Herman D. Koppel

Herman D. Koppel

Nineteen years ago this month, the world of Danish music lost one of its last living links with Carl Nielsen in the passing of pianist and composer Herman David Koppel (1908-1998). (His brother was the violinist Julius Koppel.) Of Jewish heritage, Koppel, who had to flee Denmark in 1943 when the Nazis placed the country under direct military occupation, had considered Nielsen a mentor and had played the composer's piano works in his presence. Koppel made multiple recordings of Nielsen's piano music, of which these appear to be among the first:

Nielsen: Theme and Variations, Op. 40 and Chaconne, Op. 32
Herman D. Koppel, piano
Recorded December 13, 1940
HMV DB 5252 through DB 5254, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 65.99 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 40.48 MB)

Koppel died on Bastille Day, and here he is playing French music - only the second recording ever made of Poulenc's delightful Trio (after the composer's own, for Columbia, in 1928):

Poulenc: Trio for Oboe, Bassoon and Piano (1926)
Waldemar Wolsing, oboe; Carl Bloch, bassoon; Herman D. Koppel, piano
Recorded c. 1950
Metronome CL 3000 and CL 3001, two 10-inch 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC file, 32.22 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 18.71 MB)

Metrnonome Records was an independent Swedish label founded in 1949 by two jazz enthusiasts, brothers Anders and Lars Burman. This was one of their few classical issues.

Two More by the Coolidge Quartet

Robert McBride

I recently acquired two more recordings by the Coolidge Quartet (William Kroll and Nicolai Berezowsky, violins; Nicholas Moldavan, viola; Victor Gottlieb, cello), and with them, I am about halfway to having a complete collection of the issued commercial recordings of this unjustly neglected ensemble. For the first one, which is the only single-record issue in the Coolidges' discography that I can trace, they are joined by Arizona-born composer-oboist Robert McBride (1911-2007), who gained some fame as a young man for writing pieces with catchy, evocative titles such as "Jingle Jangle", "Swing Stuff", etc. Arthur Fiedler promoted him on records with the Boston Pops before discovering Leroy Anderson (Youtube has his recording of "Fugato on a Well-Known Theme" here). His Oboe Quintet, despite its academic title, inhabits the same lighthearted world; it's in a single jazzy movement marked With kick:

Robert McBride: Quintet for Oboe and Strings (1937)
Robert McBride, oboist, with the Coolidge Quartet
Recorded October 27, 1939
Victor 2159, one 10-inch 78-rpm record
Link (FLAC file, 13.52 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 8.70 MB)

The other Coolidge item here is more self-explanatory; it's the third installment of their ill-fated Beethoven quartet cycle:

Beethoven: Quartet No. 3 in D Major, Op. 18, No. 3
The Coolidge Quartet
Recorded October 27, 1939
Victor Musical Masterpiece set M-650, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 45.64 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 30.68 MB)

More Danish Chamber Music

Vagn Holmboe

During the Second World War, the Danish musicologist and critic Jürgen Balzer (1906-1976), acting in an advisory capacity to the Copenhagen branch of the Gramophone Company, established a recorded anthology of Danish music of all historical periods.  Under the aegis of this "Edition Balzer" some 50 works were recorded on 78-rpm records, including many small-scale gems of chamber music that could be accommodated complete on one record, as with the three examples I offer here:

Finn Høffding: Dialogues, Op, 10 (1927)
Waldemar Wolsing, oboe; P. Allin Erichsen, clarinet
Recorded c. January, 1951
HMV DB 5274, one 78-rpm record
Link (FLAC files, 50.17 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 27.43 MB)

Flemming Weis: Serenade Without Serious Intentions (1938)
Wind Quintet of 1932
Recorded Sept. 30, 1949
HMV DB 5293, one 78-rpm record
Link (FLAC file, 24.56 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 15.20 MB)

Vagn Holmboe: Serenata for flute, violin, cello and piano, Op. 18 (1940)
The Danish Quartet (Erling Bloch, violin)
Recorded c. Spring 1950
HMV DB 5297, one 78-rpm record
Link (FLAC file, 19.54 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 13.50 MB)

