HERE AND THERE With ROGER WIMBUSH

HONOURS

Our warmest congratulations go to Neville Cardus on the Knighthood bestowed on him in the Queen's New Year Honours. No man has served two masters with such elegance of style and technical knowledge, and no honour could be more welcome to the world of music and cricket. Other welcome names in the list include George Thalben-Ball, Roberto Gerhard, Alexander Gibson and Gerald Coke, CBEs, and John Tobin, OBE.

DEBUT

We have all envied the Prince of old who after commissioning a great builder (he would never have heard of an architect) to build him a palace, and the greatest artists of the age to decorate it, settled down after dinner to listen to music played by his own string quartet. Something very like this can still happen, though not quite in the same way. For a long time now Mr Denis Preston has been engaged in the business of recording and broadcasting. He still is; but this descendant of Wieniawski has always cherished a dream, which after years of recording various manifestations of popular music, has now come true. This is based on a firm conviction that the string quartet is not only a perfectly valid medium for music but that, given time, money—and thought, it can capture the imagination of a mass public. Sitting behind the clean desk that is the hallmark of the efficient administrator, Mr Preston, who master-minds a number of recordings for EMI, told me of how he was determined to create an ensemble of outstanding excellence. More than this, it would play a repertory not confined to the Viennese classics but drawn from a wide range of music in performances that must compel attention. Money from jazz and 'folk' and goodness knows what else has now produced the Lansdowne Quartet, whose first recording is issued this month (see page 431). It took a long time to find the right leader, and then, with him, to choose the other three. The first was Jack Rothstein, known to many from his work with the Bath Festival orchestra and the London Czech Trio, and the others are Antony Gilbert and Kenneth Essex, both experienced players, and Charles Tunnell, a young violoncellist of whom Mr Rothstein holds golden opinions, and who is certainly put on trial in this first recording. The choice of a work with which to launch this venture was not easy. It is a long time since Sibelius's Voces Intimae was in the catalogue, and it is with this that the Lansdowne Quartet come before the public. This is a mature work and fully representative of the composer, who himself chose the Latin inscription. The players were engaged for a sufficient period of time to perfect their ensemble, and were given no less than 60 hours rehearsal time for this recording. The fill-up is no less interesting. Samuel Barber's famous Adagio for Strings is, in fact, a quartet movement, and now receives its first English recording in its original form. It is sometimes thought that in taking so much quartet music and playing it orchestrally Toscanini was subconsciously resenting his own lack of quartet experience. I must not prejudge the issue but this recording was a revelation to me. Possibly to come is a work for String Quartet and Sitar by the Indian composer John Mayer. That is certainly being 'with it' and should delight Mr Menuhin. Verdi? VillaLobos? The field is wide open for a fascinating repertory of recorded chamber music, which

Mr Preston feels deeply should not only be done but which through the gramophone will bring a real and lasting pleasure to countless people of all brows.

BERNARD HERRMANN

Announced this month is a first English recording by the American composer-conductor Bernard Herrmann. This is no less than a fullscale opera, recorded complete on four records by Pye. Mr Herrmann is the exception to the old rule that nobody makes a living out of music, being either immensely rich or inordinately poor. His story is both ordinary and remarkable. His father was a doctor from Russia. There was no music in the family, but the boy wanted to be a composer from the beginning. He bought and read Berlioz's book on instrumentation when he was twelve, studied composition with Percy Grainger at New York University, the history of music at Columbia and conducting at Juill;ard He also worked with Reuben Goldmark (nephew of the composer), whom he called "the Stanford of the United States", and "a conservative composer who turned out the most avant-garde composers of America". Roy Harris, William Schuman and Aaron Copland are among the betterknown Goldmarksmen. From this exalted company Mr Herrmann moved into the world of work, conducting popular musicals on Broadway and a foundation of his own called the New York Chamber Orchestra, with whom he gave a number of interesting American premieres, notably Darius Milhaud's La Creation du Monde, Varese's Ionisation, Ives's Three Places and Gershwin's Symphonic Variations for Piano and Orchestra on I got rhythm, which has curiously only had one recording here. He knew Ives well and is convinced that the Fourth Symphony should be given without the present last movement, which the composer never authorized. Mr Herrmann asked him about this movement, and it was just a jumble of pages. In 1932 he joined the Columbia Broadcasting System (hereinafter called CBS) as Director of Educational Programmes, became a staff conductor and ultimately C-in-C, holding this appointment from 1942 to 1959. Here, too, was the opportunity to do much new work, an example being the Poulenc Organ Concerto with E. Power Biggs, whose performance is now available here. Both CBS and

