Prokofiev and Vivaldi from Violinist Stoika Milanova

The Bulgarian violinist Stoika Milanova (b. 1945) made a splash after placing second in the Queen Elisabeth Competition and first in the Carl Flesch Competition in her 20s. She produced several excellent LPs about then, but since has mainly been a teacher, for some time at the State Academy of Music of Sofia.

Today we have two superior examples of her art: the Prokofiev Violin Concertos and Vivaldi's The Four Seasons.

Prokofiev Violin Concertos

Prokofiev's two violin concertos could have been purpose-built for Milanova. She was (and presumably still is) a supreme instrumentalist, and her readings of these two works are impeccable - secure, forthright, even and totally in control.

She is backed beautifully by the Symphony Orchestra of the Bulgarian Radio and Television. Milanova and conductor Vassil Stefanov are completely in alignment, making these some of the most satisfying recordings you will hear.

Vassil Stefanov

Prokofiev's first concerto is an impressive work, written in his 20s and premiered in 1923. Milanova's stamina (admittedly, these recordings are likely pieced together) is remarkable, considering that she plays continuously throughout the work.

The second concerto, from 1935, is more lyrical, and it, too, suits Milanova and her accomplices. The recording is a complete success.

The LP was released circa 1972 by Balkanton, and reissued in the US on Monitor, from which this transfer comes. The download includes the garish Balkanton cover along with the usual scans from the Monitor release and a laudatory review.

Vivaldi - The Four Seasons

Stoika Milanova

The Four Seasons are hardly what you would call unusual repertoire, but Milanova and the Sofia Chamber Orchestra manage to make the work fresh, even though there is nothing unusual about their approach.

This LP comes from about 1971, when smaller forces were coming into vogue for classical and baroque music. The Sofia group is excellent, comparable to such ensembles as the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields and I Musici. This was before the dominance of historically informed performances, but there is little that will seem anachronistic about these readings (at least to this older listener).

Vassil Kazandjiev

The conductor is Vassil Kazandjiev, who, like Stefanov, leads performances that seem just right.

As with the Prokofiev, Milanova is well integrated into the ensemble. Here too the recordings are excellent.

The Prokofiev is from my collection; I added a cleaned-up needle drop from Internet Archive of the Vivaldi for a bonus.

Mary Kaye's Lone (and Excellent) Solo LP

This fine LP was requested by gimpiero, a motion seconded by woolfnotes. I've had it in the queue for transfer since my previous upload of the Mary Kaye Trio nine years ago. (I work slow.)

Gimpiero and woolfnotes have good taste - to me, this is a superior product but is fairly unknown. It is the only solo album by Mary Kaye, the singer-guitarist and namesake of the trio that was a fixture in the Las Vegas lounges of the time. All her other LPs were made with the trio and include as much ensemble as solo singing.

Mary Kaye

The trio was an excellent act, but that may have masked the real skills of Kaye, who was at once an assured and technically skilled singer with a great deal of emotional depth.

As bandleader/producer Sonny Burke writes in his liner notes, "Her timing, invention, phrasing and delivery are beyond reproach... [She] sings the words with exactly the feeling that the lyricist had in mind when he added his thoughts to the music." 

In the first song, "I Hadn't Anyone Till You," you may note the influence of Sarah Vaughan in her phrasing at the beginning of the number. But reflecting Kaye's Las Vegas background, she then seamlessly changes tempos so that the torch song turns into a swinger. 

Even so, Mary Kaye's approach can be more inward than Vaughan - striking in someone who made a living in Las Vegas lounges. Sarah herself made notable early recordings of two of the songs herein - "You Taught Me to Love Again" and "You're Mine, You."

The first side of the LP is composed of standards, with more adventure on side 2, which starts off with the terrific and not-often-heard "Real Love" by the team of Matt Dennis and Don Raye. The singer continues her salute to her peers with Mel Tormé's second biggest hit, "A Stranger in Town," which benefits from a particularly fine interpretation.

