prideful alum would want to give all that up?
But we digress. Um, maybe this would be a good time to continue on to the Allegro of the Second Symphony.
IVES: Symphony No. 2: ii. Allegro
Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Litton, cond. Hyperion, recorded Jan. 6-9, 2005
One curiosity: The Litton recording has the movement marking, normally just "Allegro," as "Allegro molto (con spirito)." It's an odd irony that LItton's performance is one of the less spirited I know.
[Parenthetical note: Did you notice that that's two cases in a row of British record companies recording American music with American orchestras; Hyperion in fact recorded all four Ives symphonies with Andrew Litton and the Dallas Symphony. (The Fourth Symphony, which was finally given its world premiere in 1965 by Leopold Stokowski with the orchestra he'd founded in 1962, the American Symphony, is quite a production -- I hope we'll have a chance to come back to it someday -- and if there's one thing Stoky knew, it was how to put on a show. Happily, Columbia made a recording at the time.) In addition, the Zinman-Baltimore Symphony Ives CD featuring the Holidays Symphony and Three Places in New England from which I extracted Thanksgiving and Forefathers' Day was recorded by yet another British company. I guess this is good, unless it means that American companies aren't doing the job.]
It's a wonder that Ives himself got to hear the Second Symphony. Indeed, it's lucky that, despite a lifelong litany of health problerms, he survived to surprisingly near his 80th birthday, because the symphony, written in 1902-10, wasn't performed until 1951, when it was conducted by a brash young conductor then making a name for himself, that name being Leonard Bernstein! By then Ives's Third Symphony (1910) had already been performed, way back in 1946, after a mere 36-year wait, and won the Pulitzer Prize.
So what was Ives doing all that time when his music was busy being unheard? Selling insurance, or rather overseeing the selling of same, having cofounded his own firm, with considerable success. He was by general consent a visionary in the field. He trained seriously in music (he had worked first with his father, a band leader, then studied with Horatio Parker at Yale, producing his (fairly conventional) First Symphony as a senior thesis, but nobody was clamoring to hear his music, and he had to make a living, and he drifted into insurance and discovered he was good at it. Remarkably, he seems to have though of insurance in terms of how it could help the buyer; interestingly, he wound up making a very good living at it. (Hmm.)
Even as his career flourished (with the occasional bump), Ives continued composing well into the '20s, and then found himself unable to continue. We don't know why, but then, it can't be easy to maintain life as a composer when you never get to hear your music performed, and never get to experience other people experiencing it. At the same time, it can't be fun to find yourself unable to continue creating -- and we may guess at Ives's state of mind relative to composition by the fact that he declined to attend that much-belated 1946 premiere of his Third Symphony.
If you look up "labor of love" in the dictionary, or at any rate a dictionary with sound files, you'll hear Lenny B's 1958 recording of the Ives Second Symphony. Columbia Masterworks seems to have been dubious enough about its commercial prospects that it put the record in the "KS" rather than "MS" series, charging an extra buck, which was pretty chintzy for 40 minutes' worth of music. In compensation, they offered a little bonus record with a Lenny talk about Ives, but at some point -- before I bought my copy -- they seem to have stopped packing the bonus record, but not stopped charging the extra buck. Of course at standard discount prices of the era it was more like half a buck, but remember, the buck of those days was worth a lot closer to a dollar.
I don't think digital sound does justice to the tonal intensity of the orchestral playing as heard on the LP. The New York Philharmonic strings were never what you'd call a lustrous group, but on that day in October 1958 they played with a vibrancy that was something to behold. Anyway, here's the complete symphony.
IVES: Symphony No. 2
i. Andante moderato ii. Allegro iii. Adagio cantabile iv. Lento maestoso v. Allegro molto vivace
New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia/Sony, recorded Oct. 6, 1958
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LOUIS MOREAU GOTTSCHALK (1829-1869)
For a virtuoso finish, we jump back now to the 19th century, to the days of barnstorming composer-performers, and the home-grown pianist-composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk -- "America's first great musician" to pianist Eugene List, one of his more persistent champions in the later 20th century. By profession if not talent level Gottschalk was a sort of American Liszt, an outsize personality (for all his slender stature) whose brief but adventure-packed life was almost as much a work of art as his music.
Gottschalk was born in New Orleans when the city was still mostly Spanish and French, within living memory of the Louisiana Purchase, which had made this vast swath of central North America the property of the young United States. He functioned as a sort of American good-will ambassador in his tours of Europe and especially South America. For his performing use, he wrote a large quantity of solo piano music as well as music for multiple pianos and assorted other piano-plus combinations. Naturally he was a great connoisseur of dance rhythms from around the world, as he demonstrates in this infectious four-hand "Cuban dance."
GOTTSCHALK: La Gallina (The Hen), Danse cubaine
for piano four hands
Eugene List and Cary Lewis or Brady Millican, piano. Vox, recorded c 1972 [Note: The packaging for the Vox set from which all our Gottschalk musical selections come, while it generously includes both an essay by Mr. List on Gottschalk and program notes by Richard Freed, is skimpy on other information, such as who among Mr. List's supporting artists plays what, or the recording dates. Where I could, I've gleaned (or guessed) such info, drawing on other sources.]