NBC shut down their orchestras at the same time, and the lack of music on American radio means that the public outside the big cities depend on records. Mr Herrmann now lives in Los Angeles, when he is not in England, whither he is drawn by his feeling for the Bronte family, and hence the opera Wurthering Heights. This is in four acts and is published by Novello. Completed in 1953, I understand that Beecham, Stokowski, Mitropoulos and Barbirolli wanted to do it, but it is seldom that conductors, however eminent, get works on to the stage, and it has yet to be mounted. Written in what I suppose would be called a neo-romantic style it was conceived on the sound principle that opera is about people. Mr Herrmann believes that music must grow "from poetics and not mathematics". The trouble is that a good deal of poetry today, no less than music, is mathematics. In the recording Donald Bell plays Heathcliffe and Pamela Bowden Isabel, with the composer conducting the Pro Arte Orchestra. Liszt, who carried out a heroic work for opera at Weimar, is reported to have said that to write an opera you need the soul of a hero, and to get it produced the manners of a lackey. When I reminded Mr Herrmann of the snooty notices for The Violins of Saint Jacques, he retorted that he had found great difficulty in getting a seat. Let us hope that the intendants of our opera houses will at least hear these records. Meanwhile nobody can accuse the composer of not performing other people's music. For CBS he conducted an astonishing repertory of English music, including three of Edmund Rubbra's symphonies, the fine Symphonic Studies of Alan Rawsthome, Lambert's Piano Concerto, works by Bernard van Dieren and Cecil Gray (surely there was some collusion here!), the Solway Symphony of McEwen, Lord Berners's Luna Park and Triumph of Neptune ballets (the Beecham recording of the latter is a treasure house—some of the music was used in the Nelson Keyes revue "Spread it Abroad"), five works by Finzi, nine by Benjamin, sixteen by Delius and much more. Has any English conductor a better record ? Anyway good luck to Wurthering Heights, and congratulations to Pye for enterprise. Has any other opera been issued on records prior to performance?

B, B and BBC

Leonard Bernstein is to leave the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra in 1969 after eleven years as its Musical Director. He is the first American to have held this appointment and will be honoured with the title "Laureate Conductor". He has given the Directors plenty of time to find a successor. It

The Lansdowne Quartet—Charles Tunnel!, Antony Gilbert, Jack Rothstein and Kenneth Essex Photo:LEM is not unreasonable that he should want to concentrate more on composition arid to have more opportunity to conduct opera, to which he is devoted. His Vienna Falstaff is reviewed this month. Candide is bound to be re-shaped one day, and he is hardly likely to leave the musical theatre with West Side Story. Bernstein was in London in December for an LSO concert and work for the BBC. His schedule was as packed, socially as well as professionally, as the Prime Minister's, except that the latter's would hardly have included breakfast with Mr Edward Heath in Albany! Founded in 1842, the Phil merged with the New York Symphony in 1928, and at its first concert the players stood while performing Beethoven 5, apparently accepted practice in those days. The conductor and founder was Ureli Hill. Hardly had Mr Bernstein left us than another CBS star came among us. Pierre Boulez took the New Philharmonia through Debussy's L'Apres-midi, Jeer and La Mer, due out in April. This was the company's first recording at Barking Assembly Hall, which thus joins London's suburban recording centres. Particularly interesting news from CBS is a recording programme with Boulez for the BBC Symphony, in early days a stand-by of the studios, but in post-Boult days a rare visitor. Works scheduled are Barta's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste, Berg's Chamber Concerto for Piano, Violin and Thirteen Wind Instruments, the three orchestral pieces of Op. 6 and the Altenberg Lieder with Halina Lukomska, and Stravinsky's Firebird Suite, though at this stage I cannot vouch whether it will be 1919 or 1945.

DECCA AT LE MANS

Possibly encouraged by the outstanding success of the Argo/Transacord railway recordings, Decca (who own Argo) decided last year to record something of the story of the famous international 24-hour sports car race at Le Mans. This happy task was entrusted to Hugh Mendl, a regular pilgrim to this great annual event, and recording engineer Arthur Bannister. (Co-opted also were the Sales Manager of The Decca Record Company and his son, who went to see the race but finished up acting as human microphone booms!). The record has an excellent commentary by James Tilling and in addition to the obvious background noises (just as temperamental as prima donnas and just as well recorded, particularly in stereo) it contains interesting contributions from Graham Hill and Chris Amon. Perhaps this year Decca will return to record a British victory with the Lola Aston Martin? (Decca mono LK4837 stereo SKL4837.)

THE DGG RING

Just before Christmas the Editor left the mild, unseasonable Southern English climate for the chillier confines of West Berlin. Here, on December 17th, Herbert von Karajan completed his recording of Die Walkiire—the first part of a projected recording of the Ring. The sessions took place in the Jesus-Christus Kirche in Dahlem, a suburb in the south-west corner of the city. This church, with its fine acoustic qualities, is now used for all the major DGG classical sessions in Berlin; in the early thirties it was the scene of Pastor Niem011er's famous sermons against Hitler.

