What Lights Your Fire (I Use Dried Dung)

Hello all,

It's almost restored my faith in human nature: we all like Bach and Monteverdi!


Sorry, it's not very clear - Blogger doesn't seem to like my big tiffs - so here are some stats, as of a few days ago:

Top of the list is Reine Gianoli's Bach on Westminster (recently transferred from LP and issued on CD by Green Door in Japan), at 218 takers;
next is Roger Wagner's Monteverdi Primo libro de' Madrigali, with 196 downloads!
Just behind, at 192, are the Fuchses doing Mozart's K.364;
at No.4, the Quartetto Italiano's 17th C Italians with 143;
followed by Jeanne Behrend's all-Gottschalk LP at 142 (Side 2) and 133 (Side 1);
and, suprisingly, by Mildred Clary's little lute 45 at 134.

Very encouraging!

Of course, I can't share all sort of stuff I'd like to - contemporary music, mainly.

Anyway, this got me thinking about my Desert Island Discs. A few years ago these'd have gone something like this:

Monteverdi Vespro della Beata Vergine, 1610 / Taverner Consort, Choir & Players, Andrew Parrott / EMI Reflexe
Bach Well-Tempered Clavier BWV 846-893 (can I have the lot?) / Glenn Gould / CBS
Beethoven String Quartet in a Op.132 / Busch Quartet / EMI Références
Beethoven 33 Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli Op.120 / Alfred Brendel / Philips
Schubert Die Winterreise D.911 / Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Gerald Moore / EMI
Brahms Symphony No.2 in D Op.73 / erm... can't remember now - Chailly?
Bartók String Quartet No.4 Sz.91/ Hungarian String Quartet / DG
Stravinsky Agon / SWF Baden-Baden SO, Hans Rosbaud / Adès

Bum, that just squeezes out:
Tippett Symphony No.3 / LSO, Sir Colin Davis / Philips
[or, possibly, Elgar Symphony No.2 in Eb Op.63 / LPO, Sir Georg Solti / Decca]

Yes, it's always a tough one - but I gotta change some things:

Machaut The Mirror of Narcissus / Gothic Voices, Christopher Page / Hyperion (or maybe the Messe de Nostre Dame, if there was an outright winner in that complicated field?)
Monteverdi Vespro - stays in! (though Parrott's Orfeo has always run it close)
Purcell Dido and Aeneas / Taverner Consort, Choir & Players, Andrew Parrott / OU-Chandos
Bach Art of Fugue BWV 1080 / (probably) Musica Antiqua Köln, Reinhard Goebel / Archiv Produktion
[but possibly Berlin Bach Academy, Heribert Breuer / Arte Nova]
Beethoven... yeah, keep both, though I rarely pull those off the shelf these days
Brahms No.2 - likewise (and happy to take whichever one comes along...)
Birtwistle Earth Dances / Cleveland Orchestra, Christoph von Dohnányi / Decca
(but there have been some stunning broadcasts, too - and if Yan Tan Tethera was commercially available I might have to go for that!)

Wot, no Schubert? Lord, this is hard.

No, feck it, I'm going to cheat:
Vaughan Williams The Lark Ascending / Isolde Menges, orch., Malcolm Sargent / HMV (download from CHARM - side 1, side 2, side 3)

So - how about you?

Ffunky Ggibbons, Locke & Purcell

Here's another one you won't want!

But I love these recordings of 17th C consort music by string quartet. They bring it out of the music chest and the library and into the concert hall - especially peformances as confident as these, by the New Music String Quartet: Broadus Earle, Matthew Raimondi (violins), Walter Trampler (viola), Claus Adam (cello). Recorded by Peter Bartók in about 1952, I reckon, for his own label, on which this was first released as LP number 913, some time in the first half of 1953. The Quartet made quite a few interesting LPs of early music for Bartók, from Alessandro Scarlatti to F.X. Richter; some have been reissued on CD - but not this one. This World Record Club Recorded Music Circle issue must date from the late 1950s, no? I wish I knew more about this fascinating label: all info grumpily received.

The two Gibbons 4-part Fantasias (his only two) have been transposed up a fourth; at this pitch and in the NMSQ's hands they zing with high tension and rhythmic drive. Perhaps the Quartet should have upped Locke's sixth Consort of Ffowre Parts too; it comes across least well of the 5 pieces here. This was not its first recording; amazingly, that was made in 1929 by the National Gramophonic Society, with André Mangeot and his International String Quartet playing Mangeot's edition of a transcription by Warlock (I dunno what edition was used here - quite possibly the same?). The movements are Fantazia, Courante, Ayre, Saraband.

