title: A good alternative to Minkowski if you are allergic to period-instruments or to Minko's customary drive and ebullience

text:
Why isn't Méhul a more recognized and recorded composer? Other than the occasional Overture, there had been less than a trickle of recordings of his symphonies in the LP era - most notably the 1st in 1954 (with cuts) by Rolf Kleinert conducting the Berlin Radio Orchestra, now on [[ASIN:B00091S7PA Schubert: Symphony No. 6 - Scherchen Mehul: Symphony No. 1 - Kleinert]] or [[ASIN:B001DBZA4Q Mehul & Schubert Symphonies]] (a recording originally published, I think, on Urania, URLP 7109, paired with Mozart's Musical Joke under Mathieu Lange) and the 2nd in 1957 by Fernand Oubradous for the French branch of EMI Pathé (reissued on [[ASIN:B00000DTME De La Revolution à L'Empire]]), but those were one-offs that triggered no particular interest of the music world. Then came the celebrations of the bicentennial of the French Revolution in 1989, which occasioned a rekindling of interest for Méhul, but that too was short-lived and nothing of note followed.

It would be a relief to think that it is because Méhul is a second-rate composer, an honest crafstman as the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th has produced hundreds, a minor figure whose talents deserve no more than a small bulge of interest once every 30 years.

But not so, and I simply can't believe that nobody in the music world, performers and producers, seems to have heard, or have been interested in the powerful dramatic impact of the First Symphony's opening Allegro, reminiscent of the last ones of Mozart or of Haydn's Nelson Mass, or the close stylistic similarities between the Second and Beethoven's first two symphonies, and likewise with the Menuetto of the First, in the latter case a similarity already noted by Schumann who wondered if Mehul had plagiarized the third movement of Beethoven's 5th Symphony, or the other way around. As it turns out, none could have known the symphony of the other when they composed their own. As the French saying goes, "les grands esprits se rencontrent", "great minds meet". On the basis of these first two symphonies, Méhul deserves I think to be called the French Beethoven, even if he stopped short of the revolutionary developments Beethoven applied to the symphonic form (in length, impact, emotional content) from the Eroica onwards. It's not that Méhul's works display just good crafstmanship: they are strewn with touches of genius as well, flights of imagination that catch your ear and make him stand out from the throng of good crafstmen. It is not by mistake that his first symphony was praised by Schumann and played by Mendelssohn (in 1839 and 1846) and Reinecke.

To answer my question, "why?", why the lack of recognition, given the quality of these compositions: other than the performers' and producers' customary laziness and utter lack of exploratory spirit, difficulty to access scores and parts may be part of the explanation (although I'm not sure it is a determining factor. After all all these symphonies HAVE been recorded, and have been edited,, so scores and parts MUST be accessible somewhere). And I'll venture that the very reasons of Mehul's success in his lifetime might be those of his neglect today. The great composers of symphonies in the Romantic era were rarely great composers of operas, and the other way around. Cherubini, Meyerbeer, Rossini, Verdi, Wagner: not composers of symphonies. Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler: not proficient or successful composers of operas (and of course the last three didn't even try). Only Spohr breaks the rule, but then Spohr looses all: posterity today recognizes him neither as a great composer of operas, nor as one of symphonies. So Méhul? During his lifetime Méhul met his greatest successes with his operas. But how can you give credit to a composer who wrote operas with titles so smacking of the Ancient Regime and pre-Romantic era as "Stratonice", "Ariodant", "Euphrosine"?

Of the less-than-a-handful of recordings of the symphonies that came out in 1988 and 1989 on the occasion of the bicentennial of the French Revolution, the one on Nimbus with the Lisbon Gulbenkian Orchestra conducted by the French conductor Michel Swierczewski stands out, not only because it uses "Urtext" editions established by the British musicologist David Charlton, but principally because it includes the hitherto unrecorded Symphonies No. 3 and 4, discovered in 1979 by the same David Charlton (see my review of [[ASIN:B0000037CW Mehul: Complete Symphonies]]). The two other recordings, this one by Jorge Rotter leading the Rhenish Philharmonic Orchestra (aka the Orchestra of the State of Rhineland-Pfalz in Coblenz) and the one by Marc Minkowski and his period-instrument ensemble Les Musiciens du Louvre (playing a semi-tone lower), still selling cheap on its original Erato release, [[ASIN:B000009IGT Symphonies 1 & 2]] and reissued on Warner's budget Apex series, [[ASIN:B00007KI16 Méhul - Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2 / Les Musiciens du Louvre, Minkowski]], featured only Symphonies No. 1 & 2 and, in the 2nd, used the old edition of Fernand Oubradous - not that the differences are audible to the lay listener.

So Swierczewski would have been the obvious recommendation, all the more so as the 2-CD set still sells today, almost a quarter-century later, very cheap. Unfortunately, as is made clear once you compare him to Minkowski and Rotter in the two shared symphonies, Swierczewski proves to be a disappointment, at least in the outer movements: trying, I suppose, to make Mehul sound "grand" (in the way Beethoven was played for grandeur rather than drive and ebullience in the pre-"Historically-informed" 1950s to 70s), in effect he only manages to make him sound thick, heavy-handed, sluggish, lacking tension and drama and often soporiphic - even more than the old Oubradous in the second symphony (both interpretations are in fact very similar, although there is a touch more drive with Oubradous) or than Kleinert in the Finale of the 1st Symphony. And the overly resonant church acoustics don't help, making the woodwinds and brass sound miles away from the strings. The Finale of the 2nd opens with a galloping timpani which is a great touch of imagination, but you can hardly hear it in Nimbus' sonics, and without a score you'll know that it's there only if you turn to the competing recordings (and nowhere better than with Minkowski); in fact, even knowing that it's there I can't hear it with Swierczewski, only a vague rumble: I call it betrayal. Only the Menuettos of Symphonies 1 and 2 does Swierczewski conduct with zest, spirit, muscularity and drive, and there, in all fairness, he scores over the competition. He also shows a welcome and unlingering elegance in the Andante of Symphony No. 1.

But for the drive, the ebullience, the drama of these two works, better go to Minkowski. Especially in the Finale of Symphony No. 1 and the outer movements of No. 2, it is day and night. I'd give the edge in the Menuetto of Symphony No. 2 to the more muscular and thrusting Swierczewski, but the only place where I'd really take exception with Minkowski's choices is in the Menuetto of Symphony No. 1 - the one that is so evocative of the third movement of Beethoven's 5th - where, surprisingly, he adopts a VERY pedestrian tempo. Maybe he was trying to underline the similarities with Beethoven's 5th (although the traditional and relatively slow tempo often adopted in the 3rd movement, and meant to slowly build up energy until the explosion of the finale, contradicts the very letter of Beethoven's much faster "Allegro" tempo indication and metronome mark), or maybe he was simply trying to be observant of the fact that the movement's time signature is an "Allegro moderato" 3/4 and not a 3/8, which implies a pulse by the beat and not by the bar. The effect isn't uninteresting, evoking some balletic tiptoeing, but it does feel very sluggish compared to the more driving approaches of Swierczewski or Rotter.

Not enough to keep Minkowski's CD, among those devoted to the symphonies of Méhul, from garnering prime recommendation, although the music lover interested in Mehul and the music of the French Revolution should by all means invest also in Swierczewski's set, if only for the 3rd and 4th Symphonies (but also for the Menuettos of No. 1 & 2).

That said, for listeners allergic to period-instruments, their lowered pitch and their somewhat acidic strings and dry-sounding timps, or simply to Minkowski's typical and relentless drive, Rotter offers a surprisingly good alternative. I had no idea who Rotter is, the liner notes give no info and very few recordings of his show up on this website, but a check on Naxos' website and Wikipedia's entry for the Argentine National Symphony Orchestra indicates that he is an Argentinian, born in 1942, trained in Germany (composition more than conducting it seems: Naxos mentions studying with Stockhausen, Kagel and Pousseur) and was the music director of the Argentine NSO  in the late 1980s and early 1990s, before the orchestra had to fold due to budgetary collapse.

Anyway, he is even slightly more vivacious than Minkowski in the respective first movement of both Symphonies, considerably more than Swierczewski and somewhat less than Minkowski in both the Finales but without either the latter's sense of breathlessness, not as lively as Swierczewski in the Menuetto of No. 1 but considerably more than Minkowski. His main miss is a somewhat heavy-footed and thick Menuetto of Symphony No. 2 (here again Swierczewski is "hors-concours"), but that's not enough to deprive his recording of the recommendation it deserves, more however as an alternative to Minkowski than as a first choice. You might find this disc sold cheaper under its other entry, [[ASIN:B000009I3T Mehul: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2]], or under its Naxos reissue, [[ASIN:B00005A7KD Mehul: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2]].


title: sells much cheaper under its two other entries

text: At the time of writing this CD sells much cheaper (and very cheap) under its two other entries, the same original release as is featured here, [[ASIN:B000009IGT Symphonies 1 & 2]] and its Warner Apex reissue, [[ASIN:B00007KI16 Méhul - Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2 / Les Musiciens du Louvre, Minkowski]], both with my detailed and laudatory review, and I believe I've reached the mandatory minimum 20 words required by Amazon, so, all that's essential having been said, I'll stop here.


title: An important documentation of the French Beethoven, unfortunately in flawed readings

text:
Why isn't Méhul a more recognized and recorded composer? Other than the occasional Overture, there had been less than a trickle of recordings of his symphonies in the LP era - most notably the 1st in 1954 (with cuts) by Rolf Kleinert conducting the Berlin Radio Orchestra, now on [[ASIN:B00091S7PA Schubert: Symphony No. 6 - Scherchen Mehul: Symphony No. 1 - Kleinert]] or [[ASIN:B001DBZA4Q Mehul & Schubert Symphonies]] (a recording originally published, I think, on Urania, URLP 7109, paired with Mozart's Musical Joke under Mathieu Lange) and the 2nd in 1957 by Fernand Oubradous for the French branch of EMI Pathé (reissued on [[ASIN:B00000DTME De La Revolution à L'Empire]]), but those were one-offs that triggered no particular interest of the music world. Then came the celebrations of the bicentennial of the French Revolution in 1989, which occasioned a rekindling of interest for Méhul, but that too was short-lived and nothing of note followed.

It would be a relief to think that it is because Méhul is a second-rate composer, an honest crafstman as the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th has produced hundreds, a minor figure whose talents deserve no more than a small bulge of interest once every 30 years.

