LPs: batch 15 – halfway with psychedelic Popp

Posted on May 10, 2010 by vhk10

Back to a mixed bag. The first two were Hungarotons of the Takacz quartet and a friend playing string quintets by Mozart. Then orchestrations of Brahms’ Hungarian Dances with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, and a further inroad into Schubert: the sonata D958 and Moments Musicaux. More Brahms: his second symphony with the Hallé and Loughran. Grieg’s Peer Gynt is conducted by Neville Marriner with St. Martin in the Fields, the Ambrosian Singers and Lucia Popp (and a rather psychedelic sleeve). Finally, a Mendelssohn disc: the 4th and 5th symphonies with Karajan and the Berlin Phil.

At this point I’ve recorded just over 100 discs and the half-way point must be approching though I don’t think I’ve reached it yet.

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LPs: batch 14 – Beethoven symphonies

Posted on May 5, 2010 by vhk10

This is a simple batch to describe as it consisted of a trawl through Beethoven’s symphonies. We have two recordings of the Eroica one of which (Sanderling and the Philharmonia) is about half as long again as the other (Karajan and the Berlin Phil). Also Karajan doing no. 4 and another recording of no. 2 (a Supraphon of Kletzki and the Czech Philharmonic). There are some recordings by Jochum and the LSO: the 9th,8th and 5th, with the Fidelio overture as a filler. I believe that the length of a CD was set so that a recording of Beethoven’s 9th would fit on a single disc, and indeed it does.

I’ll describe the set up where I record. The laptop sits next to the turntable, with the pre-amp connecting them. The LPs are ranged around in a couple of boxes, a pile, and a row lined up against the wall. The LPs I’ve recorded are all together, in approximately the order I recorded them. The sleeve of the currently playing LP is propped against the side of the pile, rather as a record shop displays ‘what’s playing now’. Other equipment includes a big drum of blank CDs, an album for the finished ones, a set of marker pens, a brush for cleaning the discs, another brush for cleaning the stylus and a small bottle of stylus cleaning fluid.

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In the stalls at the Lord Mayor’s Chapel

Posted on May 2, 2010 by vhk10

I finally achieved my ambition of sitting in these, sadly not for a service, but as part of the audience at a talk given to a meeting of the Friends of Cathedral Music in Bristol. It came after a concert (not part of our programme but I heard the tail end of it) in which the Chapel Choir were joined by deputies to form the ‘Chapel Singers’. As a long-standing dep at the Chapel, I think I should get in on this!

I’ve been an FCM member for a few years, but not been to a meeting before. (I can’t see the name written out without thinking of the ‘Friends of Italian Opera’ in Some Like it Hot!). This was a regional gathering for the South-West, and included talks about the Cathedral School and the Cathedral choir, a demonstration of the organ, an open rehearsal of the choir and evensong.

It was certainly worth going to and even though people and places were well known to me I learnt a lot. I didn’t recognise any of the other FCM members present, but managed to speak to a few of them. I should have made more effort to keep conversations on musical topics though; I don’t get much chance to talk to others who are knowledgeable in this area, and shouldn’t waste the opportunities that come my way to do so.

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Carmen at the Hippodrome

Posted on May 2, 2010 by vhk10

My daughter and I went to WNO’s Carmen at the Bristol Hippodrome – her first visit to an opera performance. The theatre was full (which caused some rather noisy air-conditioning to be turned on in the second act) and she was one of a number of young people there.

The production was traditional and adequate but what is it at the moment with monochrome stagings of opera? This is the third one in a row that I’ve been to. And I felt that they hadn’t quite worked out how to deal with the chorus. Much of the time they behaved quite naturalistically but at the beginning of Act III they ‘trod water’ on the spot to indicate that they were on the move and it looked most odd. At other times there was more movement than necessary. The narration of Carmen’s fight in Act I was accompanied by two chorus members acting out fighting, when there was no real reason for them to do so. The surtitles and previous knowledge of the opera give the information to those who can’t understand what is being sung about.

My daughter was a little disappointed in Don José but it turned out she’s been listening to a recording of José Carreras in the role so no wonder. We agreed that Escamillo was our favourite of the principals. Carmen was played by a true mezzo (sopranos don’t seem to be welcome in this role these days) and she was rather wary of her few high notes but well up to the dramatic requirements of the role. We liked Michaela (a rather thankless role, I’ve always felt) too.

Not sure what my next opera will be but it had better not end with a woman being stabbed to death as this has happened in the last four I’ve been to.

There’s a review of the production here.