It has been a long-standing wish of Karajan's to come to terms with Wagner's great dramatic cycle—as an artist, as a conductor and as a stage director. Now the wish is to be fulfilled. The recording of Die Walkiire is a prelude to performances of the work by the same artists at this year's Salzburg Easter Festival (all tickets sold months ago!) and later the whole production, orchestra included, will move to New York for performances at the Met. It is also proposed that the Salzburg performances shall be filmed —thus enacting the work on disc, on the stage and on film. Subsequently, Rheingold, Siegfried and Gedterddmmerung will be given the same treatment.

So far as is possible it is intended to use the same team for the complete Ring. The orchestra, is of course the Berlin Philharmonic and the artists for Die Walkiire included Jon Vickers (Siegmund), Martti Talvela (Hunding), Thomas Stewart (Wotan), Gundula Janowitz

Regine Crespin (Briinnhilde), and Josephine Veasey (Fricka). It is anticipated that the recording will be released in Great Britain for Easter.

LOOKING BACK

Few people today would refer to Casella as "the Italian writer", but it was as such that he opened the February 1926 issue of THE GRAMOPHONE. Yet there was a time when contemporaries would have said the same of Berlioz, or would have thought of Beethoven as "the wellknown pianist". It would, in fact, be no more than the truth to think of Boulez as "the distinguished mathematician". In his second article on "The Supremacy of Mozart" Herman Klein quotes Alfredo Casella from the Christian Science Monitor: "It is interesting to see the extent, in the case of Wagner, to which symphonism introduced into the theatre hurt it. Whereas Mozart did just the opposite and introduced the theatre into the symphony, into chamber music, even into oratorio; with the result that the operas of Mozart seem younger than the dramas of Wagner. The fusion, dreamt of by the latter, of all the arts is a pure Utopia which has already disappeared from the horizon. In the musical theatre music alone reigns". The point about Mozart has been hammered home in our own day by Leonard Bernstein among others. It is certainly true that conductors normally learn their job in the theatre, and it must be true that once you introduce music into the theatre, whether it be the Ring or The Black and White Minstrels the music must come first, and not only as primes inter pares. A stylishly sung performance can save a poor production, but neither Mr Visconti nor Mr Dexter can put a routine performance into the history books. Francis Terry also continued his series on Mozart recordings. Of the Jupiter he wrote: "On the whole this symphony is too massive and intricate for gramophone recording". One of the then recordings of No. 40 was conducted by Hyam Greenbaum, remembered by "Spike" Hughes in his hilarious autobiography Opening Bars, and who was to become the BBC's first TV Director of Music and a popular figure in London theatre pits. He was also the second violin of the 13rosa Quartet, and his death at 41 was lamented by everybody who recognized a natural musician when they saw one.

In an article on orchestral recording John F. Porte stressed the importance of knowing the sound of an orchestra before attempting to assess gramophone records. With every advance in recording during the past 41 years this is still valid, if we believe (and many do not) that the object of a record is to reproduce what you would hear from the best seat in the house. What comes as a shock is to read of Weingartner's "heavy-footed rendering" of Beethoven's Eighth. Long before that, however, Debussy, in the guise of Monsieur Croche, wrote that Weingartner conducted the Pastoral Symphony "with the care of a conscientious gardener". But is not all 'nature music' something of a disaster ?

A further discography of Strauss includes Ariadne, Elektra and Intermezzo. An appreciation of Marcel Journet, preferring him to Chaliapine, by Alan Gordon-Brown, brother of Gavin Gordon, the composer of The Rake's Progress ballet, sometime producer at Sadler's Wells and a vocal stalwart of the pre-war Gaiety and post-war Drury Lane. Read immediately after AP's lament for French singing in connection with the new Decca Faust one recalls the 78 set which HMV published with this great bass on plum label, a real bargain that might stand reissue, as happened to the Tito Schipa/Don Pasquale. Ernest Brooks pleaded for more modern music, and suggested that the gramophone was more suited to the contemporary idiom than to older music. He hoped that composers might write specifically for it and use it as a means of getting to know each other's work. He ends his article with a list of works he would like to see recorded : Pellias, the Nocturnes, Iberia and La Mer; La Valse, Rapsodie Espagnol and Gaspard de la Nuit (Mark Hambourg suggested): Le Rossignol, Fireworks, the Japanese Songs and the Sacre; Pierrot Lunaire, Nights in the Gardens of Spain, "Die Walkiire"—Karajan, Stewart and Crespin [Photo: DGG

Hyperprism and Integrales (Varese), Prometheus (Scriabin) and The Mask of the Red Death and The Bells (Holbrooke). Not all of these are available yet, but many of them today are repertory pieces.