But not so, and I simply can't believe that nobody in the music world, performers and producers, seems to have heard, or have been interested in the powerful dramatic impact of the First Symphony's opening Allegro, reminiscent of the last ones of Mozart or of Haydn's Nelson Mass, or the close stylistic similarities between the Second and Beethoven's first two symphonies, and likewise with the Menuetto of the First, in the latter case a similarity already noted by Schumann who wondered if Mehul had plagiarized the third movement of Beethoven's 5th Symphony, or the other way around. As it turns out, none could have known the symphony of the other when they composed their own. As the French saying goes, "les grands esprits se rencontrent", "great minds meet". On the basis of these first two symphonies, Méhul deserves I think to be called the French Beethoven, even if he stopped short of the revolutionary developments Beethoven applied to the symphonic form (in length, impact, emotional content) from the Eroica onwards. It's not that Méhul's works display just good crafstmanship: they are strewn with touches of genius as well, flights of imagination that catch your ear and make him stand out from the throng of good crafstmen. It is not by mistake that his first symphony was praised by Schumann and played by Mendelssohn (in 1839 and 1846) and Reinecke.

To answer my question, "why?", why the lack of recognition, given the quality of these compositions: other than the performers' and producers' customary laziness and utter lack of exploratory spirit, difficulty to access scores and parts may be part of the explanation (although I'm not sure it is a determining factor. After all all these symphonies HAVE been recorded, and have been edited,, so scores and parts MUST be accessible somewhere). And I'll venture that the very reasons of Mehul's success in his lifetime might be those of his neglect today. The great composers of symphonies in the Romantic era were rarely great composers of operas, and the other way around. Cherubini, Meyerbeer, Rossini, Verdi, Wagner: not composers of symphonies. Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler: not proficient or successful composers of operas (and of course the last three didn't even try). Only Spohr breaks the rule, but then Spohr looses all: posterity today recognizes him neither as a great composer of operas, nor as one of symphonies. So Méhul? During his lifetime Méhul met his greatest successes with his operas. But how can you give credit to a composer who wrote operas with titles so smacking of the Ancient Regime and pre-Romantic era as "Stratonice", "Ariodant", "Euphrosine"?

Of the less-than-a-handful of recordings of the symphonies that came out in 1988 and 1989 (the other significant ones were Minkowski on period instruments for Erato, [[ASIN:B000009IGT Symphonies 1 & 2]], and Jorge Rotter on Marco-Polo, [[ASIN:B000009I3T Mehul: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2]], but both limited to the first two symphonies), this recording by the (as his name doesn't show) French conductor Michel Swierczewski, originally made for Nimbus (the original is under [[ASIN:B0000037CW Mehul: Complete Symphonies]]), stands out, as it offers not only two Overtures (including Mehul's most popular work, the Overture "The Hunt of Young King Henry"), but the two previously un-recorded and unpublished symphonies No. 3 and 4. Swierczewski also uses Urtext editions, made by the British musicologist David Charlton, who rediscovered the scores of the two last symphonies in 1979 (circumstances not explained in Charlton's liner notes, frustratingly). As far as is known Mehul's symphonies were composed between 1808 and 1810. Only 1 & 2 were published in his lifetime. He planned to publish No. 3 also but ultimately withheld it - Mehul was apparently extremely self-critical. There was an earlier Symphony in C, performed in 1797, unpublished, of which only a partial score remains, and Mehul began a 5th (6th in fact if you count the early one), whose first movement alone survies on a manuscript now in Vienna.

I am not aware of any subsequent recordings of 3 & 4 (and any of the torso of 5), and in fact even in the case of the first two symphonies I've spotted only one new recording of Symphony No. 1, aptly paired with Beethoven's first, [[ASIN:B0001LJB1W Symphonie 1]]. So, if only for those "archival" reasons, Swierczewski's recording remains an indispensable purchase.

But a highly frustrating one too. Where comparisons are available, in the first two symphonies, Swierczewski proves to be a disappointment, at least in the outer movements: trying, I suppose, to make Mehul sound "grand" (in the way Beethoven was played for grandeur rather than drive and ebullience in the pre-"Historically-informed" 1950s to 70s), in effect he only manages to make him sound thick, heavy-handed, sluggish, lacking tension and drama and often soporiphic - even more than the old Oubradous in the second symphony (both interpretations are in fact very similar, although there is a touch more drive with Oubradous) or than Kleinert in the Finale of the 1st Symphony. And the overly resonant church acoustics don't help, making the woodwinds and brass sound miles away from the strings. The Finale of the 2nd opens with a galloping timpani which is a great touch of imagination, but you can hardly hear it in Nimbus' sonics, you'll know it's there only if you listen to any of the competing recordings (and nowhere better than in Minkowski's). In fact, even knowing that it's there, I can't hear it with Swierczewki, only a vague rumble: I call it betrayal. Only the Menuettos of Symphonies 1 and 2 does Swierczewski conduct with zest, spirit, muscularity and drive, and to be entirely fair, here he tops the competition. He also shows a welcome and unlingering elegance in the Andante of Symphony No. 1. Strangely, in the Menuetto of No. 1, Minkowski, who displays otherwise a wonderful drive and bubbling zest, adopts a curiously laden and sluggish tempo, maybe to underline the similarities with the comparable passage in Beethoven's 5th (although the traditional and relatively slow tempo often adopted there, and meant to slowly build up energy until the explosion of the finale, contradicts the very letter of Beethoven's much faster "Allegro" tempo indication and metronome mark), or maybe because he is observing to a fault Méhul's time signature, a 3/4 and not a 3/8, which implies a pulse by the beat rather than by the bar. Still, and despite Swierczewski's great Menuettos, to get an idea of what the music of Mehul is really worth, better go to Minkowski's CD (available even cheaper on Warner's budget series Apex, [[ASIN:B00007KI16 Méhul - Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2 / Les Musiciens du Louvre, Minkowski]]), and if you are allergic to period instruments, Jorge Rotter on Marco-Polo (and now Naxos, [[ASIN:B00005A7KD Mehul: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2]]) offers a generally good alternative. Incidentally, the score of Symphony No. 1 is available online on the revered International Music Scores Library Project.

The two later symphonies are fine specimens of early romantic symphonic writing, full of sweep, highlights being the opening allegro of No. 3 filled with triumphant fanfares and its dazzling and powerful Finale, and the andante of Symphony No. 4 unfolding a beautiful cantilena for cellos. The Schubert of the 9th Symphony rather than Beethoven now comes to mind, and Spohr, Lachner, Fesca, and possibly Onslow would have no reason to shame if their name had been affixed to the scores' cover. But they lack, I find, those unexpected touches of genius that mark out the first two, or the melodic ingenuity and obsessive forward momentum that make Schubert's 9th the work of a genius when those of Spohr, Lachner and Fesca are works of excellent crafstmen. There are of course no comparisons that would enable to assess for sure the interpretive merits of Swierczewski in the two last symphonies, and as often happens in such cases, his readings seem very satisfactory, with especially the Finale of No. 3 sounding dazzling enough, but still the nagging worm of doubt has drilled its way into the listener's mind that maybe something is wanting and if the symphonies don't sound quite as exceptional as the first two, the interpreter may be partly responsible. Nonetheless I am adding a fourth star to my evaluation in view of the significance of the works and publication (and because of Swierczewski's two Menuettos).

Still, the symphonies, especially 3 and 4, are badly in need of a new recording, and if we could be offered a number of alternative readings of 1 and 2 in the process it wouldn't do any harm either. Will the music lover and Mehul admirer have to wait another 30 years? But wait, 1989 + 30 years doesn't fall in such a long time. Or, to gain two years, how about the bicentennial of Mehul's death, which falls in 2017? Hello Naxos, anybody listening?


title: A particularly interesting "Marseillaise" doesn't quite make up for the rest of this flawed recital

text:
This might have been a more interesting and appealing disc than it turns out to be. It is one of those not so numerous ones that cropped up on the occasion of the celebreation of the bicentennial of the French revolution, and it was conceived by Jean-Claude Malgoire as an imaginary scene to have taken place on the stage of the Théâtre des Italiens (later to become the Opéra Comique) in 1794 (the Revolutionary "an II"). "A famous Italian singer (who may earlier have belonged to the troupe of the `Bouffons'), sings arias from French opéra comiques, accompanied by an orchestra in which Rodolphe Kreuzer is concertmaster. But in the enthusiasm and heated revolutionary atmosphere the public invades the stage and everybody starts singing the song then better known as "Chant de guerre" than as "The Marseillaise", and other revolutionary songs and hymns. Composer Claude Balbastre is in the attendance and starts improvising on the fortepiano a series of variations on the Marseillaise..." In fact the full compositional jetset (or should I say "stagecoach-set") is present: Gossec, Dussek, Salieri, and they happen to have their scores with them.

You may or may not be convinced by the gimmick, but the recital is interesting for giving the opportunity to hear excerpts of rarely played operas, and of a few famous revolutionary songs and hymns (Méhul's Chant du Départ, the popular songs "Ah ça ira"  and "La Carmagnole" and the Marseillaise) in what I doubt are original or period orchestrations (the arrangements are not credited) but that sound close enough,  with plenty of typical woodwind scoring. Although far from "authentic",  Malgoire's Marseillaise deserves a special mention, as it differs in many ways from what we are accustomed to hearing these days on Bastille Day or on the soccer fields (the "official" orchestration of the Marseillaise played today dates from 1887). In fact it would have been worthwhile for Malgoire's liner notes to explain exactly what he did with it and what sources he used. But no, he remains entirely silent about what's really significant about his recording, and it is only after hours of research on the sources of the Marseillaise that it really dawned on me what was there.

So, Malgoire's Marseillaise is remarkable, first, for using not the song's melody as it came down to us and is sung on the soccer fields, but Rouget de Lisle's original melody (transposed down a fourth to suit Raimondi's basso voice), as it was published in Strasburg by the publisher Dannbach under the title "War Song for the Army of the Rhine", shortly after its composition at the end of April 1792; it differs from the accepted version in a few melodic turns, that are striking when you know the song well for having sung it on the French soccer fields. Rouget's song was immediately so successful that it led a life of its own, and within a few months acquired the melodic shape that we still know today. In fact, if Malgoire's little fiction were to be taken seriously, when it reached Paris and was sung in the theatres there, it wasn't anymore Rouget's original, it was NOT anymore known as "Chant de guerre" but as the Air or the Song or the March or the Hymn of the Marseillais. But let us not be pedantic on that point, it is great to hear Rouget's original, even a fourth down.

Malgoire further follows Rouget's original in playing the curious little ritornello that ends the refrain in the Dannbach score and serves as a transition to the next verse. It curiously smacks of "opera comique" and is comically contradictory with the martial accents of the song, but it's great to hear it, and makes it even more frustrating not to know who wrote Malgoire's orchestration. Rouget's original was never orchestrated back then, in fact the original score had been printed in limited number and soon became inaccessible (copies became known only in the mid-19th century), and the song travelled through the throats of those who sung it, before being notated and first printed as a simple melody, sometimes with added keyboard accompaniment.