Between 1860, when he first composed the Grande Tarantelle, and his death (at 40) in 1869, Gottschalk seems to have arranged the thing for just about every piano-plus instrumental combination imaginable, but when Eugene List went searching for the piano-and-orchestra version in the '50s, the best he could do was a two-piano version in the British Museum. He persuaded the composer Hershy Kay to produce this 1957 reconstruction.
GOTTSCHALK-KAY: Grande Tarantelle for Piano
and Orchestra
Eugene List, piano; one of two orchestras, either Igor Buketoff or Samuel Adler, cond. Vox, recorded c 1972
Gottschalk wasn't all flash, though. Here is an orchestral piece that has won favorable attention even from some of his detractors, the two movement La Nuit des tropiques (Night in the Tropics), which the composer gave the rather highfalutin designation "Symphony No. 1." On its own terms, though, the piece is a beauty. Annotator Freed evokes Berlioz, and in the sinuous, long-breathed melodic lines of the Andante in particular, I hear what he means.
GOTTSCHALK: Symphony No. 1, La Nuit des tropiques (Night in the Tropics)
i. Andante ("Nuit dans les tropiques")
ii. Allegro moderato ("Une fête sous les tropiques") ("A Festival Under the Tropics")
Vienna State Opera Orchestra, Igor Buketoff, cond. Vox, recorded c 1972
* * *
LEONARD BERNSTEIN (1918-1990)
"Once one dismisses the rest of all possible worlds, One finds that this is the best of all possible worlds."
-- Dr. Pangloss, in Leonard Bernstein's Candide (lyrics for "The Best of All Possible Worlds" by John LaTouche)
You've surely noticed how often Lenny's name has horned in on our contemplation of these "American Treasures." We can't stop without hearing some of his own music. I've gone on record admitting the Overture to Candide is a piece I can listen to over and over and over, even dozens of times. In my mind, of course, we've "done" Candide, and done it. Oh, I know we've barely scratched the surface, but what has this series been about but scratching surfaces?
So herewith, a little Candide suite: the Overture and the great philosopher Dr. Pangloss (in the person of the late Adolph Green, the distinguished lyricist) teaching his charges that this is "The Best of All Possible Worlds" from the studio recording of the complete Candide that Lenny made at the time of his happily televised (and therefore now-on-DVD)concert performance [and now another performance of the Overture conducted by Andrew Davis -- oh, and maybe just one more, conducted by David Zinman]; and the Candide-Cunegonde duet "Oh Happy We!" and Cunegonde's great aria "Glitter and Be Gay" from the Original Broadway Cast recording, featuring the great Barbara Cook [and now another "Glitter and Be Gay," sung by Natalie Dessay].
BERNSTEIN et al.: Candide
Overture
London Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein, cond. DG,recorded December 1989
London Philharmonic Orchestra, Andrew Davis, cond. EMI, recorded live at Glyndebourne, Apr. 27, 1997
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, David Zinman, cond. Decca, recorded Feb. 3-4, 1996
"The Best of All Possible Worlds" (lyrics by John LaTouche)
Adolph Green (Dr. Pangloss), June Anderson (Cunegonde), Della Jones (Paquette), Jerry Hadley (Candide), Kurt Ollmann (Maximilian); from the DG recording (see above)
Sunday Classics: Our Fourth of July All-American Rerun continues with a taste of Ives, more Gershwin, and some Grofé
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Last night we began our musical celebration of the Fourth of July with a newly expanded "encore presentation" of our Thanksgiving tribute to "American Treasures." The tribute concludes tomorrow in this same time slot. -- Ken
Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue was always a Leonard Bernstein specialty. This is Part 1 of a 1976 performance in which he plays and conducts the New York Philharmonic in London's Royal Albert Hall; Part 2 is here. (The luscious "big tune" finally emerges at 3:03 of Part 2.) The clarinet soloist is of course our own Stanley Drucker, who just retired after the 2008-09 season. At the time he was already approaching 30 years of service with the orchestra -- with another 33 years ahead of him!
No grand propositions to prove this week. Just some deliciously wonderful music, in the Thanksgiving er, Fourth of July spirit.
JUST TO PROVE THIS IS A FOURTH OF JULY POST, HERE'S SOME MUSIC SPECIALLY CHOSEN FOR THE DAY
F. W. MEACHAM: American Patrol (march)
Goldman Band, Richard Franko Goldman, cond. Capitol/EMI, recorded 1965
CHARLES IVES: The Fourth of July
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, David Zinman, cond. Argo, recorded September 1994
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Michael Tilson Thomas, cond. CBS/Sony, recorded 1986
JAMES HEWITT: The Battle of Trenton (1792, arr. Roger Smith) i. Introduction; Army in Motion; Acclamation of Ye Americans; Drum Beats to Arms ii. Washington's March iii. Crossing the Delaware; Trumpets Sound the Charge iv. The Battle; Flight of the Hessians; General Confusion v. Grief of the Americans for the Loss of Their Comrades Killed in the Engagement vi. Yankee Doodle; Trumpets of Victory; Finale: General Rejoice
Goldman Band, Richard Franko Goldman, cond. Capitol/EMI, recorded 1965
JOHN PHILIP SOUSA: The Stars and Stripes Forever (march)
Morton Gould and His Symphonic Band. RCA/BMG, recorded Oct. 17, 19, and 26, 1956
Concert Arts Symphonic Band, Felix Slatkin, cond. Capitol/EMI, recorded 1958
Now let's continue with our Special Fourth of July All-American Rerun.
