The firsts shall last

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Eine kleine Nachtmusik in G K.525
I. Allegro; II. Romance. Andante
Nicolas Lambinon String Quartet
matrices: XXBo 8016-2 / XXBo 8017-2
recorded: c. November 1923, Berlin
Odeon O-6068 = AA 79467

Just flagging a few ‘firsts’ recently added to the ‘collection’ at the Internet Archive. Above is a label from the first record of Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik – strangely, only the first two movements were recorded. Wos zum Deifel!? In truth, that is of a piece with Lambinon’s other discs, which were all of ‘snippets’ from popular chamber works by Beethoven, Brahms, Gade, Haydn, Mozart (just this), Schubert and Schumann. Lambinon (1880-1958), born in Liège and a pupil of Joseph Joachim, was a sometime concert-master of the Blüthner Orchestra and, from 1930, a member of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. I have one other record of him, playing in a piano trio – must get that up, too.

This label seems to show Odeon transitioning from ‘face numbers’ to one catalogue number per disc, by then rapidly becoming the standard. The shy little Bestell-Nummer (‘order number’) is on this label only, up in the left-hand corner of the cartouche, whereas the face number (Platten-Nummer, ‘record number’) is prominently printed in the lower centre. That’s where Odeon would soon put the O-prefixed Bestell-Nummer, which we tend to call the catalogue number. But in the first catalogue in which this disc was listed, the Odeon Musikplatten Deutsches Haupt-Verzeichnis 1924/25 (p.192), the Bestell-Nummer is given the old way, as AA 79 467. Another oddity is that ‘1925’ in the top right-hand corner of the cartouche, again only on this side; yet the catalogue clearly states it lists discs issued up to and including July 1924. Whatever.

One of my favourite organ works by J.S. Bach has long been the Fantasia (or, as in early MSS, Pièce d’orgue) in G BWV 572. So I’m happy to report we’ve just put up the first recording, by the French organist Noëlie Pierront (1899-1988). In October 1936 she made three discs of Bach and one of Buxtehude for the Bedford schoolmaster and organ enthusiast Aubrey C. Delacour de Brisay (1896-1989), who devised, sponsored and marketed a series of 12-inch records of this music played by Pierront, Ralph Downes and, he hoped, George Thalben-Ball. Frank Andrews’ characteristically thorough account of the venture in the CLPGS’s Hillandale News is here (if you have access to the Gramophone archive, you can also read de Brisay’s own article about it and Alec Robertson’s reviews).

I’m rather proud that we have now rescued from oblivion all but two of the seven issued Private Organ Recordings, three played by Pierront and two by Downes. The fifth in the series had to be withdrawn for copyright reasons – I’ve never found out what was on it, so bravo to the unnamed publisher for erasing it more completely from the face of the earth than time or neglect could ever do. Trottel. Poor de Brisay’s series didn’t make it past eight; he hoped to have more Buxtehude recorded by Thalben-Ball, but failed to muster enough subscriptions. Now I just need to find the first and last.

A couple of other firsts and lasts: the first (and, for a long time, only) recording of the fine String Quartet by John Alden Carpenter, by the Gordon String Quartet for Schirmer; and the last recording of the wonderful and pioneering ensemble Ars Rediviva and its founder, the harpsichordist and musicologist Claude Crussard (1893-1947), a 1946 Swiss radio broadcast issued by La Boîte à Musique as a posthumous tribute after the whole group died in an air crash while touring Portugal in February 1947. It’s also a first: the debut on disc of François Couperin’s superb early trio sonata of 1692 ‘L’Astrée’ (so named after a romance, apparently), itself not that often recorded – usually, people have gone for the revised version incorporated into Les nations as the opening Sonade of La piémontoise. I’m especially proud to have tracked down a copy of this uncommon set, which took a long time; the sound of the Radio Lausanne lacquer, transcribed to shellac, is not great, but Andrew Hallifax has restored it so that we only hear what is a deeply intense performance and a fitting and moving memorial to an immortal band of women. (Do hear their unusual Bach passion aria too.)

 

François Couperin
Sonata for two violins & continuo in g ‘L’Astrée’
Ars Rediviva, Claude Crussard (harpsichord / director)
matrices: PARTX 6090-1/6091-1, 6092-1/6093-1
recorded: 7 April 1946, Lausanne
Boîte à Musique 58-59

Merry Moonlighting

Pathé PAT 36
Pierre Danican Philidor (1681-1731)
Suite for treble instrument & continuo in e Op.1 No.5

Pathé PAT 37
(also issued in Japan on Columbia J 8584)
George Frideric Handel
Sonata for flute & continuo in b Op.1 No.9 HWV 367b
[NB penultimate Andante omitted]
     
Jean/Jan Merry (flute)
Pauline Aubert (harpsichord)
rec. 13 June 1935
(date: A Classical Discography)

And I thought this was going to be ‘easy’. Spurred on by bloggers like Jolyon, not to mention eminent historians of concert culture such as Dr. Christina Bashford, I now feel my posts should include more information about artists, especially obscure ones. In the immortal phrase of one Jezza, ‘How difficult can it be?’ Little did I know that it would take me well over a year just to find Jean Merry’s dates…

Naturally, I started with Susan Nelson. Her great discography The Flute on Record: The 78 rpm Era gives Merry’s birth date, but no place of birth or date of death. Then followed months of sporadic online searches, visits to libraries, e-mails to flautists, historians and conservatoires: nothing. Until, a few weeks ago, searching digital repositories at the British Library, I came across a thesis entitled A Performance Edition of Charles Kœchlin’s Les Chants de Nectaire, Opus 198, which put me out of my misery:

1897-1983

Many thanks to the author, Dr. Francesca Arnone, flautist and teacher, who has also sent very friendly answers to my e-mails. In her thesis, submitted in 2000 to the University of Miami, Dr. Arnone warned that ‘much information about Merry cannot be recovered’. There’s now far more about him out there – though still not his dates, let alone an obituary. Still, from Gallica, Ancestry.com, academic and other sources, including Dr. Arnone’s thesis, I’ve been able to piece together a fair picture of Merry’s life and work. I’ll concentrate on the ’20s to the ’40s, the decades most relevant to these discs and also the best documented in accessible sources. It has taken me so long, I’m jolly well going to give you the lot! Sorry if it’s tedious, but that’s who I’ve become: not just a grump but a bore.

(And apologies if I appear to neglect Pauline Aubert (1884-1979); she also deserves study – as far as I know, there’s no website or page devoted to her, let alone a printed biography – but she’s better known than Merry, and she recorded much more.)

First, the flautist’s name: on the label of PAT 36, he is billed as Jean Merry, and on that of PAT 36 as Jan Merry. He seems to have used the latter as a stage name. As Nelson states, he was in fact born Jean Merry-Cohu; Cohu is a Normand name, and Nelson adds that Merry studied at the Conservatoire of Caen – where, I’m guessing, he was born. The Conservatoire was one of several institutions and people I contacted about Merry, in May 2016, and it had the grace to answer: no documentation survives from before Wold War II. Caen, the archivist reminded me, suffered very badly from Allied bombing raids in 1945.

In 1923, the newspaper L’Ouest-Éclair, listing forthcoming ‘musical masses’ at the cathedral of Saint Malo in Brittany, named one performer as ‘Merry Cohu, 1er prix du Conservatoire de Caen’, a distinction I haven’t seen documented elsewhere. In 1999, Dr. Arnone was able to interview a member of his family for her thesis:

At the age of ten, Jan Merry was offered free lessons in Normandie by the flute professor at the conservatory who considered the boy to have natural talent. Since his widowed mother could not afford an instrument, he was given the school’s flute to use.