Rouget wrote six stanzas, of which only the first is now sung on soccer fields, and today nobody knows the rest, or even knows that there is a rest. Raimondi sings verse 1, 2, 4 and 6 (the chorus joins in refrains 2 and 6), but after refrain 2 Malgoire intersperses Claude-Bénigne Balbatre's Variations on la Marseilaise (played by Mirella Giardelli on fortepiano). That's where following with the score (it is available online on the website of the International Music Scores Library Project) enhances appreciation: the upward 32nd-note run at 5:17 depicts the "the enemies running away", and the ensuing crashing cluster, the "cannon". If you've missed it, it repeats a few seconds later.

Malgoire repeats very much the same processes with "Ah ça ira", starting with Balbastre's version and seguing with Raimondi and chorus singing the song in an uncredited orchestration, sounding "period" enough. Balbastre not having written variations on "La Carmagnole", there we get only the orchestrated song. None of this is entirely "authentic" or "period" but at least it is "reconstructed authentic". It never happened, but it could have.

But as long as Malgoire was going to do a "Historically-informed" performance, he might have done it all the way. But not only is his version of Méhul's "Chant du Départ" (also known as "the second Marseillaise" and indeed very similar to it in its martial bombast), like the Marseillaise, not sung sung complete, it is also very corrupt. The original song has 7 stanzas, followed by refrain sung by chorus, but unlike the Marsellaise each stanza is attributed to a different character and voice (and who the chorus is supposed to depict also changes, so the size and section of chorus should presumably change accordingly in each refrain): "A Representative of the people" (and chorus of warriors), a mother (chorus of mothers), two elderly men (chorus of elderly men) and so forth, a child, a wife, a young maiden, and finally three warriors followed by the concluding and complete chorus. Wouldn't it have been great to do it as written? But no, I guess CBS needed the top billing of Raimondi, and what he sings is only stanzas 1, 3, 4 (there I can imagine a more childish timbre than Raimondi's basso...) and 7. And truth is, it is more tedious that way than it would have been done as written - an impression confirmed by the version of Michel Plasson, [[ASIN:B00000DQY2 Revolution Francaise / Music of The French Revolution / Michel Plasson (EMI)]] -, because there is absolutely no variety of timbre, and the very essence of the music is that each of these stanzas (and the refrains) is the repetition of the previous one, with the very basic melodic invention rapidly wearing one's patience. Raimondi and Malgloire's sluggishness here doesn't help either.

And I can't say that Raimondi is much of an asset, either. His French accent isn't so bad, but his articulation is thick and fuzzy, and in La Marseillaise and Le Chant du Départ he lacks enthusiasm - that's not a revolutionnairy Sans Culotte marching off to war or parading with an aristocrat's head on a pike, but one that's returned from the Napoleonic wars, all illusions shattered, and is merely going through the motions. He's pretty awful even in the aria "Tout le monde m'abandonne" ("everybody is forsaking me") from Paisiello's opera "Il re Teodoro", lacking articulation and elegance; the aria itself is sentimental and whining. The opera was originally written in Italian and was played for Queen Marie-Antoine, in Versailles, in the translation of a monsieur Moline; it is prosodically inept, full of accents falling in the wrong place. Raimondi is much more convincing in "Ah ça ira" and "La Carmagnole", sounding much more convinced, with a saucy and mischievous undertone that is irresistible.

Actor Yves Gourvil, who announces the various episodes of Dussek's "Tableau of the last moments and death of Marie-Antoinette" is certainly no top billing, even in France - so did they really need to choose an actor with a lisp, and such a high-pitched and uningratiating vocal timbre? The music itself is descriptive and graphic and offers little musical interest, and its main interest really is of being a striking example of typical music for a silent movie, more than a century before silent movies were invented. Among the opera numbers, only the lugubrious Chorus of Slaves from Salieri's Tarare (track 11), with its ominious string and timpani tremolando, stands out. The Act II final chorus (track 3) at least is stylistically consistent with the Marseillaise and Chant du depart: martial, hollow and bombastic. In the two overtures - to Salieri's Tarare and Kreuzer's Paul et Virginie, Malgoire's ensemble, La Grande Ecurie et la Chambre du Roi, sounds zestful, but underpowered - but after all, this is probably how it sounded back then.

Gossec's short but impressive "Marche lugubre" for winds and percussion was written in 1790 and used at each significant funeral during the revolutionary era, and was the prototype and model of all the Revolutionary funeral marches that will culminate in Berlioz' Symphonie funèbre et triomphale. No chance here that Malgoire uses the original orchestration, since it called not only for "serpents", the predecessor of the tuba, used to double and reinforce the bassoon, but also for three "tuba corva", the revolutionary revival of the antique "cornu", an ancient Roman brass instrument about 3 meters long in the shape of a letter G. More likely he uses Désiré Dondeyne's modern one. From information I've gathered on the net the wind orchestra assembled by Gossec in some of those occasions numbered over a hundred players; Malgoire's restitution doesn't come near the impact it must have made back then. In fact, Malgoire's reading doesn't come near the impact of John Wallace's on Nimbus (where it is an appropriate filler to Berlioz' Symphonie funèbre, [[ASIN:B0000037CU Berlioz: Grande symphonie funèbre et triomphale]]): Malgoire plays the burdened and funeral, Wallace plays the blasting and devastating. And even in the burdened and funeral, he is one-upped by Claude Pichaureau, [[ASIN:B000009IGC Les Grands Hymnes Revolutionnaires (Erato)]]. Gossec's use of the tam-tam was a great novelty back in the early 1790s, that greatly impressed the audiences; as played by Malgoire hardly anybody would have heard it.

No text for the choruses of Salieri's Tarare - too bad, the chorus is not always comprehensible especially in the martial and loud Act II chorus. No translations at all. Although Malgoire's Marseillaise is interesting, the recital as a whole is frustrating. Plasson's disc is a better introduction to the musics of the French Revolution, and although his Marseillaise is played in Berlioz' orchestration from 1830, it offers not just all six Rouget's stanzas, but even the 7th, non-Rouget stanza known as "the children's stanza" (it is sung by solo child and children's choir), that was added in October 1792 and became part of the canon. In Chant du Départ, he leaves out the two stanzas of the elderly men and the wives, but at least the others are sung with the voices of the characters, bringing in a welcome diversity, and he is always more dynamic than Malgoire.

attachment_type: IMAGE


title: For archival purposes only - Brüggen is much better

text:
There is a strong legitimacy to playing Suites made of the purely orchestral numbers from Rameau's operas, the dance movements and other orchestral transitions and interludes, and especially with Les Indes Galantes, the opera-ballet composed in 1735. As annotator Renaud Machard points out, Rameau himself published (shortly after the first run of the opera production) not the complete score of Les Indes Galantes but (in view, said Rameau in the preface, of the public's dislike of its "scenes", e.g. the non-dance, non-orchestral passages) an abridgement in the form of four suites or "Concerts", arranged not in the order in which they appeared in the opera but reshuffled according to tonality. In truth, Rameau's Suites include much more than just purely orchestral numbers, but also arias and choruses, and the complete act "Les Sauvages", a later addition to the opera-ballet and not yet represented when the score was published; also, his publication is not that of a version for orchestra, but a transcription for keyboard - on which a number of recordings of Les Indes Galantes with harpsichord have been based, like Christophe Rousset's recent one, [[ASIN:B001P9276A Rameau: Les Indes Galantes]].

And there is, of course, an even stronger legitimacy, one that overrides any other consideration: sheer pleasure. Listening to the orchestral suites from Rameau's operas is like listening to Wagner's "Ring without Words" arrangements: a way and occasion to revel in the shimmering beauties of the orchestra, without the words and singing getting in the way. Especially welcome for listeners who find that Wagner singers scream, or those, like me, who rapidly become edgy hearing the typical and cliched semi-tone upward or downward appogiaturas ending all the phrases in French baroque opera. The orchestral suites were my entry into the music of Rameau. Recently I heard substantial excerpts from Hippolyte & Aricie - not the suite, the opera itself, and I loved it, so now I'm probably ready for the real thing, but those Suites were a great preparation. Rameau's orchestral idiom is lush, magnificent, imaginative, uplifiting, both highly learned (like Bach's) but drawing on the popular and vernacular, without the profound spirituality that imbues every note written by Bach, but easily as sparkling and festal as Haendel's. When Hippolyte & Aricie made a splash at the Paris Opera in 1733 and revealed the then 50-year-old composer (leaves us all hope, doesn't it?), Campra - possibly in a double-tongued fashion - made the comment that "there is enough music in this opera to make ten of them". Reminds you of what Emperor Joseph II said to Mozart: "too many notes, Mozart!". But it was true, and the comment applies as much to the orchestral music of Les Indes Galantes.

The first recording on period-instruments of an orchestral suite drawn from Les Indes Galantes dates as far back as 1967, by Collegium Aureum, [[ASIN:B00002587M Rameau: Les Indes Galantes; Dardanus [Germany]]], but stylistically it now belongs to the infancy of period-practice, making the music sound stately, solemn, elegant in a prim and trim manner but also vaguely boring. Herreweghe made his in 1983, a few years into the big Rameau wave, which began at the end of the 1970s. Since then, Frans Brüggen offered his own selection, [[ASIN:B000FG5PJA Rameau: Les Indes Galantes Suite]] (in 1992), and I've located another version on a small Belgian label, Eufoda, from 2001, not listed here, by Dirk Vermeulen connducing the Prima La Musica ensemble, and one from 2009 by The Aulos Ensemble, [[ASIN:B001UDY2AU Jean-Phillipe Rameau: Suites from Les Fêtes D'Hébé & Les Indes Galantes]] -  apparently reduced to one-a-part - on Centaur. I don't have the two latter.

Herreweghe's and Brüggen's selections don't entirely overlap. Only 15 numbers (out of Herreweghe's 24 and Brüggen's 22) are shared. Two seem to be common, but in fact are not: Herreweghe's "Orage - Air pour Borée et la Rose" (track 17) vs Brüggen's "Air pour Borée et la Rose" (track 20) and the "Air pour Zéphire" (Herreweghe track 18, Brüggen track 19). The opera-ballet had a complex history, wasn't immediately successful, with the music generally praised but the libretto called inept, and Rameau soon made substantial changes, adding a full act (called "Entrées" in opera-ballets), "The Savages", and re-writing about half of "The Flowers" or Persian act. Herreweghe plays the original version of the storm and "Air for Borée and the Rose" (Borée is the allegorical figure of the wind), Brüggen the revision. As for the Air for Zephire, there were two in the original version (and only the first was later retained), Brüggen plays the first, Herreweghe the second. In both cases Brüggen's choices (as were those of Rameau) are better, although it is interesting to have, if only for reference, a recording of the original versions. All these intricate points are made clear, not by the liner notes of any of the two recordings, but by the preface and score of the admirable "urtext" edition published as far back as 1902 by Editions Durand, based on the original manuscripts then kept at the library of the Paris Opera and prepared by no less than Paul Dukas. The International Music Scores Library Project has made those scores, as well as a facsimile of the original edition of the "Quatre Concerts" and other sources, available online, eternal gratitude to them.