* * *
GEORGE GERSHWIN (1898-1937)
George and Ira Gershwin (center and right)
at the keyboard with Fred Astaire
In last night's installment we sampled the work of Gershwin the theater composer, writing -- with brother Ira -- in both the musical and the operatic genres, and venturing into his concert music with the Variations on "I Got Rhythm." Today we move on to those concert stapeles Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and An American in Paris (1928). We've already got the Rhapsody accounted for, so why don't we just throw in American in Paris? I'm especially fond of two recordings, made at opposite ends of Pennsylvania, the Command recording by William Steinberg and the Pittsburgh Symphony, and Eugene Ormandy's Columbia recording with the Philadelphia Orchestra. I don't have the Steinberg-Command version on CD, but here's the Ormandy.
FOURTH OF JULY EXTRA: I don't have the Steinberg-Pittsburgh Command American in Paris on CD, but I do have their earlier Everest recording, which is also pretty good.
GERSHWIN: An American in Paris
Philadephia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia/Sony, recorded Jan. 5, 1967
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, William Steinberg, cond. Everest, recorded c1959
FOURTH OF JULY GERSHWIN BONUS
Lenny B's bursting-with-life 1958-59 Columbia Masterworks coupling of the Rhapsody in Blue (with the Columbia Symphony) and An American in Paris (with the New York Philharmonic) was one of his happiest records, but he wasn't the only composer-conductor-pianist who found his way to Gershwin. In 1971 André Previn recorded a disc for EMI on which he played and conducted the Piano Concerto in F as well as the Rhapsody and conducted American in Paris. I can't say that I hear Previn's considerable keyboard experience with jazz, but in the Rhapsody in particular (where the great English clarinetist Gervase de Peyer, then still the London Symphony's clarinet principal,, plays the famous solo part) his approach is noticeably fleeter-fingered and less emphatic than Lenny's.
GERSHWIN: Rhapsody in Blue
Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein, piano and cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded June 23, 1959
London Symphony Orchestra, André Previn, piano and cond. EMI, recorded June 4-6, 1971
GERSHWIN: An American in Paris
New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded Dec. 21, 1958
London Symphony Orchestra, André Previn, cond. EMI, recorded June 4-6, 1971
By the time Gershwin composed An American in Paris, he was confident enough to do his own orchestration, and I think one and all will concede that it's a bang-up job (including those Parisian car horns). Both the 1924 jazz-band arrangement of Gershwin's two-piano original of the Rhapsody in Blue -- which was commissioned by Paul Whiteman for his band -- and the now-standard 1942 full orchestration were done by a longtime Whiteman associate, an expert arranger and a composer of some note in his own right: Ferde Grofé, whose Mississippi Suite was first performed in 1925, with the Grand Canyon Suite following in 1931. Which provides us a natural segue to --
* * *
FERDE GROFÉ (1892-1972)
In writing about Sibelius, I mentioned that my very first three stereo LPs, all featuring Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra included two with works by Sibelius plus the Grand Canyon Suite. I loved that Grand Canyon Suite then, both the work and the performance, and I still do. I don't have that Ormandy Grand Canyon on CD, but I do have his 1967 remake, which is almost as good. And we're going to here it complete, after a bit of "tease," or preview.
We're going to hear two of the five movements separately, starting with the atmospheric opening movement, "Sunrise," and then the movement that might function as a scherzo if this were a symphony, the third, the rhythmically irrepressible "On the Trail" (by donkey or mule, of course). Then we'll hear the whole suite; between "Sunrise" and "On the Trail" comes a beautiful slow movement, "The Painted Desert," and the general plan of the final movementsn is well suggested by their titles, "Sunset" and "Cloudburst."
GROFÉ: Grand Canyon Suite
i. Sunrise
Eastman-Rochester Orchestra, Howard Hanson, cond. Mercury, recorded May 1958
iii. On the Trail
John Corigliano, violin; New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia/Sony, recorded May 20, 1963
i. Sunrise ii. The Painted Desert iii. On the Trail iv. Sunset v. Cloudburst
Norman Carol, violin; William Smith, celesta and piano; Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia/Sony, recorded Dec. 12 and 20, 1967
concert performance [and now another performance of the Overture conducted by Andrew Davis -- oh, and maybe just one more, conducted by David Zinman]; and the Candide-Cunegonde duet "Oh Happy We!" and Cunegonde's great aria "Glitter and Be Gay" from the Original Broadway Cast recording, featuring the great Barbara Cook [and now another "Glitter and Be Gay," sung by Natalie Dessay].
recorded December 1989
Dec. 9, 1956