The famous Purcell Chacony, on the other hand, has a reticent delicacy that I really like - no Nymanesque chugging or overblown climax. Not on the disc, anyway.

Download the 5 fully tagged mono FLAC files in a .rar archive from here.

'Dry' my a*se!

I mentioned to a friend recently that I'd done a dub of this record and he called it, 'Dry'. It's a criticism I've often heard of Foldes and I don't quite understand it; I prefer to think of him as 'classical'. He's one of my favourite pianists - and sorely neglected in CD reissues. DG seems to think he's only fit for compilations of the 'Liebestraum', 'Für Elise', 'Passion for Piano', and 'Piano Weekend' variety. They can't be bothered to reissue his milestone solo Bartók cycle (just one Dokumente CD that's been around for years) and for some incomprehensible reason they never marketed the superb if unnecessarily selective Original Masters 'Wizard of the Keyboard' twofer in the UK - I had to buy mine from abroad (and three nanoseconds later it's been deleted, anyway, though you can buy it as a FLAC download, which is a small mercy - get it, the Stravinsky Sonata and Barber Excursions are my absolute tops for these works).

So, for grumpy fellow Foldes fans and sceptics, here is his fine 1958 'Emperor' with Ferdinand Leitner, from a stereo Heliodor LP published in 1959, which I picked up in a local charity shop recently. I haven't put up the filler, the little Sonata in G Op.79, because it's very short, not quite so interesting and the nitwit who last owned this disc managed to slather that bit in some annoying gunge which our little miracle helper ClickRepair can't deal with.

Otherwise, ClickRepair has done a great job and I find the 1958 sound remarkably good. Can't say the same for the grungy and depressing cover - how many copies did this sell? Also, I specially bought an A3 scanner so I could do LP covers: well, bravo the person at Mustek who put a raised, chamfered edge round the platen just high enough so that LPs, which don't fit by a couple of mm, sit half on and half off the platen: not only is one or the other side chopped off but the other is also out of focus. If you wanted to help users frame their paper originals, 1 mm, unchamfered, would have been fine. The software is also beyond dire.

Two stereo, fully tagged FLAC files (Adagio and attacca Rondo are one file) in a .rar file at:

http://www.mediafire.com/?jldzzctdymf

A rainy Saturday afternoon in Poitiers

My idea of heaven, really: a handsome old European city in a beautiful landscape - and a charity shop with French LPs and 78s! Here's a little something from my all too meagre haul:


(I had to make the pic B&W after my scanner turned the faintly sepia-like original into a sickly pink)

This appears to be a French Club national du disque issue of a Musical Masterpiece Society recording, with the influential Czech-born Viennese conductor and teacher Henry Swoboda conducting the Netherlands Philharmonic (on the MMS, see David Patmore, 'Your room a Concert Hall', Classic Record Collector, Vo.6 No.23, Winter 2000, pp.38-42). According to the Bibliothèque nationale's catalogue, dépôt légal of the MMS issue was in 1955, so I've taken a punt on that as recording date.

Interestingly, after the amusing balls-up I related in my previous post, I found that this 10-inch LP has its labels reversed - or, rather, the labels themselves aren't (side and matrix numbers are consistent with the very extensive markings in the run-off area) but the title listings on them are, with Symphony No.94 billed as No.100 and vice versa.

Rather nice performances, too!

8 mono FLACs in a .rar file here. Yes, I know, there's hum and rumble - they don't bother me too much but if you want to take them out and repost the results, please feel free! Better still, teach me how to do it... Otherwise, I found the sound rather good and needing only declicking (apart from the very end of No.100, which gets a bit harsh and crackly).

Back to Poitiers: I recently spent a delightful if drizzly Saturday enjoying its commanding site on a limestone ridge, exploring the lovely streets, squares, old merchants' houses and modern shops. When I asked in a musical instrument shop if anyone sold classical LPs, they said no, Poitiers is more rock and country! But, hurrah, later, conveniently after the sight-seeing, I stumbled on a charity shop with a few crates of LPs and 78s.