What remains in proper to Herreweghe are tracks 5 (Air for the standard-bearing warriors, from the Prologue), 7 (Gavotte, the last from the Flower act), 8 (Air for love, from the Prologue), 10 (Rigaudon en rondeau, in fact the two Rigaudons of the Prologue, not called "en rondeau" in the Dukas score but only in the score of the Four Concerts), 15 (Loure en rondeau, from the Second Entry, the Incas), 20 (Gavotte en rondeau, from the Flower Act), 21 (Air tendre for the Rose, from the Flower act, title again from the Four Concerts, it is called only "Air pour les fleurs" in the Dukas score and one of the two Flower Arias that opens the act's concluding and extended ballet, with a character indication of "gracieux", not "tendre").

And for Brüggen: the "Air vif" (track 4) and the "Musette en rondeau" from the Prologue, two marvelously boisterous numbers, the "Ritournelle for the Generous Turk" (track 10) and "Forlane of the Sailors" (track 11) from the Turkish act and  the "Ritournelle for the Incas from Peru" (track 13).

An additional point in favor of Brüggen is that his concoction is arranged roughly in the order of the opera, clearly distinguishing what belongs to each Entrées, rather than arbitrarily and all shuffled around like Herreweghe's. But the main consideration in favor of Brüggen is that his Rameau is much better played than Herreweghe's, with more beef, bite, sweep and excitement. Although they don't play exactly the same version, Brüggen's storm before the Air for Borée is more stormy than Herreweghe's, the famous Air des Sauvages considerably more savage with Brüggen, Herreweghe's sauvages sound like those Kanaks of the 1931 Paris Colonial Exhibition gathered into human zoos and asked to pretend being savages: they seem to be only half-heartedly going through the motions (here, even Collegium Aureum was more animated). You need to go to the track listing of Herreweghe to understand that the "Amants" in Brüggen's track 6 are in fact following Bellone the Goddes of war and that their "Amantes" are trying to hold them back, but with Brüggen they are certainly off to war, with Herreweghe (also track 6) they are simply pretending. Herreweghe's Chaconne sounds impossibly solemn and laden, Brüggen's sparkles and explodes like the final fireworks in Versailles. The more prominent flutes and oboes with Brüggen also provides more color.

So, if you are constrained by space and financial limitations, Brüggen must definitely be your choice. I'm keeping the Herreweghe only for archival reference, especially for those numbers not on the Brüggen CD. Among these, I would lament only the absence of the "Air for the standard-bearers" (although it is plain, even without comparison, that Herreweghe plays it with too much solemnity and not enough sparkle), the (second) Air for Zéphire, and the merry Rigaudon(s). Too bad really that these two CDs are so stingy in timing (and by some miraculous chance process, they both have exactly the same, to the second): 43:44. Brüggen would have had ample space to add the Herreweghe numbers and more. At least Universal Europe has recently reissued his Indes Galantes-Suite complemented with the Castor & Pollux-Suite recorded by Brüggen in 1996 (originally paired with three Fantasias of Purcell, [[ASIN:B00000E4AS Rameau: Castor Et Pollux Suite / Purcell: 3 Fantasias]]). It isn't listed here but is available on the European sister companies under ASIN B004IXJF1K.


title: Who'd want it?

text:
"Going Baroque", the Swingle Singers' second album, from 1964, is lovely. The repertoire mixes the great hits and a few more obscure pieces, like Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach's Solfegietto and Wilhelm Friedmann Bach's Der Frühling, and all those pieces are marvelous, especially in the Swingle Singers renditions. This was their first recording of Bach's Badinerie (from his Orchestral Suite No. 2), which became one of the ensemble's abiding standards, their latest recording of it being an extraordinary version with vocal percussion in the 2007 album [[ASIN:B000UNMOB0 Beauty and the Beatbox]]. In the Largo from Bach's Harpsichord Concerto, the sensuous abandon of soprano Christiane Legrand's voice will make you swoon, and the rest combines the dazzling and the enrapturing.

So far, so good. But then, who'd want this CD (as the Amazon system automatically links this review to entries for the original LP, note that it is the CD that I am reviewing, found under ASIN B00005LF2W or B000P0HO4U)? In the early 2000s, Universal, Philips or whoever held the rights to the early, Paris-based Swingle Singers' recordings released an eleven-CD box reissuing all the albums they had recorded for Philips between 1963 and 1972 ([[ASIN:B000BU99I8 Best of]]), and this is one of them. But what was accepted in the LP days is infuriating in the CD era: all these albums but one time 30 minutes or under. And Going Baroque is one of the worst: 24:37!

This would have been infuriating enough if it had been the only way to get this marvelous music (which is the case with some of the other instalments in the series). But not so: in the early 1990s Polygram did the right thing, and reissued the Swingle's two Bach albums (from 1963 and 1968) on one CD, [[ASIN:B0000046WP Jazz Sebastian Bach]], and did the same with this one, pairing it with the contents of their third album from 1965, "[[ASIN:B00005LF2R Swinging Mozart]]". That album, [[ASIN:B0000046Y7 Anyone For Mozart, Bach, Handel, Vivaldi?]], sells for so cheap at the time of writing that it is tantamount to a steal.

However, Polygram obviously didn't want us dairy cows to get too much of a good thing, since they managed to leave out one track from Going Baroque from their reissue: Handel's Allegro from Concerto Grosso op. 6 No. 4. Not that the CD was too generous in timing: at 50 minutes, it wasn't the 3:17 from Handel that was going to make your CD player explode! WHY DO THESE PEOPLE DO THAT????

So, fans of the Swingle Singers might feel tempted to get Going Baroque anyway, just for that track. Don't. I did (found it cheap enough, so I thought I'd give it a go). First, the Handel isn't so great that it makes it indispensable for you to break your kid's piggy bank. Second, the transfers are HORRENDOUS. Comparison with the earlier Polygram reissue shows that this one is cut at a volume that is painfully loud, and with the stereo spread artificially widened, so that it becomes, well, totally artificial.

Now, if you still want to buy this CD, I don't know, it's probably because you buy CDs for their cover art and not for their music. For the music, go to "Anyone... ".


title: Another entry for a a "Primarily A Cappella" CD

text: I'm not sure what this label, "Traditions Alive", is, and I think it is only a mis-listing for the label "Primarily A Cappella", as a Google search "Swingle Singers Traditions Alive" leads to many websites and pages listing CDs from the Swingle Singers on the Primarily A Cappella label. Anyway this one, the "Retrospective - The 40th Anniversary Show", was published as Primarily A Cappella PAC4530 (it was first issued on the Swingle Singers' own label as Swing CD 19, not listed), and its due entry is [[ASIN:B00067HPD2 Retrospective: The 40th Anniversary Show]] - selling cheaper too at the time of writing. It was recorded live in 2003 and features a fine compendium of the vocal octet's art and styles, although it hardly offers anything new, all the tracks except the last one being reprises of arrangements already recorded by the Swingle Singers in their previous albums. See my review of the original entry for all the details.


title: more lovely arrangements of hits of Classical music by the Swingle Singers, another LP badly in need of CD reissue

text:
The record companies for which the Swingle Singers recorded in the 1970s - CBS/Columbia, RCA and EMI - have done a shamefully pitiful job at reissuing their back catalog on CD (see my comprehensive discography on Listmania!, link in the comments section), and this album, Folio, which closed that period in 1980, is one of the most lamentable casualties. It was published in Europe as EMI-Columbia SCX 6631 and licensed in the US by Moss Music Group, MMG 1125 (I've uploaded both cover photos), also on the German label Aves under the title "Swing the Classics". The group wasn't anymore the original, Paris-based octet formed in 1962 by Ward Swingle (born in Mobile, Alabama). It disbanded in 1972 and Swingle reformed a new group in London with young British singers, called (depending on the labels) Swingle II (on CBS/Columbia and RCA) and The New Swingle Singers (EMI). Eleven albums were released between 1974 and this one (not counting Berio's [[ASIN:B00000E449 A-Ronne, Cries of London]]), of which only a compilation on one CD was reissued by Sony, [[ASIN:B002BX4VHM Swing Sing]] (and if my ears serve dubbed directly from the LPs rather than from original tapes): the complete contents of "[[ASIN:B0091S8R5C Rags And All That Jazz]]" (1975), two tracks from "([[ASIN:B0072CPBHQ Words And Music]]" (1974), six from "[[ASIN:B004D67GOA Lovin' You]]" (1976) and one from "[[ASIN:B0040ZHZFY No Time To Talk]]" (1979). But that wasn't the Swingles' most interesting repertoire either.

The changes between the Paris-based Swingles and Swingle II had been more sweeping than just one of home base. In 1962 Swingle had invented a unique approach, scatting - or rather, since nothing was improvised, "dee-duming" - instrumental music, and so (as I've contended in my reviews of the early Swingle Singers albums) returning instrumental music to its very essence: the human voice, elevating to the status of high art what we all do, inadvertently, casually, without thinking about it, while walking the dog, vacuuming, ironing, washing the dishes, showering: humming our favorite tunes.

But the London Swingles now embraced a new repertoire made standards of jazz, Broadway, hits of film music or the lasting or ephemeral pop music successes of the day. They also sung arrangements mainly of songs rather than instrumental music, AND now sung the lyrics as well. In the case of "Rags And All That Jazz" and the 1979 [[ASIN:B001KSUP4M Skyliner]], they even went a step further and did what the Hendricks-Lambert-Ross trio had brought to a state of perfection in the late 1950s and what Mimi Perrin had frenchified with her Double Six de Paris in the early 1960s (of which Swingle had briefly been a member): they devised new lyrics to emulate the sounds of what was originally purely instrumental (the so-called "vocalese"). Something new was gained of course (their album of late 15th-to-early-17th century madrigals, [[ASIN:B001F5KSEW Love Songs for Madrigals and Madriguys]], with a discreet pop music underpinning, is lovely, see my review), but the Swingles also lost what had made the unique originality of the Paris group. Also - sorry fans of ragtimes, Broadway and pop music - but it is doubtful that Stevie Wonder's "You Are The Sunshine of My Life", Gallagher & Lyle's "I Wanna Stay With You" and even the ragtimes of Joplin offer the same abiding musical rewards as Bach's Badinerie or Air on the G-String.

So Folio was a great album, because it returned to the Swingle Singers' basics : dee-duming the instrumental hits of Classical music.  The repertoire is great and significant, all firsts for the Swingle Singers except for Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik (already recorded - complete, here they sing only the two last movements - by the Paris Swingles in their 1965 "[[ASIN:B00005LF2R Swinging Mozart]]" album), and although some became standards often reprised by them (Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumble Bee, Debussy's Clair de Lune, Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik), most others get here their only recording (Debussy's Rêverie, Scarlatti's Sonata, Chopin's Prelude, Bizet's Intermezzo, Fauré's Pavane, Beethoven's To Elise, Saint-Saens' The Swan).

