HERE AND THERE With ROGER WIMBUSH HONOURS

Joan Hammond was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire in the Queen's Birthday Honours, Lennox Berkeley, CBE, became a Knight Bachelor and Frederick Llewellyn, Director-General of the British Council, a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George.

Our warmest congratulations go to the above, and also to Gerald Abraham, the authority on Russian music and sometime contributor to GRAMOPHONE (CBE), Arthur Davison, the conductor (CBE), Harold Gray, Associate Conductor of the CBSO (OBE), Roy Bohanna, Assistant Director and Head of the Music Department, Welsh Arts Council (MBE), and K. C. L. Mentyear, Professor of Music, Royal Marines School of Music (MBE).

GUSTAVE COOK

There are many theatrical occasions when the man who ought to be taking the solo call is the Stage Manager. We see the actors, we recognise the work of the producer, but we seldom appreciate the man whose word is law on the other side of the curtain. Similarly with the record industry: we know the artists and in these days we know many of the producers and engineers, but we have yet to appreciate adequately the man who controls the vast studio complex and whose firmness and tact, as well as immense technical skill, makes the whole operation possible. Such a man is Gustave Cook, who has just retired as General Manager of the Abbey Road Studios of EMI. Here, as over the stage door of the Palace Theatre, might be inscribed the legend: "The world's greatest artists have passed and will pass through these doors".

London born in 1908, Mr Cook joined the Post Office in 1925, but by 1929 he was with Columbia at the old studios in Petty France, when Sir Isaac Schonberg was in charge of research. Schonberg introduced the Blumlein system of recording, and it was Blumlein who developed stereo recording in 1931. (Incidentally, the present EMI research laboratories at Hayes are appropriately named Schonberg House.)

Hardly had Cook arrived on the scene than he was despatched with Charles Gregory, the Columbia recordist to Greece, Albania, Norway, Switzerland and Holland to make records for the Company's associated labels in those countries. He recalls that in Greece he had to buy accumulators, and the supplier's daughter was called Gina Bachauer, later to become the distinguished pianist and EMI artist. In 1931

Cook was introducing electrical recording to South Africa, and the following year saw him in Greece and Turkey after visits to India and Burma. Back in England in 1932 he had a short spell in the Production Department at Hayes, working on recording equipment, before being sent to Milan as engineer in charge of EMI's two studios, a legacy from the previously independent HMV and Columbia days. The Italian years were both productive and exciting. They saw many historic recordings, including the Gigli/Caniglia Tosca, the Verdi Requiem and the Gigli/Dal Monte Butterfly, all of which were recorded in the new Opera House in Rome with only four microphones in the most appalling heat in high summer when casts (and houses) are available. Cook has many happy memories of Gigli, not the least that of going round the corner to buy ice-cream and eating it in the street like a couple of schoolboys.

Between 1936 and 1939 he made annual visits to Italy and Turkey. The war found him in the RAF working on the construction and operation of high-power transmitting stations. Rejoining EMI in 1945 he spent five years in charge of studio maintenance and was then appointed engineer in charge of all studio technical operations, before becoming Deputy Manager and, in 1969, General Manager.

Thus from the early days of electrical recording Gustave Cook has seen it all, and has lent his expert knowledge to studios in many countries. Nobody could have been more fitted to inherit the ultimate crown of Abbey Road, where apart from its recording studios, the edited and approved recordings are transferred from tape to disc. He is succeeded by Kenneth Townsend, to whom go our best wishes.

LOOKING BACK—AUGUST 1933

In the Jubilee Book I quoted Fred Gaisberg as saying that the period 1930-1940 would go down in history as the most brilliant epoch of musical reproduction. "If that is no longer true", I wrote, "nothing can dim the glory of those years". Looking back at August 1933, nothing could be further from the truth. It might well be that this was the most barren month of the century, even if we include the second volume of the Beethoven Sonata Society with Schnahel playing Opp. 28, 49, No. 1 and 110. Eric Blom wrote the accompanying booklet. Otherwise there was little to note, except a record of the Overture which Weber wrote for Preciosa, conducted by Pfitzner, and Tauber's record of Richard Strauss's St/indchen and Traum durch die Dammerung. For the rest, readers were tempted by a Columbia record of the "Air on the G string", arranged by Wilhelmj, and a Wood arrangement of an unspecified Bach Gavotte, Ippolitov-Ivanov's popular Caucasian Sketches, the Overtures to The Secret Marriage (Cimarosa) and The Caliph of Baghdad (Boleldicu), Hélkne Regelly in a vocal arrangement of the Invitation to the Dance and the Band of the Welsh Guards playing something called Wedded Whispers, described as "a humorous fantasy". That could well have been so. Well, too, might Mr Crabtree write about "rock bottom" and Mr Anderson of "the day of small things''.