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LPs: batch 13 – Dvořák is too loud

Posted on April 28, 2010 by vhk10

There was a problem disc in this batch: Kertesz and the LSO playing Dvořák’s 8th symphony, which was recorded at a high level and registered as too loud when I played it in. Will need to re-do at a lower level. Looking at the label, it’s clear that it’s an old disc, possibly even from the 1960’s.

Also in the batch was the only disc of organ music: Marie-Claire Alain playing assorted Bach on assorted organs (and labelled only in Dutch). On a light note we had Offenbach’s Gaité Parisienne (and Gounod’s ballet music from Faust) played by Dutoit and Montreal. Our other Mahler disc: Wunderhorn songs with Popp/Weikl/Tennstedt and the LPO. Chamber music was represented by Yuri Egorov playing some Schumann (Carnaval/Papillons/Toccata) and two Mozart quartets played by the Bartok Quartet. Finally, I started on a trawl through Beethoven symphonies with 1 and 2 played by the Munich Philharmonic under Kempe.

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the heaviest peal of eight

Posted on April 26, 2010 by vhk10

I’m told these are the bells at Sherborne Abbey*, which may explain why all the weekends on offer for the visit of the Cathedral Chamber Choir also had a visiting team of ringers doing a lengthy peal on the Saturday. Since my previous visit the organ has been rebuilt and a new west window installed, but otherwise it was much as I remembered.

We brought some relatively unusual repertoire, which I gather was appreciated by the congregation. Grayston Ives’ Missa Brevis was written for New College Oxford and proved to have its tricky moments with some exposed entries. I’d never come across it before. Our motets were Byrd’s Ave Verum corpus (no. 4000 on my spreadsheet of things I’ve sung) and Scio enim by Lassus, the latter also new to me and with some startling harmonic shifts and another exposed entry (sopranos come in at the beginning on a top G). In fact I’ve sung surprisingly little Lassus.

Our evensong partnered music by William Lloyd Webber and Leighton, with the former’s Sing the Life and Most glorious Lord of Life and the lattter’s Second Service and responses. I think I prefer the Second Service to the First, but I get asked to sing it less often.

We sang just the two Sunday services, but the Abbey encouraged us to include a generous amount of music, with both Kyrie and Gloria at the Eucharist, two motets, and an introit at Evensong.

There’s a video here.

* It’s the heaviest set of 8 bells usable for change-ringing worldwide, and 9th heaviest overall. See here.

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LPs: batch 12 – the latest and longest?

Posted on April 22, 2010 by vhk10

I topped and tailed this with some Shostakovich. Firstly, a favourite of mine, a little out of favour at the moment: the Leningrad Symphony, here performed by the Czech Philharmonic under Neumann and paired with the 9th Symphony. At the end of the batch came the Symphony no. 12 and Overture on Russian and Kirghiz folk themes with the Concertgebouw and Haitink.

I continued the trawl through Chopin with the first piano concerto played by Pollini with the Philharmonia and Kletzki. A Decca recording of the Threepenny Opera, made as late as September 1988, must surely be the most recent in our collection. Also one of the longest at little short of the 80 minutes that can be fitted on one of our CDs. Was it practical in the final days of LPs to make really long ones, or were they squeezing on as much as possible so that LPs could be issued parallel to CDs? A Hungaroton recording of Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta and Divertimento for Strings, played by the Liszt Ferenc Chamber Orchestra. Finally, the Hagen Quartet play D804 and D87 with the inevitable Quartettsatz. The sleeve shows the four players casually strolling across an Alpine meadow, instrument cases in hand, in a rather Sound of Music kind of way.

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LPs: batch 11 – the earliest music

Posted on April 19, 2010 by vhk10

This batch contained some more of my earlier LPs – Rudolf Firkusny playing Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto with the Pittsburgh SO and three Haydn quartets played by assorted Hungarians on an old Turnabout disc with an entertainingly silly sleeve, which include the ‘Lark’, one of my O level set works. Another Hungarian quartet, the Eders, play Mozart’s K575 and K589 on a Hungaroton.

Another discs was one of the rare duplicates when we came to merge our collections, and by far the earliest music altogether: the pioneering A feather on the breath of God recording of Hildegard of Bingen’s music by Gothic Voices. Choral music of a later vintage: Haydn’s Missa in Tempore Belli with forces from St. Hedwig’s Cathedral, Berlin.

This batch also include the VPO and Kertesz with Brahms’ 4th symphony (surprisingly short) and the Juilliards performing Dvorak’s 6th and Smetana’s 1st quartets.

