'one can hear the far too numerous twiddly bits'

Liszt: Fantasia on Hungarian Folk Themes S123 

Arthur de Greef, piano &

The Royal Albert Hall Orchestra

 conducted by Landon Ronald

HMV D523 & D528

(Matrix Nos. HO 4573af; Ho4574-2af; HO 4575af & HO 4576-3af)

Wednesday 27th October 1920

FLAC file 16bit [91Mb] or FLAC File 24bit [167Mb]

(If you are not familiar with FLAC I can recommend Foobar2000 player)

I have always had a fondness for Arthur de Greef's playing and don't mind posting something that has been reissued before. A few months ago APR produced a 3CD set of de Greef's recordings that included the 1927 electric remake of the 'Hungarian Fantasia.' This post is partly to supplement and advertise their reissue available here but also to test out an alternative method of making a transfer [more of which below]. I don't think I could add much to the excellent notes by Jonathan Summers for the APR issue that can be had here

The 1927 recording runs to 16m.12s. whereas the acoustic version is faster at 15m. There is in fact plenty of room left on three of the four sides so it was not a case of rushing the performance. The month before the recording de Greef had given a performance at the Proms with Henry Wood and the New Queen's Hall Orchestra on Saturday 11 September 1920.

Wood was contracted to Columbia and De Greef to HMV so there was no way they would have been able to make a recording together. The standard practise was for extended classical works to be issued over several months hence the numerical gap between the record numbers D523, issued in February, 1921, and D528 issued in March. In the May 1921 issue of Musical Times 'Discus' reviewed the records in his Gramophone Notes column :- 

'Another old friend turns up in Liszt's ' Hungarian' Fantasia, with de Greef at the pianoforte, and Landon Ronald and the Albert Hall Orchestra, H.M.V., two d.-s. records. The pianoforte tone is especially well reproduced - so well, in fact, that one can hear the far too numerous twiddly bits with patience. What a long while Liszt is getting under way in this work! One feels inclined to say, with Macbeth, 'Come, fellow, leave thy damnable faces, and begin.' Of these two records the first is the more enjoyable, not because it is a better record, but because the musical interest is on the whole greater. But the pair should be in the cabinet of all who want a particularly good sample of pianoforte-cum orchestra.'

I have taken a somewhat different approach to this transfer than others on the blog, the sound is slightly noisier but I hope it is also a lot clearer and more balanced. This 'new process' is a work very much in progress, so any comments on it would be appreciated. I have the usual version of FLAC file at 44.1Khz 16bit but the 24bit version is better sound a lot better with less surface noise, although the downside is it is almost twice a large.

Dual Alliance

The Dual Alliance, I here you ask what is he on about, was a defensive alliance between Germany and Austria-Hungary, which was created by treaty on October 7, 1879 as part of Bismarck's system of alliances to prevent/limit war, sort of fell apart in 1918 but this  last throw of the dice did produced some good recordings - also the Austrian Schubert and the Hungarian Liszt was a dual alliance of sorts - history lesson over, phew.

Satyr at 78 toeren klassiek has made available a whole shelf of electrical recording under Leo Blech so this earlier acoustic recording is really dedicated to his hard work.

Schubert-Liszt:  Ungarischer Marsch
(From Divertissement a l'hongrois D. 818)

Kapelle des Staats-Theater Opernhaus, Berlin
Conducted by Leo Blech

DGA 69554 [040938/9] 

[1165m & 1166m]
1917

1 Flac  file HERE at Mediafire. [about 17Mb].

Liszt's piano arrangement is more readily recorded and performed than this orchestral version. Leo Blech recorded it both acoustically and electrically the latter version must have been abbreviated as it was reduced to one side as a filler on HMV D 1987.

During the dark days of the First World War  Kapelle das Stadst-Theaters Opernhaus under Leo Blech recorded quite a number of compositions of German, Austrian, Hungarian and Czech composers, just as in Britain, British compositions started to be recorded, most notably the start of the relationship between Elgar and the gramophone

The 'royal' was no longer appropriate after the collapse of the German Empire in 1918, the Opera was renamed Staatsoper Unter den Linden and the Königliche Kapelle became Kapelle der Staatsoper. Whatever name it chose to call itself we today know it as the Staatsoper Unter den Linden or Berlin Opera House orchestra today.

Although this has nothing to do with the music the orchestra or Blech  I will bore you for a minute on briefly outline how these records entered the UK. In 1914 The Gramophone Co. Ltd lost control Deutsche Grammophon Aktiengesellschaft [DGA] when it was seized as enemy property and sold by the German government to Polyphon who subsequently developed as an  independent entity. The Gramophone Co. Ltd also lost the use of the HMV trade mark's use in Germany to Polyphon and although the Versailles Treaty allowed the return of all matrices recorded before the outbreak of war everything recorded subsequently by DGA remained with the German company.  This record was pressed during that interregnum period after armistice but before the  final arbitration ruling on 22 July 1924 up until which time Germany continued  export with the HMV Trademark to countries that had been neutral during the war. After the a courts ruling records appeared for export under the Polydor label created specifically for this purpose.

Surprising anything actually got recorded, pressed and marketed in those confusing times; normally this record should have had the trade mark overlaid to hid the dog and gramophone. One example I have has it scratched out with a knife!