Who that kind teacher was, I don’t yet know (ten years after Merry attended the Caen Conservatoire, its flute professor was one Monsieur Brun; I don’t have the start date of his tenure). Merry’s mother, meanwhile, was named as his next-of-kin on the passenger list of the S.S. De Grasse, sailing for the USA from Le Havre on 23 September 1924:

COHU Merry 26 M[ale] S[ingle] [Occupation:] Civil Engineer [Nearest relative:] Mrs. Cohu 3, Rue du Pont St-Jacques CAEN (Calvados) [Final Destination:] Ohio Cleveland

‘Civil Engineer’? I’ll come back to that. Did Merry go to Cleveland for professional reasons? I don’t know, but he apparently played with the Cleveland Insitute of Music orchestra; back in France, he was once billed as ‘soliste de l’orchestre du Conservatoire de Cleveland’. The CIM did not respond to an e-mail enquiring about him, and I’ve found no mentions of him in US newspapers. Once more, Dr. Arnone to the rescue:

Merry began his professional musical career by concertizing in the United States with his first wife, an American pianist. After living in New England for a time, they returned to Paris […]

Merry’s first wife was Eleanor Stewart Foster (1897-1986), sister-in-law of the composer Roger Sessions. According to Andrea Olmstead’s biography of the composer, they were married in 1927, in Paris:

Sessions gave the bride away. He also gave Merry a solo flute piece, Pastorale, perhaps a wedding present; the piece is now lost.

In France, Merry continued his musical partnership with his wife, usually styled ‘Elen Merry’ in the French press, less commonly ‘Ellen Merry’. In February 1928, they gave a concert in Paris, performing duos by Loeillet, probably Jean-Baptiste (1680-1730), Bach, Albert Roussel and Philippe Gaubert; she also played solos by Brahms, Darius Milhaud, Emmanuel Chabrier and Chopin, and he played Debussy’s Syrinx. Another Paris concert, in January 1929, included duos by Louis Couperin, Benedetto Marcello and Handel, Pierre Hermant (1869-1928), Joseph Jongen, Quincy Porter, and Lili Boulanger. The same month, Jan Merry took part in a concert entirely devoted to works by Georges Hüe (1858-1948), and in July he played in a ‘Festival Albert Roussel’, with the composer at the piano for his Joueurs de flûte Op.27. In December, the Merrys joined forces for a programme juxtaposing old French organ music with works by Georges Migot (1891-1976); they would collaborate with Migot again.

About this time, the couple also formed a trio, Ars Nova, with the French violinist Colette Franz (1903-2004), later a well-known teacher and founder of the first conservatoire in the French West Indies. Ars Nova made its debut on 17 December 1929, at a concert promoted by the Société Internationale des Amis de la Musique Française; the repertoire, which included vocal and piano solos, ranged from Jacques-Christophe Naudot, Joseph Bodin de Boismortier, Rameau and Couperin (probably François), to Fauré, Debussy, Roussel, Maurice Emmanuel (1862-1938), Pierre de Bréville (1861-1949), Lili Boulanger and Joseph Canteloube. The Trio received an ecstatic review from Georges Migot:

Il est excessivement rare d’entendre un ensemble de tels artistes. Chacun est virtuose et musicien, chacun peut établir seul, sa notoriété, chacun est digne de toute notre attention. Mais ces trois interprètes de race aiment assez la musique pour la servir en unissant leur triple personnalité. […] Quant à Jan Merry, je crois que, rarement, il a été donné de réaliser une telle alliance de la technique et des lèvres, car sa sonorité est à la fois distinguée et chaude, pure et variée sans cesse. […] On pressent un musicien cultivé, qui sait analyser la morphologie d’une œuvre, et mettre chaque détail bien en place. Nous le répétons; la sonorité de Jan Merry ne peut s’oublier après audition. Elle est rare. Et nous osons dire qu’elle est une des plus belles parmi celles que nous connaissons en Europe.

[‘It is exceedingly rare to hear an ensemble of such artists. Each is a virtuoso and a musician, each could win fame alone, each deserves our full attention. But these three thorough-bred performers love music enough to serve her by uniting their threefold individuality. […] As for Jan Merry, rarely, I feel, has it been possible for such a marriage of technique and embouchure to be achieved; his sound is at once elegant and warm, pure and ever varied. […] One is aware of an educated musician, able to analyse a work’s structure and place each element perfectly. Let me say again: once heard, Jan Merry’s sound cannot be forgotten. It is a rare thing. And we make so bold as to claim it as one of the most beautiful we know of in Europe.’]

Ars Nova did not last. A month later, on 21 January 1930, a second concert followed, with works by Bach, Handel, Boismortier, Couperin, Roussel and Petros Petridis (1892-1977), as well as the premiere of Migot’s Livre des danceries for flute, violin and piano (later orchestrated), and some of his Petits préludes for two flutes (or, as here, flute and violin). Besides a brace of broadcasts, Ars Nova gave two more concerts: on 14 November 1930, of works by Purcell, Couperin, Naudot, Boismortier, Ladislas Rohozinski (1886-1938), Carl Reinecke, Georges Enesco and Alexander Tcherepnin; and on 21 March 1931, devoted entirely to music by Migot. Although billed, Frantz was apparently not available that evening and was replaced by the Swiss violinist Magda Lavanchy (1901-76).

I suspect marital problems. After that last concert, I can find no more listings or mentions of Elen/Ellen Merry on Gallica. By March 1932, she reappears as Elen (or Helen) Foster; many years later, she related that, after divorcing Merry, she was obliged to revert to her maiden name. Still, the two continued to appear together in concert – of which, more below.

Also on the bill of that March 1931 Migot concert was the harpist Françoise Kempf (1901-1996). A few days earlier, on 16 March, Kempf and Merry had given the first of what would be many concerts and broadcasts together, as a duo and with other artists. I’ve found at least ten collaborations, from early 1931 until mid-1941, well after Kempf had reportedly undergone her mystical religious conversion in 1937.

Meanwhile, on 22 January 1932, Merry’s other important musical partnership was apparently inaugurated, in his first documented concert with Pauline Aubert. They played works by Frescobaldi, Couperin, Rulman (not identified), Duval (presumably François) and Rameau. After a gap, they appeared together in October or November 1934 (listings vary), in the salon d’Hercule of the palace of Versailles. Dressed in period costume, they were joined by string players in one of François Couperin’s Concerts royaux; the Russian emigré Sacha Votichenko (1888-1971) played an original tympanon, a type of hammered dulcimer popular in Marie Antoinette’s heyday; and Antoinette Bécheau La Fonta (1898-1971) sang ariettes galantes of the ancien régime. It was Mme La Fonta who organized this and other historical concerts in ‘authentic’ (my word) settings. In December 1932, she put on a second concert at Versailles, at which Merry and colleagues played Mozart’s Flute Quartet in A K.298, and works by Jean-Marie Leclair, Couperin, Giovanni Battista Somis and (Pierre de?) Chauvigny (?-?).

Pauline Aubert was not only a concert artist but also an editor and composer. She unearthed forgotten works, such as a cantata entitled Jupiter et Europe and attributed to one A. Pasquier (not identified). She and Merry performed it in late 1934, at a concert of the women’s orchestra conducted by Jane Evrard (1893-1984), alongside a flute concerto by Michel Blavet. In March 1935, Parisian concert-goers heard Aubert’s Poèmes persans, for voice and flute, performed by Merry and the soprano Madeleine Chardon. In April, Aubert and Merry gave a broadcast talk, with music, on ‘Les Couperins [sic] interprètes de l’amour’. In the summer of 1936, Merry and Aubert returned to Versailles, giving concerts in the palace’s Salon de la paix, and in the Salon des jardins in the Grand Trianon. In December, they played together in an upmarket Paris showroom or gallery.

Thereafter, I’ve found nothing until April 1939, when Merry and Aubert were in The Hague, playing works by Blavet, Louis de Caix d’Hervelois, Jean-François Dandrieu, Louis Hotteterre (one of several musicians of this name), Rameau and Charles de Lusse. This was only the second trip I have traced which took Merry outside France before the War; the patchiness of periodical digitization and access means I’ve probably missed others.