FROM FRANCE

I first met Pascal Roge at the time of his first record, which was a Liszt recital and which was warmly welcomed here by WSM. He is a Parisian, born in 1951, whose mother was also a professional pianist with the ORTF. His grandfather was a violinist. Beginning to play at the age of three, which is two years above (or below) par, he entered the Conservatoire at ten, working under his mother's teacher, Lucette Descaves. He left at fifteen after winning first prize for piano, and gave his first recital at the Salle Gaveau in 1969. Two years later he became the first Frenchman in twenty years to win the Marguerite Long prize and he is now recording all Ravel's music for solo piano on three records for Decca. The first of these, comprising the Tombeau de Couperin, the Sonatine and the Valses nobles et sentimentales, is due later this year. Following this he will be recording the First and Second Concertos of Bartok with the LSO under Walter Weller.

Pascal Rogb worked for some time with the latejulius Katchen, for whom he had a veneration and who inspired his devotion to the music of Brahms, not normally regarded as a French taste.

ROBERT WALKER

Back in the twenties it used to be said that hit tunes paid for string quartets, and indeed the luckiest composer in terms of royalties was presumed to be the man who wrote "the other side of Valencia". There will always be fortunes to be made out of 'pop', but there have always been classical records that made money for those who knew how to market them. While the longest running record was probably called In a clockstore, there are plenty of records that in one form or another have been in the black for more than forty years. But Boards of Directors want quicker returns than that, and top sales managers thus generally emerge from the 'pop' side of the industry.

Robert Walker, recently appointed Head of Marketing of CBS Records at the age of 35, is, however, a classical man. That may not make him unique, but his promotion is a significant pointer to the importance of the classical market in any major recording operation. Walker's was not a musical inheritance. His family came from Lancashire, and his nearest links with the world of entertainment were far removed from the concert hall. An uncle was one of the "Lancashire Lads" who worked with Charlie Chaplin, and a cousin, Sandy Strickland, was a non-stop piano player in the barbaric days of marathon dancers and other bizarre feats of endurance. Strickland would book the New Cross Empire from 9 am on a Monday through to 11 pm on the Saturday, during which time he would play the piano without stopping—no sleep, and being fed at the keyboard. The audience came and went as they pleased, and by Saturday they could be standing in the aisles.

Born in Woolwich in 1939, Walker's first musical awakening was when as a schoolboy he discovered he had a voice, and he was accepted as a chorister at the Queen's Chapel of the Savoy off the Strand. The Chapel is part of the Palatinate, where to this day the Sovereign is prayed for as Duke of Lancaster. Music was the only subject that interested him at school, and he decided he would be a composer. He had had Robert Walker [photo: CBS no theoretical training, but this was a firm decision. At 16 he left school and took ajob in a soft drinks factory, paying for lessons from local teachers, and while still in his teens wrote four symphonies in full score, one of which was rehearsed and performed locally. At this time he developed a view that most composers lived in ivory towers, divorced from the workaday world. This theory suited his own state, but then in 1959 he was called up for National Service in the RASC, served for two and a half years in France and North Africa and wrote a Cello Concerto. When he left the Army he did an extraordinary thing. He had acquired a strong admiration for the music of Darius Milhaud and he commuted regularly between London and Paris to take lessons from him and wrote a Violin Concerto for him. This brief, 15-minute work he describes as "Sarasate up-to-date". Deciding that composition would not provide him with a living he went into the City and joined a firm of paper merchants, where he found he had a flair for business. After a merger he was kept on and appointed Company Secretary, responsible for both the legal and financial aspects of the firm. He continued to compose in his spare time and there have been six more symphonies, a form that he finds particularly congenial. Life was sweet. He had married, lived well and enjoyed a private library of some 3,000 records.

