Robert Shaw's 'Treasury of Easter Songs'

Toward the end of last year I posted Robert Shaw's early LPs of both Thanksgiving and Christmas music. Today I am adding to the collection with his Treasury of Easter Songs, which came out in 1952.

Similar to his other sets, the famed choral conductor assembled a variety of seasonal material, ranging from Schütz to spirituals and across several centuries. There are 20 selections presented in a relatively brief period. Nothing wears out its welcome, but the stylistic diversity elicited equally diverse critical opinions.

Enthusiastic: "Mr. Shaw has chosen these selections with extreme care. He seemingly had in mind pieces of musical merit with a very wide variety of appeal ... all sung artistically with the highest regard for good taste." [The New Records]

Skeptical: "[T]he twenty brief selections sometimes follow one another in incongruous juxtaposition ... the attempt to include all classes of Easter music has made for unevenness." [The New York Times]

Robert Shaw

By this time, the Chorale's excellence was seemingly taken for granted. The American Record Guide commented, "The performances are in the well-known clean-cut Shaw style, the recording generally good but occasionally overloaded." If by "clean-cut," the critic means the unanimity of ensemble without ever seeming detached, I guess this is accurate. Seventy years on, the program strikes this listener as being supremely well performed.

It's not clear when most of the program was recorded, but we do know that the Bach and Poulenc pieces were taped in the Manhattan Center in 1950.

Bonus: 'Easter Parade'

Ralph Hunter

In keeping with the eclectic theme, I have added one bonus to the program: the Chorale's 1953 recording of Irving Berlin's "Easter Parade," here in a recording led by Ralph Hunter, a distinguished choral trainer in his own right who was at the time the conductor of the Collegiate Chorale, which Shaw had founded.

The LP is from my collection; the single comes from an Internet Archive needle drop. The download includes scans of both the first and second LP covers, along with the reviews excerpted above.

LINK

Eastern Fun with Gene Autry

Gene Autry's big Easter hit was 1950's Peter Cottontail. This EP collects that tune with three other rabbit tales to produce this Easter Fun EP from the mid-50s.

It wasn't until after I prepared this post that I remembered having Autry's 10-inch Easter LP. That one will have to wait until next year.

LINK

Easter Songs by Vic Damone

There sure are a lot of Christmas records, but not so many for Easter, although they do exist. Here is one from my collection, a 78 single with an attractive picture sleeve, likely issued for Easter 1948.

The artist is a very young Vic Damone, who performs two religious works: Crown Without a Thorn, based on an Anton Rubinstein piano piece, and César Franck's setting of Panis Angelicus.

Crown is quite well done, but Vic and the others don't seem to be on the same page pitch-wise for Panis, at least to this tin-eared blogger.

The grandly-titled Mercury Chorale is led by Mercury A&R chief Mitchell Miller (better known as Mitch when not in the classical or semi-classical realm).