The arrangements are great too, from lovely (Debussy, Bizet, Fauré) to dazzling (Rimsky, Chopin, Beethoven). Exclusive classical music fans (I am) more intolerant than I am might raise an eyebrow at the pop music instrumental accompaniment. I think it works perfectly well. As with the original Swingle Singers jazzifying of Bach (which, I contended, was less about jazzifying of Bach than bringing out the inherent jazziness of Bach), it draws interesting and unsuspected links between Classical music and pop: Flight of The Bumble Bee with pop rhythmic accompaniment makes it sound as if it could be music written by Henry Mancini for "Peter Gunn" or Lalo Shifrin for "Mission: impossible". Beethoven's Für Elise should have been a hit for a teen-age pop group. Debussy's Rêverie with pop drums bass guitar and vibraphone becomes cocktail lounge music (well... if music so lovely was played in cocktail lounge patrons would stop talking and start listening, and the group would be fired). The Sonata of Scarlatti is turned into dance music. Debussy's Clair de Lune and La Fille aux Cheveux de Lin are purely A Cappella.

Small detail: there is something bizarre in one of the soprano's voice in Bizet at 1:34 and again in Fauré at 1:33 (my transfers to mp3), making it sound almost like a music saw, can't tell if it is an effect of the recording, or because she's humming at a very high pitch with mouth closed and it distorts her voice. It is likely to bother only the punctilious exclusive Classical music loves referred to above.

As with all the Swingle Singers' LPs (and many of their CDs too!), the TT is frustratingly short (34 minutes), because with such good stuff you never want it to stop. It took me longer to write this review - not that it bothered me to listen again. I don't understand how this album didn't make it back then into the pop charts. It must have been badly marketed. Hope the ignorant and Alzheimer-stricken executives at EMI wake up and realize that the 50th anniversary of the Swingle Singers' first album comes up next year, and finally do what they got to do: reissue this album, and pair it with the other one they have on their catalog, Skyliner (see link above), the Swingle's homage to big band jazz.


title: One of the Swingle Singers best albums, badly in need of a CD reissue

text:
Sony has done a shamefully pitiful job at reissuing their Swingle Singers' back catalog on CD, and the 1976 album "Baroque" is one of the most lamentable casualties. When the original, Paris-based group founded ten years earlier by Ward Swingle (born in Mobile, Alabama, and the only non-French member) disbanded in 1972 and Swingle moved to London, he reformed a new group with young British singers, now called Swingle II, and they contracted with CBS/Columbia. Seven albums were published between 1974 and 1979 (for the same company they had already made the premiere recording of [[ASIN:B003B8US50 Luciano Berio's Sinfonia]] back in 1968 with the composer conducting the New York Philharmonic, a historically major document also not reissued on CD). These divided between arrangements of Classical music ([[ASIN:B001F5KSEW Love Songs for Madrigals and Madriguys]] 1974 and this one) and four albums of arrangements of standards of Jazz, Ragtimes, Broadway, Film music and the abiding or ephemeral pop successes of the day ([[ASIN:B0072CPBHQ Words And Music]] 1974, [[ASIN:B0091S8R5C Rags And All That Jazz]] 1975, [[ASIN:B004D67GOA Lovin' You]] 1976, [[ASIN:B0040ZHZFY No Time To Talk]] 1979), one being an album of pop music compositions specially written for the ensemble ([[ASIN:B0040ZFVR8 pieces of eight LP]] 1977). Of these, Sony has reissued only [[ASIN:B002BX4VHM Swing Sing]], a compilation from the non-classical albums, gathering the complete contents of "Rags And All That Jazz", two tracks from "Words and Music", six from "Lovin' You" and one from "No Time To Talk".

But that style isn't necessarily the most interesting and significant musically of the Swingle Singers. Sorry fans of pop music and ragtimes, but Stevie Wonder's "You Are The Sunshine of My Life", Gallagher & Lyle's "I Wanna Stay With You" and even the ragtimes of Joplin may not entirely offer the same abiding musical rewards as Bach's Badinerie or Air on the G-String. Also, the changes between the Paris-based Swingles and Swingle II were more sweeping than just one of home base. In 1962 Swingle had invented a unique approach, scatting - or rather, since nothing was improvised "dee-duming" - instrumental music, and so (as I've contended in my reviews of the early Swingle Singers albums) returning instrumental music to its very essence: the human voice, elevating to the status of high art what we all do, inadvertently, casually, without thinking about it, while walking the dog, vacuuming, ironing, washing the dishes, showering: humming our favorite tunes.

But the London Swingles not only tackled a new repertoire made mainly of songs rather than instrumental music, they now sung the lyrics. In the case of "Rags And All That Jazz", they even went a step further and did what the Hendricks-Lambert-Ross trio had brought to a state of perfection in the late 1950s and what Mimi Perrin had frenchified with her Double Six de Paris in the early 1960s (of which Swingle had briefly been a member): they devised new lyrics to emulate the sounds of what was originally purely instrumental (the so-called "vocalese"). Something new was gained of course (their album of late 15th-to-early-17th century Madrigals, with a discreet pop music underpinning, is lovely, see my review), but the Swingles also lost what had made the unique originality of the Paris group.

So "Baroque" (not to be confused with the earlier "[[ASIN:B00005LF2W Going Baroque]]" from the Paris Swingles) is great because it goes back to the basics, reverting to the original dee-duming with discreet jazz accompaniment of drums and double-bass, but now with added keyboards. It is also essential in that it features many one-offs that the Swingle Singers never re-recorded: Handel's Arrival of the Queen of Sheba (the overture to Act III of the Oratorio "Solomon"), Hornpipe from Water Music, Largo from Concerto Grosso op. 3 no. 2 and Allegro from Concerto Grosso op. 6 no. 1, the presto from Bach's Brandeburg Concerto No. 4 and Allegro from Brandeburg Concerto No. 5 - running 7:40, the latter is a subsantial addition!

The keyboard is not an acoustic piano but a electric keyboard offering a variety of sounds, glockenspiel or vibraphone in Queen of Sheba, Air On the G String, Jesu Joy Of Man's Desiring, a mixture of portable organ and horns in Handel's Hornpipe, a mixture of cello and bassoon in Handel's Largo, electric organ in Brandeburg 4, and imitating piano only in Brandeburg 5. It is played by Swingle himself (trained as a classical pianist before becoming a singer): and to hear what a virtuoso he is, listen (or rue that you can't!) to Bach's Brandeburg 5. In fact, Swingle's arrangement of the original is perfectly "straight": except for a cut in the (less virtuosic part of the) final harpsichord cadenza, all the notes of Bach are played, with the two sopranos taking the dialogue of flute and violin, the others singing the inner voices, the double bass usually taking the harpsichord's left-hand (except in some of the flourishes that run over the two staves) and Swingle the virtuosic right hand (and the drums freely adding their own colors). It is great, one of the Swingle Singers' most exciting recordings. But no wonder they dropped it from their repertoire: once Swingle gone, who was going to be both a virtuoso singer AND a virtoso pianist?

In fact all the arrangements are very straight, with the keyboard usually taking one or several parts (up to three in solo in Brandeburg 4, the two cellos in Handel's Largo) and blending with the voices. Soprano I (Olive Simpson I suppose) adds her own lovely embellishments to the upper line of Handel's Largo.

But even the old standards, Bach's Air on the G string (from Orchestral Suite No. 3) and Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring (the concluding Chorale from Cantata BWV 147), tackled by the Swingle Singers as early as their first album [[ASIN:B0000046WP Jazz Sebastian Bach]], get new arrrangements: in the Air, a lovely added keyboard counterpoint, vibraphone-like and sounding like an improvisation; the vibraphone-sounding keyboard taking on the part of violins-and-oboe in Jesu. Only the Little Organ Fugue BWV 578, first used by Swingle as the basis of his composition for the film Operazione San Pietro in 1967 (but I've exhausted my authorized product links. See ASIN B00006GJKS) and which later became one of the ensemble's most recorded pieces, sounds very much as it did from 1967 to 1982 (the later arrangement used only vocal percussion).

A great album, one of the Swingle's best, the only proviso being, as with all the Swingle Singers' LPs, the frustratingly short TT of 30 minutes. With such good stuff, you want it never to end. Hope the ignorant and tasteless a*****es from Sony wake up and realize that the fiftieth anniversary of the Swingle Singers' first album happens next year: that's the nick of time for reissuing a compilation of Madrigals and Baroque, the 60-minute TT would be just right. HELLO! ANYBODY LISTENING?!

For more on and of the Swingle Singers, see my comprehensive discography-Listmania (links in the comments section).


title: lovely recital by the Swingle Singers from 1995

text:
Hard-to-find recital by the Swingle Singers, recorded in July 1995, because it was published on the ensemble's own label, Swing CD 10 and, unlike other similar recordings, never reissued and given bigger circulation by other labels like Virgin or Primarily A Cappella. The music publisher Peters International seems to be still selling some copies, presumably because they are also the publishers of the sheet music of those arrangements for vocal octet.

I haven't found all the CDs of the Swingle Singers from the 1990s and 2000s entirely successful, especially those in which they sing arrangements of whatever successes of pop music of to- or yester-day, standards of Broadway or Jazz, folk-music, because there they sound just like an excellent A Cappella vocal octet rather than like the unique Swingle Singers. What Ward Swingle invented back in 1962 was a way of scatting, or rather "dee-duming" instrumental music (since nothing was improvised), first applied to the "greatest hits" of Classical music, then to Christmas music and American vernacular. It was similar but different from what the Hendricks-Lambert-Ross trio had brought to a state of perfection in the late 1950s, inventing lyrics to emulate the instrumental sounds of the standards of Big Band jazz (the so called Jazz vocalese), which was Frenchified by Mimi Perrin's Double Six of Paris in the early 1960s (of which Swingle wa briefly a member before establishing his own group, [[ASIN:B00002MIQM Les Double Six]]). But in the 1970s the newly formed English Swingle singers (first called Swingle II) became more "mainstream", tackling songs from pop music, Broadway, Jazz, popular - and singing the lyrics, rather than dee-duming them -, or even "vocalesing" Jazz instrumental music or Ragtimes in the manner of Jon Henricks (who even wrote lyrics for one of the Swingle singers' albums). It was OK when the dee-duming rhythmic underpinning remained (usually in the more dynamic songs), but in all the sentimental and crooning ballads, as pretty as was the collective sound of the vocal octet, the Swingles sounded just like any other pretty vocal octet. Add also - sorry fans of popular music - that the source material, as entertaining as it was, was rarely as masterly and sublime as the greatest hits of Bach and Mozart.