The switch from this charmed life to the rigours of the record industry came about in an extraordinary way. In 1969 he engaged a junior clerk, who in his spare time was singing in a rock 'n' roll group. The group split up and Walker helped the boy start up on his own. To do this he opened a club and engaged the new group as an attraction. This, too, foundered and Walker found himself with a great deal of equipment and a custom-built van, which he decided to put to use. An advertisement in The Melody Maker brought him an enquiry from CBS for a moving job. A closer association with the Company led to him travelling as a freelance lecturer on the CBS classical catalogue to gramophone societies. He had spent nine years in the City and feeling it was time for a move he joined CBS in 1971 as Classical Promotion Manager. After three months he was appointed Classical Sales Manager, then Manager of the Classical Department in 1972 and now, this year, Head of Marketing for the Company. "Now, once again", he says, "I can listen to records for pleasure".

Robert Walker makes no bones about his interests. His god is Beethoven, and he is essentially a mainstream man. He is also proud of the fact that CBS artists are mostly long-stayers, instancing the contrasted names of Rudolf Serkin and Johnny Mathis. He has swept the cupboard clean of its non-starters, which had better be nameless here, and has a shrewd idea of sales potential. For instance, he has enormous confidence in Daniel Barenboim's Elgar series, which is scheduled to continue for some time, and is particularly happy about a forthcoming issue of Havergal Brian, the 22nd Symphony with the Fifth English Suite and the 23rd Psalm with the Leicestershire Schools Symphony

Orchestra under Eric Pinkett. One record is scheduled for the Schoenberg centenary and it is a very special one: the composer's own record of Pierrot Lunaire with Erika Stiedry-Wagner. This was recorded in 1942, but has never been issued in Britain.

Record executives come from diverse backgrounds, and if Robert Walker's is even less orthodox than some others it epitomises that mixture of business acumen and love for music that has contributed as much to the pre-eminence of the British record industry as all the glittering names on the companies' rosters.

OBITUARY

Ludwig Koch died in late May, and when we remember the innumerable records of wild-life and of bird-song in particular his pioneer work will always be honoured in gramophone history. He was 92. He began recording in 1889 and had been a concert singer between 1905 and 1914. In 1936 he left Germany and settled in England for the rest of his life. He was a frequent broadcaster and his monumental collection of recordings is now housed by the BBC. "Salute to Ludwig Koch" (BBC RED34, 7/69) is a fine tribute to a remarkable man

I am indebted to Mr Richard Davis of Queensland for news of the death of Browning Mummery, whose records are well remembered, not least his superb recording of Bridge's Love went a-riding (HMV B2756). He was 85. Also dead is the Spanish tenor HipOlito Lazzaro, who was a prolific recorder.

Now Edward Kennedy Ellington ("The Duke") has gone. Stravinsky and Ellington in their different ways seemed immortal, and immune from the chances and changes of this mortal life. Truly the world is breaking up. Ellington's music was inseparable from the band that produced it and to that extent it dies with him, for the Ellington sound was unique. He was not America's greatest composer, as has been suggested, nor had he much influence. He was a phenomenon. He first played with William Sweatman's Jazz Band in 1920, but it was in 1927 when he appeared at New York's Cotton Club that he became internationally famous. He had worked for Ziegfeld and played in films. He was 75.

Darius Milhaud has died at the age of 81. No composer this century had been as prolific or as eclectic. He was a member of Les Six, and apart from his enormous output he was a a brilliant raconteur. His broadcasts on Satie, whom he understood, will long be remembered. Checking my own shelves I was interested to note that neither the big Moses Symphony ("Opus Americanum" No. 2) nor the first String Quartet of 1912 are currently available. His own enchanting recording of the orchestral version of the Saudades do Brazil and the Suite Provençale could well be reissued.

Niccolo jommelli died 200 years ago on the August 25th, 1774. As a variation on the major centenaries of this autumn some company might care to devote a record to this Neapolitan composer, who pioneered the accompanied recitative, broke with the da capo aria and generally moved opera forward at a crucial time. Gluck should not have all the glory, and Jommelli is currently unrepresented on records.