Meanwhile, Merry had not abandoned the moderns. On 12 December 1935, he took part in the inaugural concert promoted by La Spirale, playing the Six petits préludes for flute and violin by Georges Migot, the group’s president. This served one of la Spirale’s aims, which was to privilege repeat performances over premieres, in its wider mission to promote contemporary music, French and foreign, in concert. On 5 March 1936, La Spirale put on an American programme, for which Merry and his former wife Elen Foster, alongside other Spirale members such as Olivier Messiaen, played works by Harrison Kerr, Roger Sessions, John Alden Carpenter, Wallingford Riegger, Isadore Freed, Charles Ives and Quincy Porter. Merry played Riegger’s Suite for flute alone, and revisited Porter’s Suite in E for flute, violin and viola, which he had premiered with Porter himself almost exactly five years before.

On 16 March 1937, Merry took part in the second concert promoted by another new group, La Jeune France. Founded the previous year, it’s now remembered mainly for its most famous member today, Messiaen, but it numbered another composer more important to Merry: André Jolivet (1905-1974), also a member of La Spirale. In 1936, Jolivet had composed Cinq Incantations for solo flute, and on 14 January 1937 Merry premiered some of them at La Sorbonne, reportedly because his peers were too conservative for such music. Later that month, he gave a second, private performance of some or all of the Incantations; and at the March concert of La Jeune France, Merry played three. Jolivet dedicated the cycle to Merry, whether before the premiere or in recognition of his advocacy I don’t know. Soon after composing the five Incantations, Jolivet wrote a free-standing Incantation pour que l’image devienne symbole, originally scored for solo violin (G string) or ondes Martenot, but premiered by Merry in 1937 on the flute (I have not identified the occasion); the violin premiere was not given until 1967.

In May 1938, at a salon concert organized by La Jeune France, Merry again presented three of the Incantations, as well as two pieces by another member of the group, Yves Baudrier (1906-1988), for which the flautist was joined by Elen Foster at the piano. The programme also included works by the British composers Alan Bush (1900-1995) and Alan Rawsthorne (1905-1971). Merry and Foster repeated the Baudrier items at another concert of La Jeune France later the same month. Intriguingly, in March 1939, at a concert held by La Jeune France in the salon of the duchess Edmée de la Rochefoucauld, Merry played the second of the Cinq Incantations while Foster executed a dance of her own devising.

The previous July, Merry and Foster had given the public premiere of a chamber cantata by Georges Migot, Vini vinoque amor (setting the composer’s own text), having premiered in private for the dedicatee. A year later, the partnership’s future must have seemed in doubt. At the outbreak of war, Merry and Foster travelled to his native Normandy, he to Cherbourg, to join an artillery regiment providing coastal defences, she to Caen to stay with Merry’s mother. It took Foster a year to escape. As the Burlington Free Press and Times of Burlington, Vermont, related in July 1941:

Mrs. Eleanor Foster Cohu of Claremont, N.H., a resident of France for 14 years before the invasion, was the guest speaker before the members of the Montpelier Rotary club Monday afternoon. Mrs. Cohu is an American girl and left Lisbon, Portugal, last Oct. 5 for the United States. She told of the first bombing on June 3, when the planes came down about noon, two bombs falling where she was staying, and two women being killed because they had wished to remain in their dining room, rather than seek shelter. She told of their laborious travel south […] to Pau, where they kept in hiding for six months. Mrs. Cohu spoke of the good work the American Friends society is doing in France, in Marseilles alone feeding between 30,000 and 40,000 school children each day. Everything this Quaker society collects, goes to France, she said.

After the Armistice, Jan Merry was presumably discharged and returned to occupied Paris. In February 1941, he played two of Jolivet’s Incantations at an public lecture by the composer. Later that year, Merry gave his first performance under the aegis of Le Triptyque, a concert series founded in 1934: on 5 July 1941, for a programme of Bach, Handel, Michel Corrette and others, Merry appeared with the tenor Paul Derenne (1907-1988) and the organist Marthe Bracquemond (1898-1973), who would later write a Sonatine for solo flute – whether for Merry, I don’t know (she had already written a work for him and Françoise Kempf to perform). In July 1942, he took part in a Triptyque concert of music by Arthur Honegger, with the soprano Noémie Pérugia (1903-1992).

Most important of all, on 7 May 1943, Le Triptyque devoted an entire concert to Charles Koechlin (1867-1950) with, again, Pérugia, a pianist and three wind soloists. Merry premiered two of the composer’s three Sonatines Op.184 for solo flute; he was also joined by his younger colleague Roger Bourdin (1923-1976), probably in the Sonata Op.75 for two flutes, and by the clarinettist Jacques Lancelot (1920-2009), possibly in the Divertissement Op.91. The concert marked the beginning of an important association, which would culminate in one of the monuments of solo flute music, and the subject of Dr. Arnone’s thesis: the ninety-six Chants de Nectaire, composed from April to August 1944 and named after a character in a novel by Anatole France. Merry premiered several of the Chants, some of which were dedicated to him by Koechlin (as is one of the Sonatines Op.184), and he continued to champion the Chants until the end of his career.

Which career, though? On that 1924 passenger list, Merry’s occupation was not given as musician – and he never became a professional flautist. For his entire working life, he was an electrical engineer, specialising in the lighting of halls, tunnels, streets and other public spaces. In this capacity, he was always known as Merry Cohu, which probably explains his slightly but distinctively different stage name (I wonder if he first used Jan in the US, to avoid any possible confusion with the female name Jean?). He seems to have qualified as an engineer in 1923, and he obtained a doctorate from the University of Caen with a thesis entitled Étude de quelques propriétés photométriques caractéristiques de certains verres diffusants à faces parallèles... [‘Study of some photometric properties characteristic of certain types of diffusing glass with parallel surfaces…’], published in 1932.

By 1935, Merry Cohu was Chief Engineer of the Research Group of France’s Society for the Improvement of Lighting, and by 1938 President of the lighting and heating chapter of the French Electrical Association. By 1959 he was General Secretary of France’s Committee for Lighting, and a consulting engineer to the leading Dutch electrical firm Philips. He spoke at conferences and symposia, and published extensively, from a 1924 article about light in a popular science magazine, to Récepteurs photoélectriques (École supérieure d'électricité / Malakoff, 1969). He translated at least one publication by a well-known physicist of gases, Frans Michel Penning (from Dutch, if you please).

Talking of publications, I’ve forgotten to mention that Merry edited four volumes of flute scales, studies and exercises by Giuseppe Gariboldi (1833-1905), and published his own transcription for flute and piano of Debussy’s Le petit nègre. There may be more. I don’t know if Merry ever had a teaching position – it seems unlikely, with his ‘day job’ – but he certainly had pupils, and he had a method. In fact, he was a formative influence on one of the most famous French flautists of the later twentieth century. As Dr. Arnone relates, remembering his kind schoolteacher in Normandy, Merry always

hoped to repay his “musical debt” to a talented and deserving pupil someday. That student would turn out to be his good friend’s son, Michel Debost.

Debost himself told a pupil of his,

In 1943, a friend of my father’s, Jan Merry, started me on the flute. He loved to play. His teaching was based on reading — first the original Altès Method, then duets of the Baroque, and many Mozart duets. I still think this reading skill is essential, because many technical hurdles in repertoire are just bad reading.

So, we’ve sort of reached the end of the War, when the paper trails I’ve been following run out. There are basically no hits on Gallica for Merry after the War – I don’t know why. Presumably Merry’s work as a consultant engineer took off, with so much infrastructure needing to be repaired, rebuilt and lit. But he was certainly still playing – according to Dr. Arnone, not just in France but also in Britain and Germany, and on one occasion he played one of Koechlin’s Chants de Nectaire

at an airport’s baggage claim in order to prove that his gold flute was indeed his property.