"Old Maid in April Weather" is a bit of a peculiar song by Mary's brother Norman, and the singer herself adds "I Must Have You," written with John Kruglick. "When I Go, I Go All the Way" is another unusual item, penned by arranger Russ Garcia and Bob Russell.

The LP benefits from charts by Jerry Fielding, which are worth hearing on their own. Decca's sound is very pleasing on this 1958 release.

Jerry Fielding

Bonus Items

I've added two items as bonuses - an RCA Victor single from 1954 along with one of Mary Kaye's earliest recordings, which gives a clue to her background.

The RCA single couples the dramatic "Almost," with music by Fred Spielman and lyrics by the father-daughter team of Ogden and Isabel Nash, with "Don't Laugh at Me," the theme song of English comedian Norman Wisdom. Not sure how they came up with this coupling, but these offbeat items are done very well. Hugo Winterhalter conducts.

The earlier recording is a selection from a 1947 Apollo album, when Mary Kaye's act was known as the Mary Ka'aihue Trio. She and her brother had been in show business from an early age, performing in her father's act, Johnny Ka'aihue’s Royal Hawaiians. The trio's first records were of Hawaiian music, including "Hooheno No Beauty" (The Beauty Hula) and "Makalapua" (Your Eyes Are Like Flowers), which were coupled on one of the three records in the Apollo set. Mary and Norman soon changed their last name to Kaye so that people would not assume they only performed the music of Hawaii. 

Both the RCA and Apollo records were cleaned up from Internet Archive needle drops. The Victor sound is good; the Apollo is a bit noisy.

There is more about Mary Kaye and her act in this 2013 post. Also you can hear her (and, separately, Julie London) sing the title song from Boy on a Dolphin.

Vaughan Williams - Choral and Organ Works

My recent post of Coronation choral music elicited a request for this elusive 1976 LP by the same forces - a set of choral and organ works by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

As before, the performers are the Exultate Singers led by Garrett O'Brien, with organist Timothy Farrell. RCA UK issued this disc; the previous item came out on Vista, producer Michael Smythe's own label. The recording location was London's Southwark Cathedral, where O'Brien was assistant organist.

Southwark Cathedral

The LP opens with one of the composer's apocalyptic compositions, A Vision of Aeroplanes from 1929. The work is a setting of a text from Chapter 1 of Ezekiel in which the prophet describes an overwhelming vision of God. The text is frightening in its intensity, which Vaughan Williams captures in both the organ and choral passages. 

The other choral works include the motet O vos omnes from 1922, A Choral Flourish from 1956 (a setting of Psalm 32), and The Hundredth Psalm from 1929.

The LP closes with The Voice Out of the Whirlwind from 1947. The "voice out of the whirlwind" is God's, as captured in a passage from the book of Job. The work includes music related to the composer's ballet Job. 

Texts of the choral works were not supplied with the album, but I've pulled them together because they are essential to understanding the composer's intent, particularly with A Vision of Aeroplanes.

The choral works are interspersed with organ preludes on Welsh tunes as set by Vaughan Williams in 1920 (Three Preludes on Welsh Hymn-Tunes) and 1956 (Two Preludes on Welsh Folk-Songs).

The Exultate Singers never made a huge impact, but they did make some excellent records in the mid to late 1970s. I will be presenting a few more later on.

Music for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth

The coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1953 was accompanied and celebrated by much splendid music, including the choral works heard on this LP, recorded to mark the Queen's Silver Jubilee in 1977.

Performing are the Exultate Singers under Garrett O'Brien, an ensemble that made several LPs from 1977-80, including music of Vaughan Williams for RCA UK and Finzi for Hyperion. From what I have read, the ensemble was based at Southwark Cathedral, where O'Brien was assistant organist.

The organist here was Timothy Farrell, who was at the Chapel Royal at St. James Palace, and was previously sub-organist at Westminster Abbey. Farrell was for many years organist of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, St John's Wood, and performed there as recently as last year.

The ceremony in Westminster Abbey

Most of the composers represented on the LP were living at the time of the coronation - Herbert Howells, Sir William Harris, Sir George Dyson, Healey Willan, Ralph Vaughan Williams, William Walton and Gordon Jacob. The works by Howells ("Behold, O God Our Defender"), Harris ("Let My Prayer Come Up"), Dyson ("Confortare"), Willan ("O Lord, Our Governour") and Walton ("We Praise Thee, O God") were written for the ceremony.