ET CETERA

Philips announces a new recording of CosI fan tutte with the Royal Opera Chorus and Orchestra under Cohn Davis. Soloists are Montserrat Caballé (Fiordiigi), Janet Baker (Dorabella), Wladimiro Ganzarolli (Guglielmo), Nicolas Gedda (Ferrando), Ileana Cotrubas (Despina) and Richard van Allan (Don Alfonso). The producer is Erik Smith and the recording was made at Watford Town Hall in May and June.

Independent World Releases announce a joint venture with the Cunard International Hotel at Hammersmith, London, where IWR are giving twelve concerts followed by dinner at an inclusive price. The concerts are by a section of the Symphonica of London under Wyn Morris and each evening features an international soloist and is devoted to national music. The season began with Austria on June 22nd. National food will also be served, and it is hoped to enlist considerable support from industry. IWR also contemplates a new bargain label, and IWR records are now used world-wide for demonstration purposes by the Danish equipment manufacturers Bang and Olufsen. From the Netherlands with its strong Mahler tradition the Dutch branch of the International Gustav Mahler Association has written to Wyn Morris setting out a detailed appraisal of the IWR recording of the Eighth Symphony and giving it very high praise indeed, particularly in its treatment of the voices.

The RPO has been playing in Bulgaria and was heard at the Prague Spring Festival. This was the first occasion on which a British symphony orchestra has visited Bulgaria. Programmes included Michael Tippett's Double Concerto for Strings and Benjamin Britten's Violin Concerto with Ralph Holmes. The orchestra has also been chosen as the Resident Orchestra at the Institute for Advanced Musical Studies in Montreux, Switzerland. A central project will be a complete recording of the fifteen symphonies of Shostakovich under Rudolf Kempe over five years in the Institute's own studios, and in the presence of the students attending master classes given by the orchestra's principals. Four one-year scholarships will be awarded to the Institute for British and Commonwealth students.

I am indebted to Mr D. Mervyn Jones of London for reminding me that Brahms's Quintet, Op. 111 was recorded by the Budapest and not the Busch String Quartet (June 1933). The second viola was Hans Mahlke. Mr D. Cijfer of Amsterdam identifies Tito Schipa's record in the same month as being of Alessandro Scarlatti's Sento nel cor, and Mr Edward Johnson kindly fills in some details about the Bach which Stokowski recently recorded with the LSO for RCA and which is due for release in the near future. Ein Feste Burg is not in fact a Bach transcription at all, being Stokowski's orchestration of the Lutheran chorale. For the rest, the transcriptions are of "Komm susser Toil" (No. 42 of the Geistliche Lieder), the Chaconne in D minor from the Second Partita for solo violin, the Prelude from the Sonata in

E major for solo violin, the Air from the Suite No. 3 in D major, Wachet auf!, the Organ Chorale Prelude, which is Bach's own transcription of the tenor chorale in his Cantata No. 140, the Arioso which Bach used for both the slow movement of the keyboard concerto No. 5 in

F minor and for the Sinfonia in Cantata No. 156, and the "Little" Fugue in G minor. Mr Johnson writes that the melody of Wachet auf! dates from 1599 and is attributed to Philipp Nicolai. During the sessions at St Giles Church, Cripplegate, London, in April the conductor celebrated his 92nd birthday.

Simon Rattle (19) has won the John Player International Conductors Award for 1974. The judges were Paavo Berglund, George Hurst, Peter Katin, Peter Andry of EMI, Bernard Jacobson, Director of Southern Arts, and Kenneth Matchett of the Western Orchestral Society. Mr Rattle, who won from over 200 applicants, of which he was the youngest, is at the RAM, and his prize involves 40 engagements with the Bournemouth SO and Sinfonietta, as well as engagements with the CBSO, LPO, SNO and Northern Sinfonia. At the final concert of the competition in Portsmouth's Guildhall he conducted a Concerto Grosso by Handel and Richard Strauss's Don Juan, reputedly the trickiest piece in the repertory, to get off the ground!

EMI announce recordings by Sir Adrian Boult of Herbert Howells's Concerto for String Orchestra, Sir Arthur Bliss's Music for Strings, Elgar's The Apostles (to be released in October) and HoIst's Choral Symphony.