Delman and boys

 

Michael Haydn Missa Sancti Aloysii in Bb MH 257
J.S. Bach Weichet nur betrübte Schatten BWV 202
Jacqueline Delman, Emerentia Scheepers (sopranos)
Kathleen Joyce (contralto)
Hampstead Parish Church Boys’ Choir
Martindale Sidwell (chorus master, organ)
London Baroque Orchestra
Karl Haas (conductor)
Recorded 14 & 15 December 1953, issued late 1954
Parlophone PMA 1023

I’m happy to announce that since my last post I’ve uploaded four more LP transfers to my Internet Archive account, starting with the above four months ago (sorry). It’s a lovely record, which I originally transferred for the sakes of Bach’s beautiful ‘Wedding Cantata’, and of Karl Haas, whom I admire. The Bach side was in good condition and didn’t need too much work but the other, with Michael Haydn’s Mass, had endless little plops and scuffs and took ages. Still, as I restored it I came to enjoy both music and performance more and more, so that’s a win!

And it’s another black mark for EMI and its ‘successors’, who for the last half-century have sat on almost all of the many pioneering and enjoyable recordings of Karl Haas and his excellent London Baroque Ensemble, stuffed with top-flight British players of the 1950s and 1960s. Only the Phoenixa CD reissue series, short-lived as it was (and clearly unloved by EMI), and Testament have allowed us to hear how good these recordings are when remastered from master tapes and not from house clearance castoffs.

Talking of Testament, everyone who cares about historical recordings of classical music, as well as about intelligent A&R and marketing, will have mourned the recent and all too premature death of Testament’s founder and head, Stewart Brown. I knew Stewart a little and he was always friendly, helpful, positive, unpretentious and deeply savvy, with a winning touch of Trotter about him (which it seems you need, if you’re to succeed in that line of business). His label was and remains a leader in the field, with remastering from the best available sources (for commercial LPs, usually master tapes, doggedly licensed) and exemplary presentation. Long may it flourish.

So, if it’s not too impertinent from one unfit to unlatch his sandals, I dedicate this post to Stewart’s memory, in the hope that his taste, entrepreneurship, dedication to music, and knowledge of catalogues and his customers’ wants, will continue to show up the dog-in-the-mangerishness of multinational catalogue-hoarders.

Talking of dogs in mangers… watch out for another post on that subject!

For now, just a quick reminder that my Internet Archive account is here, and that the other new LP transfers now up are of Fela Sowande’s lilting African Suite for strings and harp, in Trevor Harvey’s 1951-ish Decca recording; four Handel trio sonatas, recorded around the same time for Urania by the husband-and-wife team of Mr. and Mrs. Willy Schweyda; and another Urania LP from a couple of years later, of quartets by Boccherini, de Giardini and Puccini, played by the Quartetto della Scala of Milan.