12-10: The Band : NY Palladium 1976 - Henry Cowell Piano Music : Cowell 1963 - Heifetz : Sibelius Concerto 1935 / Tchaikovsky Concerto 1937 - Il Giardino di Giulio Caccini 2003

Not shown above: Friedrich Franz Hurka, Dieudonné-Pascal Pieltain, Mariano Obiols i Tramullas & Pablo Hernández y Salces

1618 – Giulio Caccini (Italian composer, lutenist, gambist, harpist, singer, author & teacher, a pioneer of opera)
1665 – Tarquinio Merula (Italian composer, organist & violinist)
1805 – Friedrich Franz Hurka [František Václav Hůrka] (Czech tenor & composer, active in Germany)
1826 – Benedikt Schack [Žák] (Czech tenor & composer, active in Austria, friend of Mozart & creator of Tamino in Die Zauberflöte)
1833 – Dieudonné-Pascal Pieltain (Belgian violinist & composer)
1877 – Federico Ricci (Italian composer & teacher, brother of Luigi)
1888 – Mariano Obiols i Tramullas (Spanish composer)
1910 – Pablo Hernández y Salces (Spanish composer)
1921 – Viktor Jacobi (Hungarian operetta composer)
1938 – Mario Pilati (Italian composer, music critic & teacher)
1939 – Wilhelm Grosz (Austrian composer, pianist & conductor, active in the UK & US, "Red Sails in the Sunset")
1965 – Henry Cowell (American composer, music theorist, pianist & teacher)
1966 – Boris Koutzen (Russian-born American violinist, composer & teacher)
1967 – Brasílio Itiberê da Cunha Luz (Brazilian folklorist, composer & author)
1967 – Otis Redding (American soul singer, songwriter, producer, arranger & talent scout)
1967 – Ron Caldwell, Carl Cunningham, Phalin Jones & Jimmy King (members of American R&B group the Bar-Kays)
1969 – Franco Capuana (Italian conductor)
1969 – Leigh Harline (American film composer, "When You Wish Upon A Star")
1982 – Roy Webb (American film composer, The Magnificent Ambersons, I Walked with a Zombie, Notorious, Mighty Joe Young)
1986 – Kate Wolf (American folk singer, songwriter & guitarist)
1987 – Jascha Heifetz (Lithuanian-born American violinist)
1991 – Headman Shabalala (South African singer, Ladysmith Black Mambazo)
1994 – George van Renesse (Dutch pianist & conductor)
1995 – Darren Robinson [Buffy, Buff Love, DJ Doctor Nice] (American rapper & beatboxer, The Fat Boys)
1996 – John Duffey (American bluegrass singer & mandolinist, The Country Gentlemen)
1997 – Violet Carlson (American comedienne, actress, singer & dancer)
1999 – Rick Danko (Canadian rock & folk bass guitarist, singer, songwriter & multi-instrumentalist, The Band)
2008 – Didith Reyes (Filipino actress & singer)

This is getting really difficult. And I don't just mean finding links for you. (Some of the hosts have now gone into a kind of lockdown mode, where only those who uploaded a file can download it.) I'm talking about all the carnage, too! Heifetz, Otis Redding and most of his backing band, Henry Cowell... Rick Danko... it smarts something awful.

11-27a: RODZINSKI / REEDER ROUNDUP! Mussorgsky | Tchaikovsky | Sibelius | Richard Strauss | Shostakovich AND MORE...

The main post for 11-27 will follow, but first here are a bunch of transfers of Columbia 78s featuring the work of Artur Rodziński (d. Nov. 27, 1958), all made by the trusty F. Reeder over at the Internet Archive. A few of these I believe we've seen already, but at least a couple dozen we haven't, and I found it too difficult to choose from them... so I'll leave that up to you!

Rodziński is most famous for his legendary decade with the Cleveland Orchestra, from 1933 to 1943. Much of the credit usually given to the tyrannical George Szell for transforming that orchestra into the world-class organization it is today should really be reserved for Rodziński; for without the prior groundwork he laid the Clevelanders would not have been up to Szell's exacting demands. Rodziński also had four great seasons in New York with the Philharmonic, and as guest conductor for Toscanini's NBC Symphony, which Rodziński had helped to organize in 1936–37.

Rodziński's later years, first in New York, and then in an abortive stint at the Chicago Symphony in 1947–48, were characterized by a lot of personal wrangling with orchestra management. His reputation as a conductor was such that his resignation from the New York Philharmonic was actually a cover story for Time magazine in February 1947:

After Chicago, Rodziński had no further long-term positions in his career; he did do quite a bit of freelance work, especially in the opera pit, both in the United States and in Europe. And it's perhaps because of this somewhat sour end to his professional life that he isn't remembered as well as some of his contemporaries, even though he was certainly at least their equal as a musician.

He was tall; he used a big baton; he preferred brisk tempi; he was renowned wherever he mounted the podium for his muscular yet refined interpretations. Enjoy these recordings by this too-little-lauded master of the orchestra!