In December 1951, at a concert in Paris devoted to Koechlin’s works, the composer’s disciple Pierre Renaudin read the passage from Anatole France’s La révolte des anges which had inspired the Chants de Nectaire, after which Merry performed his own selection of five Chants. In her thesis, Dr. Arnone reproduces the programme of a concert given as late as August 1978, at which Merry played two Chants and one of Jolivet’s Incantations. Still, I would like to know more about Merry’s later life, including his work as an engineer. And it’s particularly irksome that I can’t find a notice of Merry’s second marriage, to a singer whose name I don’t know – possibly Magdeleine Camberlein. Their names are linked on a French genealogical site, but everything about his wife is hidden. One of the few details about Merry, rather sweetly, is his family nickname: ‘Tonton La Flûte’.

Anyway, it’s time we got down to hearing Merry’s records. I imagine Merry Cohu the engineer was less than impressed by Pathé’s slapdash production: not only is he billed differently on the two discs, the sides of the Handel sonata are mixed up. This label is stuck on what is actually the first side:

This Pathé session was not, in fact, Merry’s debut on disc. He had been among the first artists to record for L’anthologie sonore (in September 1934, according to Michael Gray), the historical label master-minded by Curt Sachs (1881-1959), the musicologist and organologist, in exile from Nazi Germany. Blink, and you might miss his only known contribution: Merry is credited for just half of one side of L’anthologie sonore 3, playing in a 4-part lied by Heinrich Isaac (c.1450-1517) sung by the Swiss tenor Max Meili (1899-1970); the other item on the side didn’t require Merry. You can hear a good transfer by the Bibliothèque nationale de France on its Gallica site (note that the page mistakenly illustrates the label of the other side):

L’Anthologie sonore 3A
Isaac Zwischen Berg und Tal, Dufay Pourrai-je avoir     
Max Meili (tenor), Jan Merry (flute),     
Franz Siedersbeck (vielle), André Lafosse (trombone)     
recorded September 1934     
(date: A Classical Discography)

It’s possible that Merry performed in other L’Anthologie sonore recordings; not all instrumentalists were credited on labels. I doubt it, though: already on L’Anthologie sonore 9, a flute sonata by Blavet, a composer in Merry’s repertoire, was assigned to Marcel Moyse (1889-1984) – what’s more, with Pauline Aubert, who made many records for the series. Of course, Moyse was a great flautist and would have lent wider appeal to what perhaps seemed a label for specialists. But perhaps Merry’s sound was another issue: in that Isaac lied, notice how quick and almost febrile his vibrato is, more so than on the Pathé discs (but does the BnF transfer reproduce the recorded pitch?). His playing of these baroque items was not to the taste of the gramophone critic of the Paris paper L’Homme libre, one Nicolas Motais:

Une « Sonate » de Haendel (Pat. 37) et une « Suite » de Philidor (Pat. 36) sont jouées sans poésie et souvent sans justesse par le flûtiste Jan Merry.

[‘A Sonata by Handel (Pat. 37) and a Suite by Philidor (Pat. 36) are played without poetry, and often inaccurately, by the flautist Jan Merry.’]

I feel that’s harsh. Most reviews I’ve found of Merry’s Pathé discs are complimentary, though about the music rather than the performances (which was usual at the time, in reviews of records containing rare repertoire). Still, I must admit, what with the moments of off tuning and occasional scrambles, I don’t find Merry makes a particularly beautiful sound or lasting impression here.

But what in fact was Merry’s sound? That’s another reason this post has taken me so long. I’ve been itching to get blogging again, and especially to transfer some of my growing collection of 78s. Again, Jolyon and others have brought home to me the importance of transferring at correct pitch; but I don’t have a fully working varispeed turntable – only three which need attention… I chose these two Pathé discs, partly because I thought they’d be ‘easy’ to transfer, and partly because I wanted to listen to them to answer some discographical questions.

Oh dear – once again, little did I suspect… My copies are in goodish condition, and they responded well to light digital restoration. But when I played my transfers to a friend with perfect pitch, he wasn’t happy. So another friend kindly shifted the pitch, which didn’t entail a change large enough to cause artifacts, luckily. Now, my first friend was happy, but a flute historian I sent the shifted versions to, and whose opinion I very much respect, wasn’t. This all happened a year ago, and came on top of a sorry saga of me attempting to buy a varispeed turntable on ebay and being messed around by an ethically, socially and orthographically challenged seller, plus buying a second copy of one of Merry’s discs only to find I already had it.

So I’ve decided to stop messing about and upload the shifted transfers. Each disc has been transferred as a single sound file, in FLAC and Apple Lossless formats (feel the ecumenicity). Both discs are bundled together in one Zip file, which can be downloaded from here:

FLAC format

ALAC format

A few final things. There is one, just one, tantalising rerefence online to a commercial recording by Jan Merry of Koechlin’s Chants de Nectaire, supposedly issued on 5 LPs by the little-known French label Encyclopédie Sonore Hachette. That would be extraordinary, if true, because I’ve seen no mention of this possibly complete recording in any printed or online sources I have consulted (including an entire website devoted to the Chants). The only confirmation I can find is a listing of another Encyclopédie Sonore issue, containing a recording of Racine’s Phèdre, performed by a cast including Emmanuèle Riva, directed by the label’s founder, Georges Hacquard, and with ‘Flute music written by Charles Koechlin, performed by Jan Merry.’ Very much in a French tradition of incidental music for solo flute which goes back to Debussy’s Syrinx, Hacquard’s production, I would guess, draws on the above recording of the Chants. Having Merry’s recordings of Koechlin’s Chants would radically change our aural image of him: for all their interest, these Pathé discs are really Aubert’s affair, with Merry playing a slightly secondary role.

After the War, Eleanor Foster returned to Paris. For a time, she resumed her musical partnership with Merry. On 27 January 1947, they premiered Migot’s Sonate en cinq parties, dedicated to them. Migot also dedicated several pieces to Foster alone, from Le verseau [Aquarius], the first piece of his piano cycle Le Zodiaque, to two piano preludes, written as late as 1969-70. Meanwhile, Foster continued to reinvent herself. According to a 1975 newspaper interview quoted by Andrea Olmstead, ‘For 18 years she was the musical organiser and scriptwriter for a Masterworks of French Music radio program, heard on 300 American radio stations.’ So she was responsible for all those Masterworks of French Music LPs we see advertised for sale on the internet! (An example.) Foster also pursued another calling which she’d already explored before the war with Merry (see above):

A love of dancing and an investigation into a method of improving “centered coordination” led to a series of exercises she evolved that strengthened a belt of muscles in the solar plexus region. She wrote a book in French on the subject, The Solar Center of the Body: Source of Energy and Equilibrium. The interviewer noted that Eleanor was her own best advertisement: “At 78 she moves like 40; her enthusiasm glows like 20.”

Le centre solaire du corps was published in 1973. Above, the cover of a 1977 edition; it was reprinted well into the 1980s. I love Foster’s new moniker; finding it led me to her other publications:

• Herzen, Monod; Forget, Maud; Foster, Ellé; Toupotte, Roland, et al. Médecine, parapsychologie et spiritualité, Éditions Martinsart, 1976
• Foster, Ellé Mère la terre m’invite à danser: méthode d’éducation corporelle pour les enfants, Épi, 1979

It comes as something of a shock to read further in Olmstead: ‘The hearsay [...] is that Eleanor may have committed suicide.’

A bitter-sweet final note. In an e-mail to Dr. Arnone, quoted in her thesis, Michel Debost wrote:

Jan Merry was a prominent electrical engineer, but his only passion was for the flute. He had always wanted to be a professional flute player and regretted it to his dying day…

It’s a pity that his passion is so meagrely documented, but Dr. Arnone made a start in her thesis, and we’ve added a bit more detail.