Stanley Webb praised the LP in The Gramophone, saying that the ensemble sings "with the fervent intensity of a concert hall performance rather than the reverent dedication of a cathedral choir: they have no difficulty filling the great spaces of Westminster Cathedral with splendid sound." I have to disagree that the group fills the Cathedral with sound. It sounds like quite a small group.

Webb also praised organist Timothy Farrell, writing that he "is a sensitive accompanist throughout and his inspired playing heightens the drama of the Walton Te Deum." (The Walton is indeed dramatic; even O'Brien's sleeve note calls it "vehement.")

As recorded the choral sound lacked presence, which I remember noting when I bought the record nearly 40 years ago. Today's audio tools give me the ability to address the issue to an extent, along with fixing some pitch problems. The result is pleasing, I think - although the singers still seem backwards compared to the dramatic organ sound.

The record came out on Vista, a small label that issued quite a number of LPs of organ, choral and other music in the 1970s, until the early death of its founder, Michael Smythe, who produced this LP.

Elmer Bernstein, Composer and Conductor

Today we have a special post devoted to the distinguished film composer and conductor Elmer Bernstein (1922-2004). There's a a newly transferred 1958 LP, Backgrounds for Brando, plus remastered versions of two other albums I have offered before - and a reminder about one of his most famous scores.

Bernstein: Backgrounds for Brando

The title of this Dot LP is a little misleading, in that it might suggest that Bernstein wrote these "backgrounds for Brando." In actuality, he wrote none of the music, although he does indeed conduct the various pieces. (Also, it might suggest that the better-known Leonard Bernstein is conducting.)

Elmer Bernstein's LPs fall into three categories: single-film soundtrack LPs, compilations of his own work, and compilations of other film composers. This one of course falls into the third category; the other albums below contain his own music.

The selections for Backgrounds for Brando are presented in no particular order. The actor's first big success, A Streetcar Named Desire, leads off side two, with the music that Alex North wrote to depict Blanche.

Also included are one of the themes that Bernstein's namesake Leonard wrote for On the Waterfront, and music from the following films: Sayonara (Franz Waxman), Viva Zapata (Manuel Ponce), The Men (Dimitri Tiomkin), Guys and Dolls (Frank Loesser), The Teahouse of the August Moon (Saul Chaplin), Désirée (Alfred Newman and Ken Darby), Julius Caesar (Miklós Rózsa) and The Wild One (Leith Stevens). The excerpt from The Men is the theme "Love Like Ours," which has appeared here recently in a Lisa Kirk vocal collection. This blog has an extensive post devoted to the music from The Wild One as well.

I should mention that the title Backgrounds for Brando should be taken in the broadest sense. Marlon doesn't appear in the Guys and Dolls scene where the selection on the LP (the "Fugue for Tinhorns") is performed.

Themes from the General Electric Theater

I went ahead and remastered the LP Themes from the General Electric Theater, even though I posted it only four years ago, because I thought I could improve the sound. This is one of the LPs where the music is both composed and conducted by Bernstein.

The themes were all written for the 1958-59 season, the program's first. (Yes, its host was future president Ronald Reagan.) The music is excellent and very well performed and recorded.

From watching this show 60 years ago, I still remember the General Electric theme that Bernstein wrote ("Emblem") and the end title background ("Progress"), both of which are wonderful, sweeping pieces of "Old Hollywood" music.

The link for this LP is in the comments to this post and the original post.

Movie and TV Themes Composed and Conducted by Elmer Bernstein

This fine 1962 LP got lost in the shuffle when I posted it eight years ago along with miscellaneous other material. Here is what I wrote then:

"The great film composer conducting some of his best swaggering jazz themes, leading off with the tremendous 'Rat Race.' Played by a stellar ensemble of West Coast musicians."