Nonetheless, this one offers a fine mixture, customary with the Swingle Singers since the early 1980s, of purely dee-dumed classical hits (including the Largo from Dvorak's New World Symphony, giving the disc its title, and two Slavonic Dances, and Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries, and arrangements of piano pieces of Bizet and Gabriel Grovlez), popular song ("Here's That Rainy Day", originally by Jimmy van Heusen with lyrics by Johnny Burke, covered by many jazz and pop singers; Henry Mancini's "Moon River" on lyrics by John Mercer, sung by Audrey Hepburn in the 1961 film "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and covered by many artists since), pop music (the Beatle's "Gotta Get You Into My life" - the Swingles had done a number of Beatles arrangements before and four years later they recorded a full disc of them, [[ASIN:B000063DFY Ticket to Ride: A Beatles Tribute]], but this is their only recording of that particular song), Broadway (Rogers and Hart "I Could Write a Book" from their 1940 musical "Pal Joey"), traditional and vernacular ("Miller of Dee", "Oes gafr eto", a medley of patriotic songs from World War I including "It's A Long Way to Tipperary"), film music ("Someday My Prince Will Come"). See the uploaded photo for the detailed track listing.

As usual with the Swingle Singers' records, the credits are so minimal, just listing last name of composer and, when relevant, lyricist, as to be very uninformative, and some amount of Internet research had to be done to establish the exact sources of what they sing. The two Bizet pieces, "Husband and Wife" and "The Bal", are the last two numbers from his suite for two pianos "Jeux d'Enfants". The Grovlez pieces are taken from his collection of piano pieces "L'Almanach aux Images". Gabriel Grovlez is described in his Wikipedia entry as "an eminent French composer and conductor" - I must be the first time I even hear about him, but apparently the collection is a standard of UK 9th-grade piano teaching; each of the pieces is headed in the score by the poem by the French symbolist poet Tristan Klingsor that inspired it. The Swingle's arrangement of "Petites Litanies de Jesus" sets back one verse from the poem, "Souriez-moi" ("Smile to me") - probably meaningless if you haven't read the rest of the poem (two four-erse stanzas, a kid's humble plea to Jesus) but very appropriate when you have: the music says the rest. The arrangement of "Les Anes", the Asses, integral with braying, is hilarious - so much so that the CD ends with a repeat track, "take 1!", in which the singers can't help but crack in laughter. What the CD calls "Oes gafr eto" is in fact "Counting the Goats" aka the Welsh folk song "Cyfri'r Geifr", which the track listing titles from its first line. If the Wikipedia entry is to be believed, the CD is also wrong to credit "A Long Way to Tipperary" to "traditional": it is a British music hall song written in 1912 by Jack Judge.

It's a lovely recital, a good introduction to the variegated styles of the Swingle Singers and one whose value is compounded by the fact that of all these arrangements except "Moon River" and "Some Day My Prince Will Come", it is the only recording they made. Only drawback is a TT of 47:41. With such good things, you want 30 more minutes.


title: A rarity - but not the most significant of the Swingle Singers

text:
This CD is a relative rarity, and it took me some time and patience to find it at a reasonable price - but ultimately, I did. It was the first album to be released on the Swingle Singers own label, SWING CD 1/2, and unlike others (Swing CD 4 1812, Swing CD 5 Bach Album, Swing CD 8 The Story of Christmas, and Swing CD 15 to 20, see product links in the comments section), it wasn't later licensed by Virgin, Signum or the label Primarily A Cappella. It compiles the near complete contents of two previously released recordings, Reflections from 1985 (but I've found only an improbable Bulgarian Balkanton LP release, BTA 12134 - order reshuffled, and three tacks omitted, all three reprised in the second album: "Round Midnight", "L'il Darling" and "It's All Right With Me") and Live at Ronnie Scotts (complete - recorded at Ronnie Scotts Jazz Club May 2nd, 1987, originally issued in cassette form only). The 1974-1989 period of the Swingle Singers, after the original, Paris-based ensemble founded in 1962 by Mobile, Alabama-born Ward Swingle disbanded, is not well documented on CD. Before, the group recorded for Philips and most of the records made then have been reissued. From the 1990s onwards they were published or reissued by Virgin and the various other labels mentioned above. But of their first London period, when they had assumed various titles like Swingle II, The New Swingle Singers or The Swingles, before reverting to the original name, and recorded mainly for CBS then EMI/Moss Music Group, there's only a compilation by Sony apparently directly dubbed from the LPs, "Swing Sing" ([[ASIN:B002BX4VHM Swing Sing]]) and a live concert from 1982 belatedly released ion the Swingle label, SWING CD R01 ([[ASIN:B00495RY3S Live in New York]]).

Reflections was the first album to be recorded after the retirement of founder Ward Singer from the ensemble, although he still acts as arranger (of all the tracks of Reflections and three from Live at Ronnie Scotts) and music adviser. The personnel constantly evolved, but there was enough overlapping for the whatever "traditions" to be passed on, and for the ensemble always to retain its unique vocal color. The only exception is between 1997 and 1999 (and the albums "Screen-Tested", Swing CD 12 and "Ticket to Ride: A Beatles Tribute" CD 15 - there was never a CD 13, and CD 14 is a compilation), when something dramatic must have happened because the complete personel changed. In the mid-1980s the vocal octet was comprised of Olive Simpson/Hellen Massey, Jacqueline Barron/Deryn Edwards, Jean Carter, Carol Canning, Andrew Bushter, Jonathan Rathbone, Mike Dore, Simon Grant/David Porter Thomas.

The original Swingle group had invented a unique way of scatting the classics, e.g. singing wordless and slightly jazzified arrangements of classical instrumental pieces (Bach, Haendel, Vivaldi, Mozart, the Romantics...) using various "dee-dum" techniques of sound-production invented by Swingle to emulate the sound of the original instruments. Although the first two tracks and track 11 illustrate that style (Mozart's Overture to The Marriage of Figaro, Bach's Organ Fugue BWV 578, Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumble Bee), these two albums are typical of their later evolution. First, they added on to their repertoire arrangements of the pops of the day, pop music, jazz, soul, ragtimes, Broadway, film music, traditional and vernacular (the latter they had in fact tackled as 1969, with their "[[ASIN:B0006M14E8 American Look]]" album). Second, rather than scatting even the arrangements of songs (which they did in the Paris period, as on the 1969 American album and their 1968 Christmas album, [[ASIN:B000051W4G Christmastime]]), they now sung the words.

By so doing, I find that they lost much of what made their originality. Instead of being a group with that unique scatting technique, they became one excellent vocal octet among many others. The all-Jazz/pop Ronnie Scotts recital is very typical, in that, to the voices, it adds an instrumental section made of keyboard, drums, bass guitar, tenor saxophone, trumpet/Flugelhorn, acoustic and electric guitar. While the later Swingle ensemble dispensed altogether with any instrumental backup, scatting instead the drums and bass (you can hear it on the first program, totally "a cappella"), the original Paris-based ensemble had used a jazz rhythmic section (drums and double-bass) that gave the jazz color, but this is far more abundant and "mainstream". The Ronnie Scotts recital is agreeable and entertaining, no doubt, but it's just that: a (mostly) Jazz/pops album by a vocal octet and instrumental ensemble, and there's not so much that makes it recognizable as specifically a Swingle Singers album. It is not by coincidence that my favorite is Ward Swingle's arrangement of Cole Porter's "It's All Right With Me" (track 17): it dispenses with the instrumental ensemble altogether. The final song, "Tuxedo Junction" (track 22) is fine also for all its scatted rhythm. I prefer the Reflections album (and regret that for the three common tracks it was the later live version that was preferred; in fact, with at TT of 71 minutes, they could have fitted them, and who cares about the duplication, since the arrangements were presumably not the same?), although, for the same reasons - lyrics sung -, don't find that it is the most significant and interesting of the Swingle Singers. Only the first two tracks, Mozart's Marriage of Figaro overture and Bach's Fugue and the final, dazzling Rimsky-Korsakov Flight of the Bumblebee (enhanced by a fun left-to-right channel circulation of the sound) are purely scatted. Even the second Bach piece, "Bist du Bei Mir", track 3 (a song from the Anna-Magdalena Bach Notebook, the attribution to Bach is doubtful), is sung. Among of the "sung songs", the more dynamic ones are very entertaining ("Come Live With Me" track 4, "Oh Johnny!" track 6, "Fascinating Rhythm" track 7, "Country Dances" track 10) and come with their share of "dee-dums" under the lyrics, the others are Broadway or the Sinatra crooning type, and as well-sung as they are, I find that the Swingle Singers sound here just like a fine A Cappella group, not like the unique Swingle Singers.

As usual with the albums of the Swingle Singers, the product info is very terse about the origins of the songs (many of which had their flash of glory in the 1970s and are now forgotten), and if you are not very knowledgeable in Jazz and pops from the 1970s and 80s or earlier you need to do some research on the Internet. Here at least they give the family names of the song writers, which makes the search a bit easier.

Reflections

4. "Come Live With Me" is an original composition of Ward Swingle, on words by Marlowe - you know, the contemporary of Shakespeare (you know, the contemporary of Marlowe) ?

5. "All the Things You Are" by Oscar Hammerstein II (lyrics) and Jerome Kern, written for the musical "Very Warm for May" (1939)

6. "Oh Johnny!" by Abe Olman and Ed Rose, Bonnie Baker's greatest success, recorded with the Orrin Tucker Orchestra in 1939

7. "Fascinating Rhythm", Gershwin 1924. Interesting case: originally a song with lyrics by Ira Gershwin, brilliantly arranged by Bill Russo for the Big Band of Stan Kenton, now brilliantly arranged by Swingle for voices with Jon Hendricks contributing brilliant "vocalese" lyrics expanding Ira's.

8. "Just One of Those Things", Cole Porter for the 1935 musical Jubilee

9. "London by Night", Carroll Coates, made famous by Sinatra in his album Come Fly By Me (1958)

10. "Country Dances", a medley of traditional American songs

Live At Ronnie Scotts

12. "Route 66" by Bobby Troup (1946, famously recorded the same year by Nat King Cole, but the Swingles' arrangement is much more pop)

13. "Children of the Ghetto" by Chris & Eddie Amoo from the album "4 from 8" (1977) by the Black British soul band "The Real Thing"

14. "L'Il Darling" by Lambert Hendricks & Ross on their 1958 album with Basie (the second one, [[ASIN:B000002UX8 Sing Along With Basie]]). Very typical to see the "new" Swingles pick up that song, because it was Lambert-Hendricks and Ross' unique invention to do exactly the opposite of the original Swingle group, inventing lyrics on arrangements of instrumental pieces, the so-called jazz "vocalese" (a tradition pursued in French by the Paris Double Six, in which Swingle had originally been a member, ([[ASIN:B00002MIQM Les Double Six]]). The Swingle's arrangement is fine, but there's even more sensuous abandon in the original.