ADDENDA

20 September 2017:

I’ve just come across the Netherlands’ superb digital portal Delpher, thanks to which I have details of some of Merry’s appearances in Holland.

The earliest currently documented in Delpher’s newspaper archive is an introduction to 18th century French music, given on 18 April 1939 to students of the Amsterdam Conservatoire, in the old building’s Bachzaal. It was presented by Pauline Aubert, who took the lion’s share of the programme, Merry joining her in pieces by Michel de la Barre and, possibly, Philidor. The following day, at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, the duo gave a longer public concert, again drawing on French baroque repertoire, which Aubert played on a harpsichord from the museum’s collection. No fewer than four Dutch papers reviewed the concert, not entirely favourably. Tempering the mostly positive verdicts on Merry’s playing were criticisms of his sound, intonation, and choice of apparently weak solo items by Hotteterre and Blavet.

Not until 1961 does Merry reappear in these digitized Dutch newspapers, again performing at The Hague’s Gemeentemuseum on 16 November; no details of the programme or other artists were reported. In February 1964, Merry gave his last concert documented in these sources, at Amsterdam’s Institut Français, also known as the Maison Descartes (recently sold). With the pianist Nicole Aubert (her relation to Pauline is unknown), Merry performed French music by the baroque composers Blavet, Leclair and Caix d’Hervelois, and, from his own time, Migot, Koechlin, Francis Poulenc and Jehan Alain. The only review I’ve located was damning, pronouncing the baroque first half ‘a disappointment’, and finding little more to commend in the ‘moderately modern’ pieces; only Poulenc’s Sonata won favour, as a piece and a performance.

Sources

Ancestry.com (genealogical, travel and other documents; subscription required)

Arnone, Francesca A Performance Edition of Kœchlin’s Chants de Nectaire Op.198 [DMA thesis], University of Miami, 2000

Clough, F.F. & Cuming, G.J. The World’s Encyclopaedia of Recorded Music, London: Sidgwick & Jackson & Decca Record Company, 1952, 1953, 1957

Councell-Vargas, Martha ‘Michel Debost: Teaching Artistry’, The Flutist Quarterly, Vol.XXXVII No.3, Spring 2012, pp.26-29

Delpher (Dutch newspapers, periodicals, books and other sources; open access)

Duchesneau, Michel L’avant-garde musicale et ses sociétés à Paris de 1871 à 1939, Mardaga, 1997

Gallica (French newspapers, periodicals and other sources, audio and image files; open access)

Gray, Michael A Classical Discography (open access)

Honegger, Marc [ed.] Catalogue des oeuvres musicales de Georges Migot, Les Amis de l’Œuvre et de la Pensée de Georges Migot / Association des Publications près les Universités de Strasbourg, 3e Série, Initiations et Méthodes, No.13, 1977

Jansson, Anders booklet note for Sforzando SFZ2001, 2000

Kayas, Lucie André Jolivet, Fayard, 2005

Meunier, Jean-Pierre La naissance de Malavoi [blog post], 1 August 2006

Nelson, Susan The Flute on Record: The 78 rpm Era, Scarecrow Press, 2006

Newspapers.com (mainly US newspapers; subscription required)

Orledge, Robert Charles Koechlin (1867-1950) His Life and Works, Harwood Academic Press, 1989

Powell, Ardal The Flute, Yale, 2003

Simeone, Nigel ‘La Spirale and La Jeune France: Group Identities’, Musical Times, Vol.143, No.1880 (Autumn 2002), pp.10-36

Wikipedia (open access)

Worldcat (bibliographical and discographical data; open access)

Acknowledgements
Dr. Heidi Álvarez
Dr. Francesca Arnone
Dominique Beaufils, Conservatoire de Caen
Martha Councell-Vargas
Dr. Abigail Dolan
Frans Hupjé, Philips Museum
Jolyon
Nigel Simeone
Jonathan Summers

La grotte engloutie

Debussy Préludes, Book 1 - (x) La Cathédrale engloutie
Chopin Etude in e minor Op.25 No.5
Marie Novello (piano)
(rec. c. May 1926, issued July 1926)
Edison Bell VF 674

(My wonky framing of the label, above, is so you can see the matrix number.)

I bought this record back in January – but, as usual, I’ve had to rely on the kindness of others to enable me to share it with you. Generous and patient as ever, Jolyon has sprinkled some of his legendary Fairy Fluff on these two sides, giving me several versions to choose from. Although they’re acoustic recordings, and although the piano wasn’t too well in tune, I think they sound good – I’ve not tired of listening to them, repeatedly, as I took out some recalcitrant noises.

The estimated recording date is courtesy of the eminent British discographer William Dean-Myatt, author of the fascinating Beltona: a label listing and history (2007) and the monumental A Scottish vernacular discography, 1888-1960 (2013), which can be consulted on the website of the National Library of Scotland. Mr Dean-Myatt is currently preparing a discography of Edison Bell, a difficult task which he says will take him many years yet. It promises to be another invaluable work of reference.

My prompts for sharing this disc are twofold: guilt at not posting more often, mixed with shame at the constant streams of treasures from Shellackophile, Satyr, Buster and (not quite so constant, as he himself admits) Jolyon; and some good news which I’ve long been hoping for. The enterprising Japanese specialist label Sakuraphon has announced that it will issue a complete transfer of Marie Novello’s disc recordings, including the uncommon VF of Tausig’s transcription of  Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in d BWV 565.

The Bach-Tausig will be offered as a ‘bonus track’: Sakuraphon bought the very copy of the original disc which I’d been eyeing on >ahem< ‘an internet auction site’. It was clearly being sold by a total tyro, and it reached Japan broken in two. I’m sorry for Sakuraphon, but glad that I trusted my instinct (and my meanness, baulking at the price plus postage, which were too high), and that someone more expert than me is picking up the pieces.

Sakuraphon, in case you’re not familiar with the label, is the successor to DIW Classics, which explored audio and piano-roll recordings by overlooked, underrated pianists, and issued such wonderful CDs as ‘Hounds of Ecstasy’ – two volumes of rare historical recordings of music by Scriabin; two of Chopin titled ‘Spoonful of Chopin’s Secrets’; a disc of Beethoven sonatas recorded for French H.M.V. by Aline van Barentzen; and another of Fauré played by French women pianists.

Hounds of Ecstasy vol.1
DIW Classics DCL-1001 (p.2007)

Sakuraphon is continuing this exploration, in CD and CDR compilations which you can see here. I don’t know when the Novello disc is due – I’ll try to keep you posted.

As for Novello herself, she was born Marie Williams in the land of my forefathers, and took her professional surname from her teacher, mother of Ivor Novello. She also studied with Theodor Leschetizky, apparently, although that can’t have been for long, since he died when Marie was 17. Anyway, you’ll find a decent biography and discography on Wikipedia, which also relates the sad story of her early death from cancer, aged around 30 (depending on when exactly in 1898 she was born).

Someone whose expertise and taste I respect – and who actually plays the piano, unlike me, and very well – doesn’t rate this disc very highly. Fair enough; I’m not ashamed to admit I know nothing about piano technique. Both Novello’s technique and her interpretation drew criticism in the September 1926 issue of The Gramophone:

La Cathédrale Engloutie will not stand being played at this pace; its magic atmosphere evaporates and nothing remains but a stark, empty shell. […] The delightful Chopin Etude (from Op.25) is rather better, but here again I should have liked more delicacy and a less percussive effect.

(The reviewer, Peter Latham, liked her Bach-Tausig rather more.) Well, call me cloth-eared, but I really enjoy Novello’s way with both pieces: her refusal to linger over details in the Debussy (though they’re all there), which instead she dashes off like a water-colourist painting en plein air; and, on the contrary, her unhurried, almost parlando phrasing in the Chopin, which sounds really improvised, especially in the middle bit - a quality modern pianists aspire to but rarely achieve. As for La Cathédrale, I just listened to an extremely famous pianist’s 1978 recording and found it catatonically slow, dully grey and almost totally devoid of atmosphere.