Letters to the Editor complained about the price of records. Somebody had bought 61 records in 1925 at a cost of l7 10s., and somebody else had stopped reading THE GRAMOPHONE because it was too expensive. The last copy he had read had induced him to spend k4 on records. On to these harassed readers (and non-readers) the NGS launched the Schubert Quintet, and if ever any music could draw a man's last pence from his pocket it is surely this.

Reviews included Bridge's Three Idylls (again, please), a movement from the Verdi Quartet, Klemperer in Beethoven's No. 1, Vaughan Williams's Wasps Overture, the Bach Double (d'Aranyi and Fachiri), Goldmark's Sakuntala, the Cleveland Orchestra in Traumerei (that could hardly happen today), Percy Grainger playing the Chopin Op. 58 Sonata, Maurice Cole in more Leschetisky, Anne Thursfield singing Bax's Rann of Exile (to become one of Peter Dawson's later records), Vladimir Rosing in Balakirev, the Revellers (our first `group'!) and 162 dance numbers.

OBITUARY

By a sad coincidence we must report the death of two scholarly singers, each of whom was especially known for his interpretation of the part of the Evangelist in Bach's Passions— Eric Greene and Sir Steuart Wilson. Greene was a Londoner, whose mother was a contralto singer and father a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, both of whom were to become wellknown on the halls in musical acts. The boy won a choral scholarship to Winchester Cathedral (Dr Prendergast) and to the RAM (Sir Alexander Mackenzie). By this time he had become a banker by profession, and he was probably the only person who because of his all-round musicianship—piano and organ as well as voice—was allowed to be a student while following another profession. Eventually he abandoned banking for music, and had a most eventful life, singing Elizabethan songs to the Russian fleet at Scapa Flow, at two Coronations and for Heinz in America, the last occasion causing his friends to call him the 58th variety. In fact Heinz have a fine record for the sponsorship of music. It was fitting that he should become the President of the London Bach Society, for whom he sang the Evangelist in the Society's annual German performances of the St. Matthew Passion, a part he had sung more than 500 times, on one occasion playing the continuo as well. His performance is happily preserved on ACL109/11. Steuart Wilson was a fantastic character. A translator of Lieder, Director of Music at the BBC, Deputy General Administrator of the Royal Opera, a student of George Henschel and Jean de Reszke, soldier (KRRC), founder of the English Singers, the first Musical Director of the Arts Council and Principal of the Birmingham School of Music. On top of all this he was a stimulating controversialist, and it was typical of him that he spent the proceeds of a successful libel action (the intrusive 'h' case) on bringing Boughton's Lily Maid to the Winter Garden, London in 1937, three years after its premiere at Stroud, Gloucestershire. Yet in spite of all this, it is probably as a Bach singer that he is best remembered. Unlike Greene, he was, so far as I know, unrecorded*. We also record the death of Arnold Trowel!, the violoncellist, and of Walt Disney, whose contribution to the gramophone was indirect but inevitable, if only for the Mickey Mouse operatic recordings and for giving Leopold Stolowski his fling in Fantasia. Nor must we forget "Colonel Chinstrap", alias Jack Train, a stalwart of ITMA, and do we really have to spell that out after a quarter of a century?

As we go to press news comes of the death of Gaspar CassadO, the distinguished Spanish 'cellist and a mainstay of the old Columbia catalogue; and of Frederick Woodhouse, the singer, best known to the gramophone by the early LPs of Intimate Opera in eighteenth century English stage works.

Also, at the last moment, of Mary Garden at the age of 81 in Aberdeen, and Carl Schuricht at the age of 86.

ET CETRA

Boris Brott's Northern Sinfonia goes from strength to strength. Following its American recording contract comes the news that Newcastle is to hear the European premiere of Stravinslcy's latest work, and over Christmas they entertained Will Boskowsky for a broadcast Viennese programme at the City Hall. Future engagements include the Aldeburgh

Festival, Expo 67 in Montreal and the British Week in Toronto, as well as an American tour.

News from Philips of a recording of a St. Luke Passion by the modern Polish composer Krysztof Penderecki with Bernard Ladysz, whose Columbia LP of Russian and Italian arias is remembered, is especially interesting in view of Andrzej Panufnik's arrival on records last month on HMV, for the latter's music is forbidden in Communist Poland, and my local paper has always maintained that this has prevented his work from being broadcast in this country. To nobody will this new recording give greater pleasure than to the music staff of the Richmond and Twickenham Times, who have fought the Panufnik battle week by week, faithfully recording every European performance of the Sinfonia Sacra.

The London scene before Christmas was enlivened by a Busoni exhibition at the Royal Festival Hall just in time to catch his centenary year. On view were many scores and a series of designs for Arlecchino. I wrote about the composer at some length in April and will only add that rumour still persists that John Ogdon will record the Piano Concerto. Sometimes rumours are worth fostering.