15. "The Dry Cleaner from Des Moines" by Joni Mitchell (Lyrics) and Charles Mingus (music), from her album in collaboration with Mingus, titled "Mingus" (1979)

16. "Mean to Me", a popular song with music by Fred E. Ahlert and lyrics by Roy Turk, published in 1929 and a standard recorded by Doris Day (you can see her on You Tube, an excerpt from the movie "Love Me or Leave Me" , Ella Fitzgerald, Linda Ronstadt

17. "It's All Right with Me", Cole Porter, from the 1953 musical Can-Can, also a standard recorded by Eroll Garner, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald (an early video with Nat King Cole is on You Tube), Tom Waits. This one is the only purely A Cappella track from the Ronnie Scotts recital

18. "Moon Over Bourbon Street", Sting, from his 1985 album (his first solo album after the disbandment of The Police) The Dream of the Blues Turtle. The arrangement sung by The Swingle Singers has its own charm, but it's no match for the original song; they could be singing anything - he's truly the vampire (or is it a werewoolf?)

19. "Boplicity", originally a Miles Davis-Gil Evans collaboration on the album "Birth of the Cool" (1949), adapted in French vocalese by Mimi Perrin from Les Double Six, and I realized only after establishing that that The Swingle Singers were singing in French. They should have translated it back in English.

20. "Round Midnight", the famous Thelonius Monk 1944 standard, lyrics (later) added by Cootie Williams and Bernie Hanighen

21. Strange - and misleading - that the product info should credit the song "Sweet Nothing" to "Self". That would be "Sweet Nothin's", by Ronnie Self, which the recording by the 16-year old rockabilly singer Brenda Lee turned into a chart-making success in 1960. But in fact that's absolutely not the song sung by The Swingle Singers. They sing, indeed, "Sweet Nothing" by the group "Working Week", a British jazz-dance band of the 1980s and 1990s, from their 1985 debut album "Working Nights", all titles by the band members Larry Stabbins and Simon Booth. Sometimes when I do all that research, I wonder if it is really worth it.

22. And finally: ""Tuxedo Junction" is a song co-written by Birmingham, Alabama composer Erskine Hawkins and saxophonist and arranger Bill Johnson. Julian Dash is also credited for the music. The song was introduced by Hawkins's orchestra. Lyrics were by Buddy Feyne. This original version, by the Erskine Hawkins Orchestra rose to number 7 on the national hit parade. Glenn Miller and His Orchestra had the most successful recording of the song in a best-selling (Billboard Number 1) record, RCA Bluebird B-10612-A, in 1939 in an arrangement by Glenn Miller. It was covered by numerous bands and Swing orchestras and solo artists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Frankie Avalon and Joe Jackson, and became the theme song for The Manhattan Transfer, first recorded on their album The Manhattan Transfer in 1975". Thanks Wikipedia for making these searches so easy!

Ultimately, I'm not sure it is worthwhile to break one's piggy bank for this CD. Except for Porter's "It's All Right with Me", The Ronnie Scotts program doesn't represent the Swingle Singers at their most significant and, to me, enjoyable. But the Porter song is also on the Live in New York 1982 CD, together with most of the tracks from the Reflections album that are significant and/or highly enjoyable: the Bach Fugue (although in the earlier arrangement, without the jazzy vocal percussion), the Rimsky, Ward Swingle's original composition, Gershwin's Fascinating Rhythm and the Country Dances medley (as well as Porter's "Just One of those Things" and the "Lil' Darlin'" track from Live at Ronnie Scottss, with Ward Swingle playing the piano but purely vocal percussion rather than the real percussion of Ronnie Scottss). The later group (with the help also of the Ronnie Scottss warmer sonics) is a more sensuous ensemble (only four members are shared, two gals and two boys) and the country dances are sung with slightly more verve and character, but it's something you notice only on careful comparison, and then, at the time of writing, the price of the 1982 recital is much cheaper (but hurry! Only one copy left!). The Bach Fugue was a favorite of the ensemble, I've counted in all six different recordings of it. The most accessible version is the one on the Virgin Bach album, [[ASIN:B000002SQC Bach Hits Back]], in the later arrangement with vocal percussion (where it comes also with the Bach song). The Rimsky is another Swingle's favorite, featured on the Live New York 1982 and Reflections but also three other albums, but one has never been reissued on CD and the two others are on the Swing label, either not listed on this website or selling even more expensive than this one. The Overture to the Marriage of Figaro is on the 1972 Four Seasons album, with real percussions ([[ASIN:B0001ZA1LC Les Quatre Saisons]]): for once, I prefer the later version, and much to my surprise the group hasn't re-recorded it, not even on their 1991 Mozart album for which it would have been an obvious candidate. But ultimately the only track from Reflections whose absence would be regrettable is "Oh Johnny!". It's fun, and apparently the Swingles have not recorded it elsewhere.


title: There is too much with the three principals that is less than ideally suited to the roles to make this a top-drawer Aida

text:
For a great Aida you need, first and foremost, three great voices. If, incidentally, you can get great comprimarios, great chorus, great orchestra and imaginative conducting, it does no harm, although it is not entirely indispensable. But if you have all the latter and some shortcomings in the former, it won't do.

Birgit Nilsson is not who you'd expect as an Aida. She had been singing it a lot on stage and wanted to commit her interpretation for eternity. But what can be great for the one-off kick of a night at the opera might not bear well when put directly side by side with the recorded competition. Indeed the voice lacks a kind of Italianate warmth, it has an almost vibrato-less kind of emission and a diamond-sharp incisiveness that is easier associated with Brünnhilde or even Turandot - and try CD 1 track 25 at 0:42: what I hear there is the kind of sound like that of the Ondes Martenot, associated to the attack of Martians in the cheap sci-fi movies of the 1950s. Hard not to laugh once you've made the connection in your mind. There are a few instances also where the articulation of the words is slack in the upper reaches, but that's a detail. Still, given the not insignificant proviso that Nilsson doesn't sound entirely germane to the Verdian vocal color and technique (and Nilsson recognized that - but after all it can be accepted that Ethiopians don't sing like Egyptians) and, especially in the final duet with Corelli, lacks the kind of innocence that would make it truly moving, her voice is impressive, with a purity I can associate with Aida, and it gloriously soars over the texture in the great ensembles of the first and second act. I've read comments here and there that in the role Nilsson was somewhat "placid" and inexpressive. Not at all. Just try her "pieta, pieta", CD 2 track 6 at 3:54: with singing as expressive, you don't need to see any acting, it's all in the voice. And isn't that passage, when Aida begs her father not to disown her, strikingly reminiscent of Sieglinde-Wotan?

You can say that Corelli is well suited to Nilsson - he too has a razor-sharp emission, that could drill through the walls of the great Giza pyramid. Not that he is incapable of dynamic nuance, and at the end of "Celeste Aida" for instance he attacks his finale b-flat fortissimo, but manages to diminish it to the pp indicated in the score - most tenors take it all forte. But the voice is rather monochromatic, lacking the softer and warmer shades of a Björling or a Bergonzi, better in valiance than tenderness. The Nilsson-Corelli duet would be in fact ideal for Turandot-Calaf I think (and they recorded it together of course, [[ASIN:B000002SE0 Puccini: Turandot]]). And, of course, you have to accept that this Radames has a strong lisp (Bergonzi dit too, but less pronounced, [[ASIN:B000KLRUKC Verdi: Aida]]). Maybe THAT's why they all pine for him. `Hey, honey, wanna read my lisp?" Absurdly, Corelli doesn't sing the beginning his counter-melody at the end of his final duet with Amneris in Act IV, CD 2 track 12 at 6:12 ("immense joy..."), singing only at 6:22 the now senseless end of the phrase ("...the heart will have" - in fact I'm not sure what he sings there are the written words; I hear him sing not "il cor avra" but "si compira", the end of Amneris' phrase, ["my revenge] will be carried through", which makes even less sense). Nilsson also doesn't sing her own final accompanying phrase, "a noi si schiude il ciel / the sky opens for us" in the tomb duet with Radames, CD 2 track 18 at 2:14. Probably didn't want to steal the show from Corelli. Verdi happens to have judged otherwise.

I'm not convinced by the adequacy of Bumbry's vocal color to the character and demands of Amneris. For the premiere in Cairo Verdi insisted on having a true mezzo-soprano (ultimately he didn't get it) and Bumbry isn't. You can almost fancy that she could sing the part of Aida, the voice isn't dark and burnished enough, and the contrast with Aida not pronounced enough (it may be simplistic, but it is effective, the usual quartet, soprano-tenor-mezzo-baritone, you have it in Carmen, you have it in Lohengrin, you have it everywhere). I wouldn't matter if her characterization brought something revelatory about the role, but I don't hear anything here either that is out of the ordinary - which doesn't mean it's bad, only that there is nothing outstanding and revelatory about it. I even find her final imprecation against the priests a bit placid and lacking fury (CD 2 track 15), and I also hear cases of breath intakes that show poor understanding of Italian syntax and of what exactly she is singing (like CD 1 track 16 at 0:19, "the mourning that bears on your [] heart with you I share" - no way, if you need to breathe in, it is after "heart", not before). And her "moooooo-rire!", CD 2 track 12 at 2:11, accenting the first syllable of "morire" rather than the second, is atrocious (sure, an "O" is easier to sing than an "I", but shortly after, at 3:29, Corelli does sing his high B on "ch'io VI-va", not "ch'iOOOOOO viva": it CAN be done).

The comprimari are fine, including the outstanding Amonasro of Mario Sereni (to be outstanding an Amonasro needs to have both the lyricism of "rivedrai le foreste imbalsamate" and the violence of "su, dunque! sorgete egizie coorti"). As is sometimes the case, it is Ramfis (Bonaldo Giaotti) who is cast as a basso profundo rather than, as asked for by Verdi, the Pharaoh (Ferrucio Mazzoli), which may be clever since, all told, Ramfis is a more interesting and developed part. The chorus is fine too, more valiant than refined which is not out-of-character, maybe a bit undernourished for the men's religious choruses to be as atmospheric as they can (as at the beginning of the Act I finale, CD 1 track 10 at 0:37 and all those "We invoke Thee, All-mighty Ftah" of Act I").

Mehta had made something of a specialty of Aida in Montreal, Florence and elsewhere in the 1960s. His conducting is no-nonsense, but somewhat prosaic at times I find. In his favor I hold that he usually moves forward with fine dramatic flair, and is usually fairly observant of the score's metronome marks, with few of the idiosyncrasies (e.g. very deliberate, to the point of dangerously verging on the plodding sometimes) of a Karajan, at least as regards tempo choices. In a way this is the "student's version" of Aida: it will give the listener a good idea of what Verdi had in mind while composing it. When Mehta strays, it is usually for the better. As everybody else he lingers a little too much in the Amneris recitatives at the beginning of Act I (CD 1 tracks 5 & 6), the opening ladies' chorus of Act II sounds more like a session of aerobics with Jane Fonda than like lusciously singing about the return for love of the victorious warrior, and some of his dynamics are bizarre, as CD 1 track 16 at 2:37, where he has the violins play forte and very assertively: Verdi marks them piano. The trumpets of the triumphal march are piercing as Corelli's voice. The various spatialisation effects, chorus, priests and priestesses singing from afar, are well done.

