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Posted: |
Aug 4, 2018 - 12:49 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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Ernest Ansermet was born in Vevey, Switzerland in 1883. Originally he was a mathematics professor, teaching at the University of Lausanne. He began conducting at the Casino in Montreux in 1912, and from 1915 to 1923 was the conductor for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes.
In 1918 Ansermet founded his own orchestra, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (OSR). He toured widely in Europe and America and became famous for accurate performances of difficult modern music, making first recordings of works such as Stravinsky's Capriccio with the composer as soloist.
After World War II, Ansermet and his orchestra rose to international prominence through a long-term contract with Decca/London Records. From that time until his death, he recorded most of his repertoire, often two or three times. In May 1954, Decca recorded Ansermet and the OSR in Europe's first commercial stereophonic recordings.
The 1988 cassette program below of concertos was recorded in 1958 (Haydn) and 1968 (Hummel, Weber, & L. Mozart). Despite the title of the cassette, “Trumpet Concerto,” the Weber piece is for bassoon. Ansermet died in 1969 at the age of 85.
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Born in Basel, Switzerland, Karl Anton Rickenbacher studied at the Berlin Conservatory with Herbert von Karajan. He took part in master classes with Pierre Boulez. He was an assistant conductor at the Zürich Opera from 1966 to 1969. He served as first Kapellmeister of the Stadt Buhnen Freiburg from 1969 to 1975. He was music director of the Westphalian Symphony Orchestra from 1976 to 1985.
Rickenbacher was chief conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra from 1978 to 1980. He was appointed principal guest conductor of the Belgian BRT Philharmonic Orchestra in 1987. In 1989, Rickenbacher recorded this program of music by Paul Hindemith with the Bamberger Symphoniker.
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Sir Neville Marriner was an English violinist who became one of the world's greatest conductors. In 1958, he founded the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields, and his partnership with them is the most recorded of any orchestra and conductor. The first recordings in the early 1960s, with Marriner both conducting and playing lead violin, were successful, leading Pierre Monteux, then the London Symphony Orchestra's conductor, to encourage Marriner to shift his focus to conducting.
Marriner made over 600 recordings covering 2,000 different works – more than any conductor except Herbert von Karajan. He recorded for various labels, including Argo, L'Oiseau Lyre, Philips, and EMI Classics. His recorded repertoire ranges from the baroque era to 20th-century British music, as well as opera. He supervised and conducted the Mozart selections for the soundtrack of the Oscar-winning 1984 film AMADEUS; it became one of the most popular classical music recordings of all time, selling over 6.5 million copies.
Marriner died on 2 October 2016, at the age of 92. In 1971, for Philips, Marriner recorded Mozart’s Symphony Nos. 35 (“Haffner”) and 40.
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Posted: |
Aug 10, 2018 - 10:10 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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Thomas Z. Shepard is a prolific record producer who is best known for his recordings of Broadway musicals, including the works of Stephen Sondheim. Shepard is also a composer, conductor, music arranger, and pianist. In addition, Shepard contributed to the early 1970s "switched-on" cycle of synthesized electronic classical albums, with Everything You Always Wanted to Hear on the Moog* (*but were afraid to ask for) (1973), in collaboration with Andrew Kazdin.
In 1980, Columbia Records brought Shepard, Kazdin, and Leonard Bernstein together on an album that combined two previously released versions of Maurice Ravel’s “Bolero.” Bernstein provided the conventional orchestral version, from a 1978 album with the Orchestre National De France, while Shepard and Kazdin provided Bolero “on the Mighty Moog” from their 1973 album. The combo, “Newly Remastered In Spectacular Sound!", proved to be a big seller.
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Check out Liszt's arrangement - "Wanderer Fantasy for Piano + Orchestra "
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Posted: |
Aug 16, 2018 - 12:52 AM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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Charles Munch was born in 1891 in Strasbourg, Alsace-Lorraine (a French territory at that period annexed by the German Empire). At the age of 41, Munch made his conducting debut in Paris on 1 November 1932, when Munch's fiancée, Geneviève Maury, granddaughter of a founder of the Nestlé Chocolate Company, rented the hall and hired the Walther Straram Concerts Orchestra.