If you've never seen the facade of Notre-Dame-la-Grande, go: it's stunning and has been rightly compared to a mediaeval ivory panel (the neighbouring food market is predictably mouth-watering). The inside is thoroughly Viollet-le-Duc-ized but none the less atmospheric (and damp) for that. But I preferred the more austere cathédrale de Saint-Pierre et Saint-Paul, with its amazing 12th C stained-glass window, 13th C carved choir stalls and, best of all, barely altered 1790 organ, the last work of François-Henri Clicquot, who died during the construction, completed by his son Claude-François. I would love to hear this last flowering of 18th C French organ-building - and I would love to go back, with more transport, to the shop where I found this LP and a shedload of ancient vertical cut Pathé 78s! I could only carry a few so I took two, and I already regret leaving the 10-inch lateral cut Pathé (X9918) of cellist Marguerite Caponsacchi - but she was only playing arrangements of Schumann and Schubert.

A balls-up all round...

I just bought this nice-looking LP (people go on about DG's design, which was indeed fab, but so was Telefunken's, antiquely austere and delightfully discreet) on eBay - and was immediately struck by a discrepancy on the front:



Er, since when has minor Mozart and Beethoven chamber music had anything to do with the North German organ!? This is the kind of mistake you can understand being made with computers but I'm surprised to find it from the days of cutting, pasting and typesetting by hand. Anyone else come across anything similar?

(Talking of the North German organ, I also just bought a 2-LP set of 'Buxtehude and His Contemporaries', superbly played by Lionel Rogg, HMV SLS 801/2 - odd number, don't you think? - not from eBay, from JustClassical, which I can highly recommend for excellent service. As EMI has just reissued another batch of Rogg's Buxtehude, I guess this outstanding set will never appear as digits...)

Anyway, that's not all.

Side 1 contains the first of those string trios based on fugues by Bach and attributed (less and less securely, it seems) to Mozart as K.404a, and the Flute Quartet in C K.285b, both played by members of the Alma Musica Sextet. I already knew of this side from its first issue on a nice 1955 LP entitled 'The Golden Line of Polyphony', London/Ducretet-Thomson DTL 93046, but that's a rarity and this Telefunken pressing (I don't have a date for it) seemed minty-mint, so I was looking forward to sharing it with you.

As I'm getting to be more and more of a Rampal fan (I've been buying the outstanding reissues of his early recordings on Premiers Horizons, the label of the Association Jean-Pierre Rampal - they're cheap, too, get them!), I was chuffed to see that Side 2 apparently contains Beethoven's Trio in G WoO 37 for flute, bassoon (Paul Hongne) and piano (Robert Veyron-Lacroix) and the Air russe, No.7 of the 10 National Airs with Variations Op.107 (also with Veyron-Lacroix). I think these must be the recordings listed by the Bibliothèque nationale as first issued on Ducretet Thomson LPG 8002 (dépôt légal 1952), not the mid-1960s ones made for the Club français du disque and now available as part of a complete set of Beethoven's chamber music on VoxBox CDX-5000.

But I was a smidge surprised to find that Side 2 is merely a repeat of Side 1, though for some reason the Bach/Mozart string trio was mastered at a slightly higher level! The two sides have different labels and matrix numbers, as expected. Anyone know how this might have happened?

Anyway, on Mediafire you will find a .rar file containing mono FLACs of the 'wrong' Side 2, which is decently played by:

- Everard van Royen (flute)
- Paul Godwin (violin - see his fascinating biography)
- Johan van Velden (viola) and
- Carel van Leeuwen Boomkamp (cello - Anner Bylsma's teacher; here's a biog in Dutch).

I won't pretend Alma Musica was the best ensemble ever, even of its day, but I admire its pioneering spirit and programming.

In the meantime, I'm sorry not to be able to offer you Rampal's early Beethoven. Maybe Premiers Horizons will reissue it; they seem to have gone back to tape masters wherever possible (e.g., for the Discophiles français LPs with Ristenpart) and the results are stunning. (Obviously, it's not in Accord's 8-CD box set 'Concertos et Récitals 1961-1965 Vol.1', 480 1324 - but forget about getting a track listing from Universal Music France, for that you'll have to go to Universal Music Italy.)

In fact, this makes me really grumpy: if a small label can put out these Ristenpart gems at such a reasonable price, why can't we have them all? A big Ristenpart box from EMI, which now owns the outstanding Discophiles français catalogue? Or, better still, a complete Discophiles français Edition!?

A Dilemma and a Freebie

Deepest apologies for my long absence! I've been doing paid work, now that I'm in the 4th (and, let's hope, final) year of my PhD and no longer have a stipend...

First, the freebie: pursuing my grumpily unfashionable theme of unloved early music records, here is the Quartetto Italiano (Paolo Borciani and Elisa Pegreffi, violins; Piero Farulli, viola; Franco Rossi, cello) playing Italian mid-Baroque 4-part sonatas - or, as the lovely Columbia sleeve has it:

Class, eh?And yet - not one of the Quartetto's best albums, to be honest. Still, I think it's well worth hearing - this is a wonderful repertoire, which I've been collecting and enjoying on CD for years, and now I'm often finding that musicians of the 1950s and even earlier made some very honourable stabs at it.