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LPs: batch 10 – a well-concealed nude

Posted on April 15, 2010 by vhk10

Started with a fairly obscure recording of Schwanengesang by Edouard Stocker and Magda Rusy. This was followed by one of few recordings of American music in the set, some Gershwin conducted by Bernstein … a transfer to Hungaroton. The cover of this is intriguing. At first sight you see a line drawing of a nattily dressed man in 1920’s style clothes – then on closer inspection you realise he is superimposed on a female recumbent nude. Across both of them the words Café Royal appear in mirror-writing, as if you are inside the café and the man and woman are floating outside it.

Alfred Brendel plays two of Beethoven’s lesser piano works, the ‘2nd’ piano concerto and the Choral Fantasy with different orchestras. Alan Civil plays all Mozart’s horn concertos with the RPO and Kempe (they all fit on a disc because some are fragmentary). The Smetana Quartet play the ‘Trout’ and the inevitable Quartettsatz. I started on our many discs of Chopin (who seems to have as many as anyone in our collection) with Tamás Vásáry playing the Etudes (another Taphouse closing-down purchase). Finally, I moved on to another well-represented composer, Shostakovich, with his piano concertos played by Alexeev with the ECO and Maksymiuk.

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LPs: batch 9 – the only opera

Posted on April 9, 2010 by vhk10

This batch was dominated by two sets. One was the only opera we have on LP: Don Giovanni in the version which was used as the soundtrack to the Joseph Loseley film. This is slightly cut but still three LPs’ worth. The other set is Tchaikovsky’s first three symphonies conducted by Karajan. I’m finding that his symphonies are in general just too long for two to fit on one CD, but one on its own is a bit short.

The batch finished with the New World symphony, with the Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Jarvi; there must be a jinx on the recorded quality of this symphony, as this one had a heavy scratch. Finally, Shostakovich’s 1st and his Festive Overture on a Supraphon conducted by Ancerl.

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LPs: batch 8 – remember Rediffusion?

Posted on April 6, 2010 by vhk10

I started these at the weekend. I couldn’t find any music specifically for Easter; the best I could do was Haydn’s Te Deum (paired with the Nelson Mass) recorded by the English Concert. Recorded in August 1986, this must be one of the most recent recordings we have on LP.

This batch was mostly minor works by major composers, or more important works which we have other recordings of. So Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings and Variations from the Op. 55 Suite (LPO and Del Mar) and Mozart divertimenti with the ECO and Jesús López-Cobos (I would guess this was one of his earliest recordings, on the long-gone Rediffusion Royale label). Dvorak’s Symphony no. 5, with the Philharmonia and Andrew Davis, the latter sporting a very 70’s haircut and beard on the sleeve. More Tchaikovsky (I was looking for a pairing for some orphaned music of his that was too short on its own for a CD): the Sleeping Beauty Suite. The Amadeus Quartet playing ‘Death and the Maiden’ and Schubert’s Quartettsatz; this last is a standard filler. And finally: Rudolf Serkin with three famous Beethoven piano sonatas.

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LPs: batch 7 – Holy Week

Posted on April 3, 2010 by vhk10

We don’t have huge amounts of sacred music in our LP collection, but I managed to find some appropriate to the season. Firstly, two settings of the Stabat Mater. The Rossini (conducted by Giulini with the Philharmonia) must be one of the longest LPs in the collection, with one side being about 35 minutes long. Scarlatti’s features Christ Church Cathedral Choir conducted by Francis Grier and was recorded in the familiar acoustic of Merton College Chapel. Also suitable for Holy Week: Pro Cantione Antiqua singing Allegri’s Miserere and Tallis’ Spem in Alium and Lamentations. In fact this was a duplicate in our collection as we also have it on tape, but it’s good to have a backup.

More Italian music of various periods in the shape of some Vivaldi flute concertos and Respighi’s ‘Pines’ and ‘Fountains’ of Rome, the latter slightly incongruously paired with Stravinsky’s Circus Polka and Fireworks op. 4 (played by the New Philharmonia). On the core repertoire there was Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony (the Czech Philharmonic on Supraphon, with that Eastern European brass sound again) and two works often found as fillers but here paired with one another, the Enigma Variations and Brahms St Anthony Variations, played by Monteux and the LSO.

This almost brings me to 50 LPs, so is our estimate of 200+ as the size of the collection about right? I would say that I haven’t reached the quarter-way mark yet, and the total is probably about 220. But if the digitisation operation were a transatlantic liner, it would have left the British Isles well behind and now be out in the ocean with the engine going full steam.

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