Happy Birthday, Denis Matthews!

Monday marks the 92nd birth anniversary of the British pianist Denis Matthews, who came to a sad end - he committed suicide on Christmas Day, 1988.  He was most famous for his recordings of Mozart and Beethoven, with at least eight of Mozart's concertos in his discography.  Here is the first of these, made in 1944, when he was in R.A.F. uniform:

Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 23 in A, K. 488
Denis Matthews with the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
conducted by George Weldon
Recorded August 28, 1944
English Columbia DX 1167 through DX 1169, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 64.79 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 27.79 MB)

A little over a year ago, I presented several single discs of Matthews playing solo works by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and John Field.  Here is another to add to that collection:

Bach: Prelude and Fugue No. 8 in E-Flat minor (Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I)
Denis Matthews, piano
Recorded April 25, 1949
English Columbia DX 1635, one 78-rpm record
Link (FLAC file, 21.54 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 9.66 MB)

According to CHARM, Matthews recorded at least five of the Bach "Well-Tempered Clavier" preludes and fugues, but only this one and the No. 1 in C were actually issued.  Matthews' Bach discography is rather meager, but it does include a fine version of the Triple Concerto in C, BWV 1064, with Edwin Fischer and Ronald Smith, from the Bach anniversary year of 1950, available on an EMI CD.

Handel Organ Concertos

This week I present several recordings of Handel organ concertos by two British organists that, decidedly, represent a bygone style of playing this music!  Featured first is George Dorrington Cunningham (1878-1948), who went by the rather unfortunate initials "G. D." (I wonder if they had the same connotations in those days?), and who was appointed Birmingham City Organist in 1924.  E. Power Biggs was one of his students.  His recordings of two Handel concerti, with George Weldon and the City of Birmingham Orchestra, were made late in his life, and exhibit a considerably beefier style of Handel playing than we are accustomed to today, with a big organ sound and a full symphonic-sized string orchestra accompaniment:

Handel: Organ Concerto No. 2 in B-Flat, Op. 4, No. 2 and

Handel: Organ Concerto No. 4 in F, Op. 4, No. 4

G. D. Cunningham (organ) and the

City of Birmingham Orchestra conducted by George Weldon

Recorded June 4, 1945

English Columbia DX 1358 through 1360, three 78-rpm records

Link (FLAC files, 59.19 MB)

Link (MP3 files, 25.99 MB)

If the Cunningham performances seem oversized, they're positively sedate compared to what follows.  Cunningham's student, and successor as Birmingham City Organist, was George Thalben-Ball (1896-1987), who here turns in a performance of Handel's Organ Concerto in B-Flat, Op. 7, No. 3, as arranged and orchestrated by Sir Henry J. Wood.  Thalben-Ball's playing is flamboyant, to say the least, and the Wood orchestration, for full symphony orchestra with brass and percussion, is certainly anachronistic but it's great fun!  Handel's original ordering of the movements is also altered, and this perfomance interpolates not only the Minuet from "Berenice" but also a big cadenza by Thalben-Ball that takes up most of the last side.

Handel: Organ Concerto No. 9 in B-Flat, Op. 7, No. 3 (arr. Henry J. Wood) and

Arne: Organ Concerto No. 6 in B-Flat - Allegro moderato

George Thalben-Ball (organ) and the

Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Walter Susskind

Recorded June 4, Sept. 23, and Oct. 11, 1948

HMV C 3814 through 3816, three 78-rpm records

Link (FLAC files, 59.9 MB)

Link (MP3 files, 27.31 MB)

Sir Henry Wood, of course, was a great conductor who left a fair number of recordings himself (though his recorded legacy hardly does him justice), and among these were several featuring Baroque music.  One of the very first uploads I ever offered, way back in the spring of 2007, was one of him conducting two Bach Brandenburg Concertos, and this is still available for those who may have missed it the first time:

Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G and

Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 in B-Flat

Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Henry J. Wood

Recorded June 16, 1932 (#3) and June 12, 1930 (#6)

Columbia 68084-D, 67842-D, and 67843-D, three 78-rpm records

Link (FLAC files, 53.32 MB)

Link (MP3 files, 20.4 MB)

Gladys Ripley sings "Sea Pictures"

This post features the British contralto Gladys Ripley (1908-1955), a beautiful woman with a beautiful voice, whose life, sadly, was cut short by throat cancer at the age of 47 (the age I am now!).  Here she sings Elgar's fine orchestral song cycle, "Sea Pictures" (composed in 1897-99) with, as a filler, a surprisingly gloomy song by Haydn, "The Spirit's Song" ("Hark! Hark what I tell to thee").  This 1946 recording features the collaboration of that greatly underrated conductor, George Weldon (1908-1963), who conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra.

Elgar: Sea Pictures, Op. 37 (+ Haydn: The Spirit's Song)
Gladys Ripley, contralto
Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by George Weldon
Recorded May 28, 1946
HMV C 3498 through C 3500, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 63.46 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 32.17 MB)

I have up several other George Weldon recordings with the orchestra of which he was Music Director from 1944 to 1951, the City of Birmingham Orchestra.  (That's Birmingham, England, of course - not Birmingham, Alabama! Those of us here in the Southern US have to be reminded of that periodically.)  The first of these is a new offering, and the others are re-uploads of transfers I made over three years ago; however, the Dvořák symphony upload now contains scans of the booklet for the set that I was unable to provide earlier.  Here are the details:

Sibelius: King Christian II Suite - Elegie and Musette
City of Birmingham Orchestra, conducted by George Weldon
Recorded March 22, 1945
Columbia DX 1220, one 78-rpm record
Link (FLAC files, 18.53 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 7.76 MB)

Edward German: Welsh Rhapsody
City of Birmingham Orchestra, conducted by George Weldon
Recorded April 16, 1945
Columbia DX 1274 and 1275, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC file, 43.43 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 19.7 MB)

Dvořák: Symphony No. 5 in F, Op. 76, and
Glinka: Ruslan and Ludmilla - Overture
City of Birmingham Orchestra, conducted by George Weldon
Recorded June 25-27, 1945 (Dvořák) and June 7, 1946 (Glinka)
Columbia DX 1315 through 1319, five 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 105.57 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 48.23 MB)

For those interested in reading further about George Weldon, there's a free downloadable biography (in PDF format) available here.