Last night I played Jolyon’s transfers to a friend who, again, is much more musical than me, and she likened the Debussy to a ‘charcoal drawing’, exactly the simile I’d thought of using above, instead of the water-colour. She did find the Chopin a bit lumpy. All right, but I think that’s on purpose: Novello lends the outer section an almost Bartókian grotesquery – or should that be Chaplinesque?

Two mono FLAC files, fully tagged, in a .rar file here.

Thanks again to Jolyon and William Dean-Myatt!

Albert Sammons plays Fauré REMOVED

Over the last year I’ve received a few requests for access to the transfer of  Fauré’s Violin Sonata Op.13, recorded privately by Albert Sammons in 1937, which I shared and wrote about in October 2010.

I’m very sorry not to grant these requests. As I explained in an addendum to my post a few weeks later, the owner of the original discs of the Fauré, who had kindly given me the transfer to post, then gave it to Pristine Audio for further treatment and sale via the Pristine Classical website. I try not to compete with the few bone fide producers of commercial transfers of 78s who are able to stay in business in these very difficult times, so I withdrew my upload.

Pristine Classical certainly is a bona fide producer, and deserves all our support. For instance, a few months ago, during one of my periodic Stravinsky phases, I found to my joy that Pristine has transferred one of Stravinsky’s few commercial recordings which has never been reissued, his 1957 Columbia LP of Perséphone, narrated by Vera Zorina, an interesting artist with a long and varied career in ballet, film and the theatre. Perséphone is a fine and original piece, unfairly overlooked in Stravinsky’s output – so kudos to Pristine for letting us hear the composer’s first recording, which I prefer to his 1966 remake (also with Zorina). There’s an earlier, even better recording, narrated by French actress Claude Nollier and conducted by André Cluytens, especially notable for the wonderful singing of Nicolai Gedda: I keep hoping it’ll be reissued, if possible from master tapes - one for Testament, whose catalogue includes Cluytens’s exactly contemporary recording of Stravinsky’s Le Rossignol?

Pristine’s version of Sammons’ Fauré is coupled with his 1926 Columbia recording of Beethoven’s ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata Op.47, in an album of ‘Rare and Unissued Violin Sonatas’ – and it’s priced extremely reasonably, so if you want to hear the Fauré, please support Pristine by buying it!

Thank you and, again, apologies.

The Kindness of Strangers, part 9

H.M.V. model 101 portable, Leffe brune

This was my paternal grandfather’s gramophone. Prompted by kind comments left at the Cave-mouth, I ventured out with my box brownie to snap it and one of my favourite drinks. Not my Grampy’s, though – I think he preferred India pale ale, after golf, down at The Cricketers, which is all a bit too English for me.

La Grumpy is the real beer drinker round these parts – preferably with pop-corn in front of Columbo (RIP). We love Leffe, both blonde and brune (hmm – there’s a motto in there somewhere). Unlike 2ndviolinist, we have never tried Radieuse (sorry to hear about the supply problems in Austin TX) or indeed any of the other brews. Thanks for the tip.

And we have never tried Westmalle, Corsendonck or Affligem – but with Satyr’s recommendation, we must! Perhaps with some Ockeghem or Ghizeghem. I have drunk Chimay but I’m ashamed to say I can’t remember much about it. It’s a bit pricey round here – at least three rabbit-skins a bottle. Another beer which I love and which we used to be able to buy, until the man with the clipboard faxed headquarters, is Jenlain, from brasserie Duyck. It’s also been a while since I’ve seen Fischer Tradition, from Alsace, a curiously nutty delight.

Dear Doug, since you’ve asked so kindly, I can’t refuse your request. I can’t actually play 78s myself, either, at the moment. I don’t have thorn needles for this thing, although I know a man who does; and it seizes up in colder temperatures.

The dubs from 78s on this blog are kindly made for me by collectors such as Paul Steinson, Raymond Glaspole and Jolyon. I have a modern variable-speed turntable with 78 rpm but not the right styli or pre-amp. I am lusting after the KAB EQS MK12 - should I get it (when I can afford it)? But I must finish this PhD first!

Dear Benoît, I hope to have another nice upload for you very soon. Thank you for your own contributions, which far surpass mine.

P.S.: Blogger still won’t let me leave comments on my own blog, so thank you for putting me right about the model.

The Kindness of Strangers, part 7

I’ve no more nice pictures of the sisters or label scans – so I thought I’d pay homage to these fine Hungarian fiddlers with a different kind of label. I wonder if Jelly and Adila’s father Taksony von Arányi enjoyed a drop of Aszú? Or great-uncle Joseph?

La Grumpy just found this one in an old Sachertorte box at the back of the Cave (she’s been on a bit of a spring clean). The RTWC (with which I have no connection, sadly) has made some of the best Tokaji I’ve had the privilege of drinking. Their ‘ordinary’ 5 Puttonyos is pretty good but the single-vineyard Birsalmás is heavenly. I also have some of their first-growths, behind the dead mammoth. Maturing nicely.

Like the Baroque bonbons which these sisters played so well, sweet wines (except for the sole Sauternes oriental billionaires have heard of) have been out of fashion for a long time. Good! – all the more for us. I’ll drink them any time, with anything.

This first ten-inch disc includes an item by Martin Marsick, teacher of Enescu, Flesch, Thibaud and other famous violinists, as well as a snippet from a keyboard sonata by Mozart’s mentor Padre Martini. Took me ages to check the Galuppi. No idea where in Destouches’ ‘pastorale héroïque’ Issé this passepied comes from. Chrysander confusingly called the Handel No.7.

Once again, I raise a botrytis-beaded bumper to collector Raymond Glaspole, thanks to whose extraordinary assiduity and generosity we can enjoy these rare discs. I’ve left most of the noble mould on – just a light dusting with ClickRepair and some LF filtering. Download these ten mono, fully-tagged FLAC files in a .rar archive here.

Martini arr. Endicott Sonata in D Op.2 No.2 – (i) Allegro
Marsick 2 Morceaux Op.6 - No.2 Scherzando
Jelly d’Arányi (violin), Ethel Hobday (piano)
Vocalion X 9525, issued February 1925

Purcell arr. Lambert The Indian Queen Z.630 –
Act IV, Act Tune (‘Air’) [as ‘Andante maestoso’]
Leclair arr. Sarasate Sonata in D for violin & continuo Op.9 No.3 – (iii) Sarabande, (iv) Tambourin
Jelly d’Arányi (violin), Ethel Hobday (piano)
Vocalion K 05168, issued May 1925

Galuppi arr. Craxton Sonata in a minor
Op.1 No.3 – (i) Largo;
Sonata in C Op.1 No.1 – (ii) Presto [as ‘Allegro giocoso’]
Destouches arr. Dandelot Issé – Passepied
Jelly d’Arányi (violin), Ethel Hobday (piano)
Vocalion K 05203, issued December 1925

Handel Trio Sonata in g minor Op.2 No.6 HWV 391
Jelly d’Arányi & Adila Fachiri (violins),
Ethel Hobday (piano)
Vocalion K 05222-23, issued April 1926

And I wonder if Leclair ever drank anything as good as this? It has kept me pretty happy over the last three evenings…

The Kindness of Strangers, Part 6

Adila Fachiri, c.1908 (courtesy of Tully Potter Collection)

My survey of the recorded legacy of the d’Arányi sisters continues. It includes two discs by Adila Fachiri, who made far fewer solos than her sister Jelly. As before, we can only enjoy all these goodies thanks to the great generosity of collector Raymond Glaspole, who has kindly provided these transfers from originals in his collection. I have merely called on my trusty amanuensis ClickRepair.