10-24c: Carl Ruggles Complete / Tilson Thomas 1980 - Oistrakh : Khachaturian | Sibelius Concertos 1965 - Oistrakh / Richter : Shostakovich | Franck Sonatas 1969

1971 – Fernand Quinet (Belgian composer & conductor)
1971 – Carl Ruggles (American composer, conductor, violinist, teacher & painter)
1974 – David Oistrakh [Дави́д О́йстрах] (Ukrainian violinist & conductor)
1976 – Richard Sturzenegger (Swiss composer & cellist)
2005 – Joy Clements (American lyric coloratura soprano)
2007 – Petr Eben (Czech composer, organist & pianist)
2008 – Moshe Cotel (American composer & pianist)

Another THREE-parter today. Don't miss out on this part! One of the best presentations (by MTT, who's always so good at such repertoire) of the complete (and very few) works of Carl Ruggles, that great but loquacious American modernist of the early-to-mid 20th century. And some of the finest recordings made by David Oistrakh, one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century, a great bulldog of a player with an enormous tone and technique and hot-blooded form of expression.

Well, there was a write-up! I'll leave it to you to find out more about Moshe Kotel, and his owner, Ketzel the composing cat...

09-20: Sibelius 1 2 5 7 Barbirolli - Link 80 Killing Katie 1997 - Ben Webster Ballads 1955 - Gilles Binchois / Discantus 2009 - Sarasate Zigeunerweisen Heifetz 1937

1460 – Gilles Binchois (Franco-Flemish composer)
1590 – Lodovico Agostini (Italian composer, singer, priest & scholar)
1630 – Claudio Saracini (Italian composer, lutenist & singer)
1648 – Ivan Lukačić (Croatian-born composer & church musician, active in Italy)
1896 – Johan Gottfried Conradi (Norwegian conductor & composer)
1897 – Karel Bendl (Czech composer & conductor)
1908 – Pablo de Sarasate (Spanish violinist & composer)
1957 – Jean Sibelius (Finnish composer)
1957 – Heino Kaski (Finnish composer & pianist)
1960 – Michel Brusselmans (Belgian soundtrack composer)
1967 – Henri Mulet (French organist & composer)
1968 – Frank Pelleg (Czech-born Israeli harpsichordist, pianist, conductor, composer & teacher)
1973 – Ben Webster (American jazz tenor saxophonist & pianist)
1973 – Jim Croce (American singer-songwriter & guitarist)
1974 – Robert Herberigs (Belgian composer)
1984 – Steve Goodman (American folk singer-songwriter, "City of New Orleans")
1994 – Jule Styne (English-born American Broadway composer & pianist)
1994 – Jimmy Hamilton (American jazz clarinetist, tenor saxophonist, arranger, composer & teacher)
1996 – Paul Weston (American pop pianist, arranger, composer & conductor)
1997 – Nick Traina (American punk/ska singer, Link 80, son of Danielle Steel)
2006 – Armin Jordan (Swiss conductor)
2006 – John W. Peterson (American composer of hymns & cantatas)
2010 – Leonard Skinner (American high school gym teacher, namesake of Lynyrd Skynyrd)

Some great favorites here. Both Gilles Binchois and Ben Webster were one of the Big Three in their day. "Wha??" you say? That's right... Binchois, considered by some the finest melodist of the 15th century, was one of the most prominent members of the Burgundian School, along with Guillaume Dufay and John Dunstable - composers who served the court of Burgundy and represented the first generation of composers we think of as "Renaissance." And Ben Webster was one of the three greatest tenor sax players to come out of the swing era, along with Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young.

They called Webster "The Brute" or "Frog" because of the rough, raspy tone he used on rhythm tunes - although his sound became sweetly coy and sentimental on ballads. In fact, it's safe to say that with Ben Webster, we get a greater timbral variety, from wispy, breathy warbles to petulant growls, than we do with just about any other sax player in jazz. And look, there's reedman Jimmy Hamilton on the list, too! Both Webster and Hamilton were alumni of Duke Ellington's great orchestra in the 30s & 40s... Hamilton stayed on with Ellington for decades longer, but Webster had a falling-out with the Duke (in which he apparently cut up one of Ellington's suits - ouch!) and went off on his own in 1943. Webster would go on to do his best work in the 50s, perhaps most notably on Soulville from 1957, considered to be the very first soul jazz album in the history of jazz... and, soul.

The real bigwig on the list, however, is the national composer of Finland, Jean Sibelius. It must suck to be any Finnish composer coming after Sibelius - always being compared to this musical giant who had such an idiosyncratic artistic voice. And boy, it must have really sucked to be poor Heino Kaski... a much lesser-known Finnish composer, pooping on the same day as Sibelius. Sibelius, who for many years was widely performed little elsewhere than in the Nordic countries and Britain, is known primarily for his seven symphonies, his violin concerto, and his many symphonic poems based on Finnish lore and legend. He's also known as one of the last of the great late Romantic composers, who somewhat like Richard Strauss lived into the mid-20th century as a symbol of a bygone era as several fads of modernism came and went. Unlike Strauss, Sibelius decided he'd said all he wanted to by the late 1920s, and committed hardly a note to music paper for the last 30 years of his life, preferring instead to focus his energies on fostering interest in performances and recordings of his existing body of works. See you on the other side of the early retirement...