Of special interest, as noted by J.N. (Jeremy Noble?) in The Gramophone (May 1957, pp.453-54), is the way 'the Quartetto Italiano have made a gesture towards authenticity by abjuring vibrato in the earliest pieces' - so, yar boo sucks to all those who imagine such devices were only thought of in the 1970s. The rest of this review strikes me as a tad churlish, which can't have helped this LP to sell; in his haste to point out that these are not really string quartets and mostly have a continuo part, the writer forgot that modern string quartets (notably André Mangeot's various formations) had been playing 16th, 17th and 18th C string consorts for more than half a century - and why the hell not!? No string quartet today will start a programme with Gabrieli, Marini or Vivaldi - and we're the poorer for it. Even the Pro Arte Quartet recorded a Vivaldi concerto (DB 2148, 1933 - never reissued - and, again, why the hell not!?) and if he was good enough for them...

So, 7 mono FLAC files at

http://www.mediafire.com/file/yymhwqwnyzy/Columbia_33CX_1430.rar

I've tried to identify all the pieces but I got lazy with Vitali's Capriccio - if anyone can pin-point that (or confirm that this is Neri's Sonata quinta from Op.2*) I'll be... less grumpy than usual. Michael Gray's data (http://www.charm.kcl.ac.uk/) gives a recording date only for the items on side 1 (and the Italian LP number); I've assumed side 2 was recorded the same day. Talking of the Italian issue, the Quartetto's own very useful website gives the date of April 1957, which must be the release date, as well as the entire original Italian sleeve note by Luigi Pestalozza. I hope you can make out Columbia's translation in my scan, and also the section titles: each piece is one file but three consist of more than one section. In fact two aren't quite right here: the Marini apparently goes (a) Entrata grave (b) Balletto allegro (c) Gagliarda (d) Corrente (e) Retirata (so my Manze CD says); and the Vivaldi should be (a) Largo molto (b) Allegro ma poco andante.

[*P.S. This has now been confirmed by the mighty Jolyon!]

The Dilemma

Should I give recordings away free? This one, yes: I've done nothing beyond the usual ClickRepair and the condition of side 2 was not quite what I was led to believe by the seller, so there's quite a bit of shushy noise in the Vitali and some clunks in the Vivaldi. (Also, are my dubs getting worse or what?) But I have a couple of other LPs of this type which are rarer and musically more rewarding. If academic work is not forthcoming after I finish my Phd (if I ever do...) and even if it is, I'd like to make a living in this reissues racket; if these guys can do it, why not me?

CHARM sound archive goes online

Send the family on holiday, clear your diary, farm out the pets, buy in plenty of tins and put the phone on divert: you will spend the next two weeks on your own, in the dark, happily hunting and listening to a treasure trove of long-forgotten goodies from the wonderful to the weird.

More than 5,000 historical recordings (each one, a side of a 10- or 12-inch coarse-groove disc), dating from about 1915 to 1952, have just been made available online for anyone to stream or download, free, anywhere in the world.

The CHARM online sound archive combines transfers made under the auspices of two academic projects: CHARM itself, the AHRC Research Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music, which ran from 2004 to 2009; and 'Musicians of Britain and Ireland, 1900-1950', brainchild of Professor Daniel Leech-Wilkinson of the Music Department, King's College, London, one of the Associate Directors of CHARM. Daniel brilliantly secured funding from the UK's JISC and so more than doubled the number of transfers funded under CHARM.

The transfer engineers were Andrew Hallifax, who has worked with many classical artists and companies as well as making recodings for his own record label, Big Ears; and Martin Haskell, who has worked for Decca, ASV and other companies and engineered many, many reissues of historical recordings.

The project would not have been possible without the amazing discographical research done over many decades by the likes of Frank Andrews, Michael Smith, Ernie & Ernest Bayly and Bill Dean-Myatt, all published by the CLPGS, and by Alan Kelly of Sheffield.

I must declare an interest: I ended up being the main selector of recordings to be transferred by the two projects, though others, inside CHARM and out, were also free to make suggestions; and our warmest thanks must go to the doyen of British critics of singing, John Steane, for kindly and freely giving of his fabled expertise in that domain.

You will find all the information you need about the two projects and the CHARM archive, about searching, file formats and players and so on, on the site. So:

Get searching and enjoy!