We start with a fascinating rarity, a movement from a work originally for flute with harp, horn and strings by an Australian casualty of World War I. In 1934, Oxford University Press published a version for flute or violin with small orchestra or piano, ‘The Violin part ... arranged and edited by J. d’Aranyi’, so perhaps she had a hand in the version she plays here too.

Frederick Septimus Kelly arr. d’Arányi?
Serenade [as ‘Suite’] Op.7 – (v) Jig
Schumann arr. Anon. 12 Klavierstücke Op.85 –
(iii) Gartenmelodie
Jelly d’Arányi (violin), Ethel Hobday (piano)
Vocalion R 6141, issued April 1924

Brahms arr. Joachim Hungarian Dance No.2 in d minor
Weber arr. Kreisler Violin Sonata in F Op.10
[aka Op.17] No.1 – (ii) Romanze: Larghetto
Adila Fachiri (violin), Ivor Newton (piano)
Vocalion R 6138, issued March 1924

Couperin arr. Slatter 4ème Livre de pièces de clavecin,
20ème Ordre – (iii) Les Chérubins ou l’aimable Lazure
Kreisler 3 Variations on a Theme of Corelli,
in the style of Tartini
Adila Fachiri (violin), Ethel Hobday (piano)
Vocalion X 9494, issued December 1924

Gluck arr. Kreisler Orfeo ed Euridice –
Dance of the Blessed Spirits [‘Melodie’]
Kreisler Rondino on a Theme of Beethoven
Jelly d’Arányi (violin), Coenraad Bos (piano)
Columbia 5427, issued August 1929

Download the above 8 mono, fully-tagged FLACs files here.

The Idiocy of Corporations, Part 1

I wouldn’t normally tread on the toes of the British Library’s magnificent online Archival Sound Recordings collection, which includes a transfer of the following recording. But some supplicants at the Cave-mouth live in jurisdictions in hock to behemegamoromediamoths^©®TM which suffer from chronic dog-in-the-manger complex, and so can’t stream the BL’s files. To you, I make this offering – but don’t say the ‘content owners’ didn’t warn you when they shut up shop and refuse to invest in the next ‘great’ ‘band’. One mono FLAC file (please note: sides have not been joined up).

Bach Violin Concerto in d minor BWV 1043
Jelly d’Arányi & Adila Fachiri (violins),
orchestra, Stanley Chapple
Vocalion A 0252-53, issued February 1926

The Idiocy of Corporations, Part 2

This simple post has cost me hours. About four days ago, without warning, Blogger stopped formatting text as it has done ever since I first yawned, scratched my breech clout and peeked out of my antre 18 months ago. Line-breaks were ignored, vast spaces yawned between paras. After wasting time trying to correct things by hand, I visited the Blogger ‘help’ forum, where I read that others have the same problem. But I couldn’t post there. Closed to non-members. I’m a Blogger blogger, dammit. I applied to join, three days ago. No response. Maybe they’re trying to amend their meddling.

Then I read that Windows Live Writer works well with Blogger. To install that, though, I needed to install Windows Vista Service Pack 2 and Platform Update. (No, if I’d known, I’d never have bought a laptop with Vista. Why do you think I’m Grumpy?) SP2 took 45 minutes to download, on a 1MB(ish) broadband connection, and something approaching 3 hours to install. Various ‘vital’ updates followed, more hours. Then: create a Windows Live account. Then, more time, choosing not to install various messengers, syncers and swymmers, not uploading all my and my friends’ personal details and mugshots, and ticking boxes so as not to receive e-mails, telephone calls and SMSs about Microsoft’s ‘products’ and ‘services’, thank you.

Live Writer does seem to work quite well, though. So far.

Il pleuvait sur Peckham...

Once again, thanks to the selflessness of British collector Paul Steinson, we are able to enjoy two acoustical rarities. The first was recorded on a very wet day in 1923 - in Peckham!

Liszt Piano Concerto No.1 in E flat
Anderson Tyrer (piano)
British Symphony Orchestra, Dr. Adrian Boult
Velvet Face 557-58

Joe Batten's Book, London: Rockliff, 1956, p.61: ‘Dr. Adrian Boult’s first recording for Velvet Face was Liszt’s E flat Piano Concerto, Anderson Tyrer being the soloist. Our well-concealed recording studio in Peckham was remote from the West End. The first session had been called for ten in the morning ; since dawn it had rained hard and incessantly. Through this downpour Boult pedalled across London on a bicycle; when he arrived at the studio his clothes were soaked. But he made nothing of it, mounting the rostrum and getting to work without any fuss. As he conducted, water dripped from coat and trousers and collected in puddles about his feet. Despite this physical discomfort, he made a musicianly job of the Liszt work.’

As the set was issued in July 1923, I guess these sessions took place in the first half of that year - does anyone have a more precise date? The recording was mentioned in The Gramophone in January 1924, in Compton Mackenzie’s quarterly retrospective, but, as far as I can make out (since The Gramophone’s online archive is so hard to search), it was never fully reviewed - I wonder why not?

This is often stated to be the Concerto's first recording; most of Arthur de Greef’s version with Ronald on HMV (D 890-92) was actually waxed earlier, in 1922, but not completed until September 1923. This Velvet Face version has a cut of a few bars marked Grandioso at the end of the first side, not a bad one; otherwise, it is complete. I have merely run Mr. Steinson’s dub through ClickRepair, with decrackling, and joined up the sides (as you will hear, since the surface noise changes quite abruptly).

Download the single, fully-tagged mono FLAC file from my midden.

Some time in the following year, the same team returned (I imagine) to Peckham:

Franck Variations symphoniques
Anderson Tyrer (piano)
British Symphony Orchestra, Dr. Adrian Boult
Velvet Face 599-600

This set, recorded complete, was issued in November 1924, when it was reviewed in The Gramophone. The reviewer, Peter Latham, preferred Arthur de Greef’s 1922 version with Ronald on HMV (D 697-98), transferred and recently uploaded by this enterprising fellow-blogger (doubt he's a fellow-troglodyte, though). I'm just glad to have both!

Technical bits as above. Download the single, fully-tagged mono FLAC file from here.

As ever, the Cave resounds with thanks to Mr. Paul Steinson. All such offerings are, of course, grumpily - I mean, gratefully - received...

Hurrah for job lots!

Recently, I took a punt on a job lot of 78s on eBay... result!

Busoni String Quartet in C Op.19 - (ii) Andante
Mozart String Quartet in G K.387 - (iv) Molto allegro
Odeon O-6273, rec. 10 November 1924
Roth Quartet
(Feri Roth, Mauritz Stromfeld, Herman Spitz, A. Franke)

The seller had been kind enough to list all 150+ discs (other sellers, please note, you lazy so-and-sos!) - but not always with enough detail to be quite sure exactly what they contained. I feared this might be from the Roth Quartet's incomplete recording of Schubert's 'Death and the Maiden' Quartet D.810, issued in Britain on Parlophone (E 10767-68) and transferred by CHARM (their only other British issue, not on CHARM, was E 10656, a snippet of Debussy's Quartet).

Yippee, it wasn't! Instead, I found this interesting acoustical rarity, in an original sleeve, as many in the job lot were: and it contains what must be one of the earliest recordings of a work of chamber music by Busoni - anyone know of an earlier one? What's more, this coupling is not listed in Hansfried Sieben's Odeon Matrizen-nummern der Serie xxB (30 cm) von 6815-9598, (1923-1953) (Düsseldorf, 1988). On the other hand, Sieben does list the players, by surnames only; I've been able to get first names for all but the ’cellist.

My fellow-collector Jolyon Hodson has kindly made this transfer (I haven't the right kit, at the mo) and the scans. By my reckoning, this is only the third ever recording of the Finale of Mozart's K.387 (the first was by the Flonzaley for Victor and the second by the Léner for Columbia) - and it goes at a heck of a lick!