Following this success, Munch conducted various French orchestras during the 1930s. He remained in France conducting the Conservatoire Orchestra during the German occupation of the early 1940s, believing it best to maintain the morale of the French people. He refused conducting engagements in Germany and also refused to perform contemporary German works. He protected members of his orchestra from the Gestapo and contributed from his income to the French Resistance. For this, he received the Légion d'honneur with the red ribbon in 1945 and the degree of Commandeur in 1952.
After the war, Munch made his début with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on 27 December 1946. He was its Music Director from 1949 to 1962. In 1961, he and the BSO recorded Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 1 for RCA. The recording was re-issued on cassette in 1982.
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Posted: |
Aug 17, 2018 - 3:31 AM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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Roger Sessions was an American composer, teacher, and writer on music. Sessions was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1896, to a family that could trace its roots back to the American Revolution. Sessions studied music at Harvard University from the age of 14. There he wrote for and subsequently edited the Harvard Musical Review. Graduating at age 18, he went on to study at Yale University before teaching at Smith College, Northampton MA. With the exception, mostly, of his incidental music to the play “The Black Maskers,” composed in part in Cleveland in 1923, his first major compositions came while he was traveling in Europe with his wife in his mid-twenties and early thirties.
“The Black Maskers” orchestral suite was completed in 1928. It was arranged from music originally composed to accompany a performance of Russian author Leonid Andreyev’s drama The Black Maskers at Smith College in June 1923. The piece was recorded by Walter Hendl and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra (originally masquerading as the “American Recording Society Orchestra”) in 1952. That 10’’ LP recording has been reissued several times, including on this Desto/CMS Records cassette, on which the Vienna Symphony gets its due.
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Posted: |
Aug 17, 2018 - 11:22 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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In 1937 Russia, at the height of Stalin’s purges, the Communist Party strongly denounced Dmitri Shostakovich’s most recent works. Under such criticism, Shostakovich composed Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47, between April and July 1937. Its first performance was on November 21, 1937, in Leningrad by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under Yevgeny Mravinsky.
During that performance, people were reported to have wept during the Largo (third) movement. The music, steeped in an atmosphere of mourning, contained echoes of the panikhida, the Russian Orthodox requiem. However, the symphony ended with a rousing march. The premiere was a huge success and received an ovation that lasted well over half an hour. But to many, the triumph rang hollow. Even today, people wonder just what Shostakovich was trying to say. Was the symphony meant to celebrate Stalin’s regime?
In later years, Shostakovich was reported to have said words to the effect that “I think it is clear to everyone what happens in the Fifth. The rejoicing is forced, created under threat. It’s as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, ‘Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing …”
Mravinsky and the Leningrad Symphony would make the premiere recording of the symphony for Melodiya in 1938. Nevertheless, in the nearly 30 years that followed, there were only a handful of subsequent recordings before Andre Previn tackled the piece with the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) for RCA in 1966. That recording seemed to have opened the floodgates, and over the next 50 years, more than 30 additional recordings have been produced.
Previn himself would record the 5th twice more--first, performing excerpts with the LSO for the 1975 soundtrack of ROLLERBALL; then, in 1977, re-recording the entire work with the Chicago Symphony for EMI Classics. RCA re-issued Previn’s LSO recording on cassette in 1983 and on CD in 1995.
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Posted: |
Aug 19, 2018 - 8:52 AM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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Jean Sibelius was a Finnish composer and violinist of the late Romantic and early-modern periods. He is widely recognized as his country's greatest composer and, through his music, is often credited with having helped Finland to develop a national identity during its struggle for independence from Russia.
The core of his oeuvre is his set of seven symphonies which, like his other major works, are regularly performed and recorded in his home country and internationally. His other best-known compositions are Finlandia, the Karelia Suite, Valse triste, the Violin Concerto, the choral symphony Kullervo, and The Swan of Tuonela (from the Lemminkäinen Suite).
Morton Gould and His Orchestra recorded many of these non-symphony pieces for a 1963 release by RCA. Quintessence re-issued that recording on LP and cassette in 1977.
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