Of these three composers, Holmboe (1909-1996), pictured above in characteristic pose with his pipe, is by far the best known; his music, including 13 symphonies and 20 string quartets, has been disseminated fairly widely since the advent of CD, but this unpublished three-movement Serenata does not appear to have been recorded since.  Høffding (1899-1997), who was Holmboe's teacher at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, specialized in music for amateur performers, and excerpts from his "Dialogues" have been presented by several students on Youtube videos.  There are five movements, which are presented in a different order on the record than in the published score; accordingly, I present two files containing the complete work in both orderings, and you can be the judge which sequence you prefer.  For me, the real find here is the delightful piece by Weis (1898-1981), a composer about whom I can find out very little, save that he trained as an organist and has two symphonies to his credit.  This one-movement serenade for wind quintet is in several contrasting sections, by turns wistful and dance-like, beginning and ending with a polka.

The Incomparable Leon Goossens - Postscript

Leon Goossens

My Christmas present to myself this year was a new turntable - an Audio-Technica LP120 3-speed direct drive unit - meaning that it will no longer be necessary for me to switch out between turntables to handle LPs and 78s (at least, I hope it won't be!).  Here is my first project using the new table: an LP featuring two oboe concertos played by the great Leon Goossens, as a kind of postscript to the transfers of concerto recordings by him that I offered earlier:

Bach-Tovey: Concerto in A, BWV 1055, for oboe d'amore and strings
Recorded June 1, 1949, and July 30, 1952
and
Vaughan Williams: Concerto for Oboe and Strings
Recorded June 16, July 7 and September 1, 1952

Leon Goossens, with the Philharmonia String Orchestra
conducted by Walter Susskind
HMV CLP 1656, one 12-inch LP record
Link (FLAC files, 96.04 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 50.18 MB)

No doubt both of these, like the earlier Goossens concerto recordings, would have been issued as English Columbia 78 sets had not the long-delayed launch of LP by EMI in September 1952 intervened.  As it was, both recordings had to wait eleven years for full issue.  In the case of the Bach, an incomplete issue actually did occur in 1953, on American Columbia (ML 4782) - apparently only the first three 78-rpm matrices of the required four were available to CBS, with the result that the concerto, on that release, cuts off about a minute into the finale!

My best wishes to everyone for a prosperous and collectingful New Year!

The Incomparable Leon Goossens

I started this blog over a year ago with some oboe recordings (by Mitch Miller), so it seems fitting that I should return to posting uploads of vintage recordings by celebrating that supreme exponent of the instrument, Leon Goossens (1897-1988).  I present no less than eight concertos recorded by him between 1937 and 1950, three of which I have offered before (on RMCR, in 2007 - the concertos by Albinoni, Vivaldi, and Scarlatti-Bryan).  I have decided to offer these uploads in two batches, one containing Baroque oboe concertos, and the other containing 20th-century works, both original and arrangements:

Part One:
Albinoni: Concerto in D, Op. 7, No. 6
Handel: Concerto No. 1 in B-Flat
Marcello: Concerto in C minor (& Fiocco: Arioso)
Vivaldi: Concerto in D minor, Op. 8, No. 9 (& Albinoni: Allegro)
Link (FLAC files, 108.4 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 46.11 MB)

Part Two:
Cimarosa-Benjamin: Concerto (& Bach: Sinfonia from "Easter Oratorio")
Eugene Goossens: Concerto in One Movement, Op. 45
Scarlatti-Bryan: Concerto No. 1 in G (& Pierné: Aubade)
Richard Strauss: Concerto for oboe and small orchestra
Link (FLAC files, 160.97 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 70.48 MB)

The Cimarosa, Marcello and Strauss recordings have had quite a bit of currency over the years, the others perhaps somewhat less so.  The conductors include Eugene Goossens, Leon's eldest brother (in the Handel, the earliest of these recordings), Malcolm Sargent (in the Cimarosa), Alceo Galliera (in the Strauss), and Walter Susskind (in the rest).