Download the 2 mono FLAC files, fully tagged, in a .rar file from here.

Some ten months later, the Roth recorded the Menuetto of K.387 (xxB 7237, face no. unknown, issued on O-80283). If anyone has that, we'd love to hear it.

I must say I'm chuffed to bits with my job lot bonanza and I hope to be able to post more goodies from it soon. I have some German Parlophons and even rare Homochords (Robert Pollak, Fery Lorant - yes!).

I wish I had more Odeons like this, though. They recorded a lot of chamber music, including some twelve discs with the Roth Quartet. (By the way, why is seemingly no one in Germany posting stuff like this on the web? Is anyone collecting these discs?)

Odeon even recorded a disc of ‘Old English Dances from Shakespeare’s Time’, with the Munich Viol Quintet! That would make Grumpy exceedingly happy...

UPDATE

Jolyon has found a notice, in The Musical Times of November 1924, of a 'very animated performance' of Busoni's Op.19 by the Roth Quartet, 'very well received', at a Busoni commemoration organized by his pupil Edward Weiss - of course, silly me, I'd forgotten Busoni had just died (27 July 1924)!

Albert Sammons plays Fauré, 1937, HMV private issue

Once again, I am deeply indebted to Mr. Paul Steinson for the following treasure!

Fauré Violin Sonata in A Op.13
Albert Sammons (violin), Edie Miller (piano)
recorded 10 & 12 November 1937
HMV private issue JG 60-62

I am very happy to be able to present this on Mr. Steinson's behalf. He kindly provided me with his dub of the original set, as well as the above label scan; I have only passed the dub through the marvellous ClickRepair (declick and decrackle), monoed it and joined up the sides where necessary - no more. Any definciencies are thus of course mine!

Download the 4 mono FLAC files, fully tagged, in a .rar file here.

My other favourite recording of this lovely Sonata is by Lola Bobesco and Jacques Genty, recorded in 1950 by Decca and reissued by Testament.

I see Sammons and Edie Miller made at least one other privately issued duo recording together, of Turina's Violin Sonata No.1 in D Op.51, on three 78 sides; on the odd side, Edie Miller played Poulenc's Mouvements perpetuels.

The Steinson cornucopia will continue shortly, with two rare acoustic concertante sets played by Anderson Tyrer with the British Symphony Orchestra under Adrian Boult!

Update, 31 October:

A friend suggested I try reequalizing this with the Blumlein curve (using brilliant Brian's wonderful Equalizer) and, I agree, the recorded image is now clearer and better balanced - but the surface noise obtrudes more!

Anyway, see what you think: as before, 4 mono FLAC files, fully tagged, in a renamed .rar file here.

Update, 10 December:

Pristine Classical has now redubbed and remastered this recording and made it available as a commercial download; better still, it is coupled with Sammons' 1926 Columbia set of Beethoven's Violin Sonata in A Op.47, the 'Kreutzer', never previously reissued on CD or as a download (the only reissue I know of was a 1982 Pearl LP). As I very much support Pristine's work and don't wish to take away its custom, my version may no longer be downloaded. Information about Pristine's reissue can be found here.

The Kindness of Strangers

Bach Brandenburg Concerto No.2 in F BWV 1047
Ernest Hall (trumpet), Frank Almgill (flute), Leon Goossens (oboe),
Samuel Kutcher (violin), Rudolph Dolmetsch (harpsichord),
London Chamber Orchestra, Anthony Bernard
Brunswick 30137-38 (rec. 1928-29?)
property of Mr. Paul Steinson

A great reason not to be grumpy!

Paul Steinson, a music-lover and record-collector in England, read the article about downloads of historical recordings in Classic Record Collector (No.61, Summer 2010, pp.46-49) and noticed that the British Library's Archival Sound Recordings website has some of Anthony Bernard's legendary 'lost' cycle of Bach's 'Brandenburg' Concertos - but not No.2. This recording has previously been reissued but only in a set of cassettes which accompanied Ewald Junge's biography of the conductor, Anthony Bernard - A Life in Music, published as a limited edition in 1992.

This first-ever complete cycle of the Brandenburgs, recorded I should think some time in late 1928 and early 1929 (does anyone have more precise dates and/or a location?)*, was slated for release on twelve records, 30135-46, in March 1929. That month The Gramophone published a fascinating article by Bernard himself, recounting the difficulties posed by the recordings and revealing that the sessions, which he called a 'costly enterprise', had been completed only days before the time of writing. As he admitted, 'The Second Brandenburg Concerto with the very high trumpet part could not be given exactly as written by Bach; both microphone and wax would have rebelled.' Perhaps the second side, which was published from take 11(!), was one of the last to be redone? For a while, I thought Bernard had deployed a harp on continuo in the slow movement; but it must be a harpsichord stop, chosen by Rudolph Dolmetsch on the instrument, presumably from the family workshops, which he played in this Concerto as well as in Nos.3, 4 & 6 (and a Pleyel in No.1).

But the same month, the entire cycle was suddenly cancelled and almost completely destroyed; some copies must have got out, as there are survivors, seriously rare (no full set is known, I gather). The sad story has been told in detail by David Patmore in Classic Record Collector's 'Rarissima' column (No.44, Spring 2006, p.9). Dr. Patmore countered Junge's suggestion that the cycle was withdrawn because 'Bach was too risky commercially' with the more plausible explanation that, in 1929, Decca, which had just taken over Brunswick, was in dire straits and had to retrench and regroup drastically.

With extraordinary generosity, Mr. Steinson has transferred his own complete set of No.2, scanned the label of the first side (above), and agreed to allow the transfer to be further processed, if need be, and shared here by Grumpy. The entrance to the cave has been duly spruced up and all coprolites and mouse skellingtons swept to the back. The indefatigable and highly knowledgeable Jolyon has tweaked the difficult side-join in the first movement and sprinkled his fairy-dust on Brunswick's sound, which he calls 'nasty' and 'harsh' and which made him wonder if this was one of the company's 'Light-Ray Process' efforts: 'The original recording has been made in a rather boxy room. The last movement is transposed a semitone up but the trumpet plays an octave down anyway so I left the pitch alone. I have pushed all the instruments back a bit so they are not so in your face. I can't get rid of all the edginess but I hope it is a bit clearer.' I think it is an improvement but mainly I'm thrilled to be able to hear this at all!

Download Jolyon's version of Mr. Steinson's transfer as one fully-tagged, mono FLAC file, from here.

Can anyone explain the matrix numbers starting BA? Bernard's Brandenburgs begin at BA71, yet Ross Laird's great Brunswick book shows no such matrices originating in London, only in Buenos Aires! Any matrix numbers for the rest of the cycle gratefully received. And scour your attics: the keyboard part in Concerto No.5 was played on the piano by Walter Gieseking, no less - wouldn't it be grand to hear a complete set of that!

My eternal thanks to both Mr. Steinson and Jolyon - exactly the kind of generous, altruistic collectors (like so many of the bloggers over on the right-hand side of this page) who will be the subject of the next article about downloads of historical recordings, in the forthcoming (Autumn) issue of CRC.

*Postscript: Jolyon, who has a usefully forensic approach to discography, reckons from the matrix numbers that this Concerto may have been recorded between the 10th & 18th of October 1928. Nothing to do with Buenos Aires, he assures me; these BA-prefixed numbers were a London series not recorded in the documents available to Laird (and indeed none of Bernard's sessions have numbers in Laird's book).

And it turns out the BL does in fact have a copy of this set. It should have been included in the Archival Sound Recordings Bach survey but for some reason was omitted; I understand this may be rectified! At the moment the BL is busy hoovering up some rare and interesting early Beethoven quartet recordings which were also overlooked and should be posted on ASR fairly soon.