The recording dates from 1967, and the sound is excellent. Thanks to Mehta's fastish tempos the music is ideally dispatched on the two CDs, with Acts I & II on CD 1 and III & IV on CD 2, and the cueing is abundant. These voices are certainly impressive, and for a night at the opera, this would have been a terrific evening. But in the more competitive field of recordings, where one has the choice of five or ten simultaneous terrific nights at the opera, there is too much with these three principals that is not ideally suited to the roles to make this a version of reference. It is a more version for Nilsson's Aida, Corelli's Radames or Bumbry's Amneris than for Verdi's Aida. On this French release there is no libretto, just a synopsis of the opera - in French. At the time of writing the cheapest-selling entry for this recording is [[ASIN:B003DX95NY Verdi: Aida]].


title: Incredible, unique. A version of extremes, a combination of Heifetzian urgency, Russian lyricism and end-of-the-world stillness

text:
Deutsche Grammophon, which now holds the rights to the Westminster catalog, announced the reissue of this recording in 2010 and it must have been imminent since an entry was created on Amazon, [[ASIN:B001PU6SQE Schubert: String Quintet In C Major D.956]], but apparently, and for reasons unknown, never carried through. I was listening to the Borodin Quartet's 1994 recording of Schubert's Quintet ([[ASIN:B000000SNN Schubert: String Quintet]]), marked in its outer movements by an unrelenting, almost Heifetzian urgency, but never at the expense of a wonderful lyricism, and I reflected that another Russian group, Oleg Kagan and friends live in 1989, had also adopted a similar approach ([[ASIN:B00005BI5G Schubert: String Quintet Op. 163]]); so I wondered if it might be a Russian thing, this combination of extreme urgency and great lyricism. Not that such an approach would have been limited to Russian performers, of course, and other than Heifetz' recording in 1961 (but here I find that there is a razor-sharp shrillness that kills the lyricism, see my review of [[ASIN:B00000E6GQ Quintet in C]]), it is one that can be traced back to the 1941 Budapest Quartet and the 1951 Hollywood Quartet (product links in the comments section) and that was illustrated in the 1970s, at least in their respective first movement, by the Hungarian Quartet and the Vienna-based Weller Quartet. But then, the question was not whether ONLY Russian performers examplified such an interpretive approach, but whether ALL Russian performers did. But of course my statistical panel was too narrow to draw valid conclusions, and I lamented the absence of the Taneyev-Rostropovich recording - Rostropovich's first, before the two he made with the Melos Quartet in 1977 ([[ASIN:B000001G6G Schubert: String Quintet In C Major, D. 956]] ) and the Emerson Quartet live in 1990 ([[ASIN:B000001GFA Schubert: String Quintet in C, d. 956]]).

But then I thought of checking if it wasn't available on download somewhere, and bingo, someone has uploaded it a year ago on YouTube. And double bingo. The first movement isn't urgent, it is breathless. Now, I realized that part of that was due to the fact that the uploaded recording runs a semi-tone too high (often the case with turntables). Well, gratitude then to the people who designed Audacity and made it available for free, a little bit of fiddling, playing by ear in comparison with the Borodin Quartet's recording and I lowered the speed by 3%. It does make a difference of 30 seconds on the first movement's 17:27 on You Tube. Still, even at the right pitch and slower speed, the timing of Taneyev Quartet's first movement, up to the repeat bar, 4:39, comes within seconds of Heifetz's: 4:34.

I am otherwise a huge fan of Heifetz, of the urgency he brings to everything, which to my ears translates in no loss of lyricism but makes the lyricism even more intense and searing rather than sentimental, but I've hated his recording of Schubert's Quintet so much that I've sold it away - and twice I've tried, twice sold it. There I found that it wasn't so much urgency as a mad rush, to the point of caricature, the sonic equivalent of those old movies shot at 20 images per second and projected at 25.

I never get that feeling with Taneyev. First, there was a dryness and boxiness to the sonics of Heifetz that made it unbearably shrill and aggressive, not so here. Second, while Heifetz maintained his mad rush from the repeat bar to the end of the movement, tossing it off in 8:13, Taneyev, while maintaining the urgency, are more flexible, taking here 8:37, which puts them in the same league as Archibudelli in 1990 (see comments for the product link) and the 1989 Kagan ensemble (and, for the second part, the Borodin Quartet - their exposition was slightly more spacious). But then, this is not a determining consideration, since I didn't get the same impression as with Heifetz even hearing the Taneyev on You Tube, which made them almost as fast here again: 8:22. So, third: within their urgent tempo, they sing, they let the phrases soar and vibrate, in a manner that in my recollection eluded the Heifetz group entirely (obviously I don't have the CD anymore to check again).

Sure, the very urgency seems to disregard Schubert's "Allegro MA NON TROPPO" indication, but in view of the results, it doesn't matter. What it produces is a harrowing vehemence, an unparalleled dramatic intensity, chords cracking like whiplashes,  the sense of a breathless race to the abyss as if the players' lives were at stake. The Taneyevs don't linger on the second subject (at 1:42 on You Tube) but bring out the phrases' songfulness through their phrasings and tone and, as Schubert develops these lyrical themes and combines them with his dramatic mottos, I find the lyricism all the more intense, in the best Heifetz manner, that there is always a feeling of anxiety to it, of crying for help. One small point I noted is that, as in 1977, Rostropovich seems loath to play staccato, even when Schubert writes it, thus making the textures sound heavier than they should. But it doesn't matter much here, given the intensity of the performance.

Thanks to the person who uploaded the recording, I've learned two things. First, I had thought that the recording dated from 1974 or a little earlier, but it turns out that 1974 was only the year of publication of this LP in the West by Wesminster: the recording was made in 1963, something I found confirmation from other sources as well. Second, I had thought that the first versions to play the first movement repeat on LP were the Tatrai Quartet (Hungaroton, [[ASIN:B000009I4P Franz Schubert - String Quintet in C Major (Hungaroton / White Label)]]) and Alberni Quartet (Crd, [[ASIN:B000027Q0D Schubert: String Quintet In C Major- Op 163-D956]]) both from 1975: until then, with a first movement lasting typically circa 14 to 15 minutes and a slow movement anywhere between 13 and 15:30, adding the circa 5 minutes of the repeat would have exploded the time limitations of an LP-side, and made it necessary to split the sublime slow movement between the two sides. Interrupt the slow movement? Not on your life, they all, sensibly, prefered to sacrifice the first-movement repeat. It turns out that I was wrong again: the first ones to play the repeat were the Taneyev Quartet. But in fact, reading an interview of Rostropovich in The Gramophone (April 2007), I understand how they did it: the slow movement was split between both sides. You don't hear it on the You Tube transfer, either because whoever did the transfer did it tastefully, or because by 1974 Westminster (which is the source used for the upload) was able to put the two first movements on one side. Incidentally, the recording was also licensed in Europe by Ariola/Eurodisc (see uploaded photo) and here also they fit the two movements on side A - but only because they cut out the first movement repeat, shame shame shame!

If Westminster was able to fit the first two movements, first-movement repeat included, on one side, it certainly wasn't because (as was the case with the Tatrai Quartet) the Taneyevs played the slow movement so briskly that, added to their first movement tempi, it made if manageable on an LP. On the contrary. Whatever my criticisms of Heifetz, one thing you can't deny is that he was consistent. He madly rushed not only through fhe first movement, but through all. Other than an interesting but ultimately failed experiment by the Smetana Quartet in 1973 (limited only to the slow movement, see product link in the comments section), his Adagio was the fastest ever recorded. Not so with Taneyev. They go for maximum contrast, for interpretive extremes. After playing one of the swiftest first movements ever, they segue into THE slowest Adagio ever. Interestingly, when he re-recorded the Quintet with the Melos Quartet in 1977, Rostropovich offered an Adagio that seemed uniquely slow, and with sonorous cello pizzicatti evoking the tolling of some death knell. But it was all there already in 1963, and in their opening section the two recordings are strikingly similar, in tempo and expression, to the second even in their respective timing up to the middle agitated section. Until I heard Taneyev, I had thought that the 1986 Lindsay Quartet had established the record of the slowest Adagio, going one step further than Melos: and indeed, their opening movement is markedly slower still (6:26, to Melos and Taneyev's 5:55, [[ASIN:B0000030Q8 Schubert: String Quintet in C, D. 956]]). But where Taneyev stands out is in the middle, agitated section, in which they keep a very slow tempo; Melos here adopted a normally "fast" pace (section played in 2:56). Lindsay was oustanding for keeping it slow (3:24). To give an idea of the range of possibilities, the slowest in the many I'd heard was the Marlboro ensemble, 3:39, and the fastest the Smetana Quartet, 2:34. Most versions are anywhere between 2:50 and 3:15. Taneyev: an egregious 4:00.

Does it feel sluggish, plodding, soporiphic? Not a second. Here again there is a harrowing vehemence to the music. It is not a cry of revolt (as it sounds in the other versions), it is a cry of pain. And when ends the agitated section, the bridge passage to the return of the Adagio proper sounds not so much like a violin softly weeping over ascending cello scales, as the music floating into oblivion.

The Taneyev's Scherzo is less out-of-the-ordinary - which doesn't mean it is less good, played with great energy and at a relatively brisk tempo, and all repeats are taken, an option not customary in those years. The middle trio offers moments of haunting hushness. Like the first movement, the Finale is brisker than Schubert's "Allegretto" might seem to imply, and played with an unrelenting urgency that points back to the recordings of the Budapest and Hollywood Quartets and has not been emulated since... except by the Kagan group and Borodin Quartet. So there MUST be something to Russian performers after all. Maybe they grew up listening to the Taneyev's recording (I don't suppose the bins of the Soviet record shops were filled with much diversity back then) and it became like a second nature to them. The Taneyev's Finale is also played with a raging vigor verging almost on violence, with practically no slowing down on the second subject at 0:54, and with very little if any of the coying charm brought to the music by more "Viennese-inspired" ensembles. And that is fine: "charm" would have seemed totally out of place here.

As is clear I think, this will be nobody's "standard" version. It is a version of extremes - very Russian indeed. But that is precisely where lies its value: it is absolutely unique. Reaction will be a matter of individual taste. I find it, on its own terms, entirely convicing, and a version I've wanted to return to, more than any I've listened to in a long time. Deutsche Grammophon, can you carry through, please?