Eugene Goossens is also heard as a conductor on the following two recordings of Baroque arrangements, which I originally uploaded in 2007:

Bach-Goossens: Suite in G (after French Suites Nos. 3 and 5)
London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Eugene Goossens
Recorded June 25, 1931
HMV C 2273, one 78-rpm record
Link (FLAC file, 23.32 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 9.58 MB)

Scarlatti-Tommasini: The Good-Humoured Ladies - Ballet Suite
London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Eugene Goossens
Recorded June 29, 1936
RCA Victor Red Seal set M-512, two 78 rpm-records
Link (FLAC file, 43.89 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 23.03 MB)

Finally, one of the earliest recordings billing Leon Goossens as a soloist - again, this is a "reissue," having been originally uploaded in 2008:

Mozart: Oboe Quartet in F, K. 370
and
Bach: Sinfonia to Cantata No. 156
Leon Goossens, oboe, and the Spencer Dyke String Quartet
Recorded in May, 1925 by English Parlophone
National Gramophonic Society Q, R, S, three 10-inch 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 44.53 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 15.79 MB)

Happy 100th, Lady Barbirolli!

Monday will mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Evelyn Rothwell, latterly known as Lady Barbirolli (1911-2008), oboist (a student of Leon Goossens, with whom she shared a wonderfully expressive way of playing the instrument) and the wife of conductor Sir John Barbirolli.  They are both pictured above, in a photograph accompanying the Daily Telegraph's obituary of her, which can be read here; she died only three years ago, one day after her 97th birthday.  To celebrate her birthday, I present the first two recordings she made in collaboration with her husband, both oboe concertos arranged by him from works in other media by Corelli and Pergolesi.  (Actually, all but one of the movements of the Pergolesi arrangement are now thought to be by other composers.)  Here are the details:

Corelli (arr. Barbirolli): Concerto in F for oboe and strings
Recorded June 7, 1946
HMV C 3540, one 78-rpm record

Pergolesi (arr. Barbirolli): Concerto in C minor for oboe and strings
Recorded March 25, 1948
HMV C 3731, one 78-rpm record

Both by Evelyn Rothwell with the Hallé Orchestra conducted by John Barbirolli
Link (FLAC files, 41.96 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 17.78 MB)

The sources for both works are spelled out in text files accompanying the recordings.

The Barbirollis' third recorded collaboration, a 2-disc set of the Mozart Oboe Concerto from December, 1948, can be heard at the CHARM website.

Mitch Miller plays Handel

 

For this debut entry in my new blog, I wish to pay tribute to Mitch Miller, who passed away on Saturday, July 31, 2010, aged 99.  For Americans over a certain age he will always be associated with his series of "Sing Along With Mitch" LPs (and the television show which these inspired, which ran from 1961 to 1966).  One of my very first records, received with my very first record player (at Christmas 1965), was a 6-eyes Columbia LP of "Still More Sing Along with Mitch" which I am listening to in this photo:

 

Long before his career as a sing-along leader, however, Mitchell Miller (as he was billed on his classical recordings) was well-known for his fine oboe and English horn playing.  No less a conductor than Leopold Stokowski admired his playing, and when Stokowski conducted a recording of Dvorak's "New World" Symphony in 1947, he hired Mitch to play the famous English horn solo in the second movement, and insisted that Mitch be credited on the label, at a time when such credits were rarely given.  From 1935 to 1947 he was oboist in the Columbia Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra, who accompanies him on the first of two Handel recordings below:

Handel: Oboe Concerto No. 3 in G minor

Mitch Miller and the Columbia Broadcasting Symphony under Howard Barlow

Recorded June 19, 1939

Columbia 69660-D, one 78-rpm record

Link (FLAC file, 16.3 MB)

Link (MP3 file, 8.34 MB)

Handel: Oboe Sonata in G minor, Op. 1, No. 6

Mitch Miller, oboe; Yella Pessl, harpsichord

Recorded August 4, 1938 (information courtesy of Don Tait)

Victor 15378, one 78-rpm record

Link (FLAC file, 15.51 MB)

Link (MP3 file, 7.28 MB)

Both of these recordings have been transferred from my own 78-rpm shellac records (although, in the case of the Sonata, from a cassette copy, as I no longer own the record).