All true, but it doesn't convey the impact of this excellent record, or its presentation. For one thing, the back cover has information about not only who plays on the LP (a who's who of studio musicians), but the soloists and arrangers (Jack Hayes, Leo Shuken and Ruby Raksin - three old hands at the studios). One of the producers was Tommy Wolf, the songwriter. The label was Choreo, which was owned by Fred Astaire, Wolf, Bernstein and drummer Jackie Mills.

Interestingly, Bud Shank, best known for playing the alto saxophone and flute, plays baritone sax here, and contributes some outstanding solos.

The LP features several of Bernstein's lesser known pieces, but one of the more familiar items is the Sweet Smell of Success theme, which has appeared here before (and is about to do so again - see below).

The link to this LP can be found in the comments to this post and the original post.

Sweet Smell of Success

Bernstein's score to Sweet Smell of Success dates to the early years of the blog. I remastered it a few years ago, and it is still available via the original post.

Here is what I said about Bernstein back then: "Bernstein has an enormous reputation among film music aficionados, although among the general public he doesn't have 1/100 of the reputation of his namesake Lenny - no relation. This is a relatively early score, and a particularly strong one."

Highly recommended - as are all these records.

The Liebeslieder Waltzes of Brahms in a Superb 1958 Recording

Brahms' Liebeslieder Waltzes were truly love songs in waltz time, on the one hand to Clara Schumann (or so it is thought), on the other to his predecessor Franz Schubert, who composed similar works.

These perennially popular pieces were in some ways folk inspired, both in their Ländler rhythms and in the choice of texts, most of which come from Georg Friedrich Daumer's Polydora collection of folk songs and love poems.

The waltzes were published in two collections, the Liebeslieder Waltzer, Op. 52, and the Neue Liebeslieder Waltzer, Op. 65, issued following the success of the first set.

The two groups are often performed together as they are on this fine LP, and usually by four solo voices and piano duo, although they are also heard in choral versions, and there is an Op. 52a for duo pianists alone.

The current set dates from 1958, and features one of the finest piano duos of the time, Vitya Vronsky and Victor Babin, together with four superior soloists. 

Vronsky and Babin were both born in Russia but resident in the US from 1937. They began recording for Victor soon after arriving in America, including several Rachmaninoff pieces, but also Milhaud, Strauss, Weinberger, Bach, Brahms, Rimsky-Korsakov and other composers, including Babin himself. Postwar they switched to Columbia, which issued a notable version of Rachmaninoff's Suite No. 1, among other works.

The duo made several records for HMV in the 1950s, including this LP. The vocalists on the 1958 sessions were notable as well - soprano Elsie Morison, contralto Marjorie Thomas, tenor Richard Lewis, and bass Donald Bell, all then resident in the UK. (Morison was Australian, Bell Canadian.) They were among the leading singers in Britain at the time.

The recordings come from EMI's fabled Abbey Road Studio No. 1, and are striking in their clarity and truthfulness, although the presentation could have used a little more depth. While the US Capitol cover is shown above, my transfer comes from a later stereo Seraphim issue.

The critics were pleased with the album. Paul Affelder wrote in High Fidelity, "Whether singing solos, duets, trios or quartets, the four vocalists do a superior job, as does the fine duo-piano team." In the American Record Guide, Irving Kolodin found that "Vronsky and Babin achieve wonderful rapport, and their playing itself is a delight to hear."

The download includes texts, translations and cover scans for both the Seraphim and Capitol releases, the latter of which is autographed by Babin and Vronsky.

Ad in High Fidelity, 1953

Kletzki Conducts Wagner and Brahms

Here is a return to the work of conductor Paul Kletzki, who has appeared on this blog only once before, with the Israel Philharmonic in Mendelssohn's Third Symphony. Today we explore his work in more depth, with these two 1950s recordings of Wagner and Brahms, both with the Philharmonia Orchestra.

Kletzki (1900-73) worked quite a bit with the Philharmonia in the 1950s, making recordings for EMI, the source of today's two LPs. Born in Poland, he made his early career in Berlin, primarily as a composer, before moving on with the ascension of the Nazis, first to Italy, then to Switzerland, where he became a citizen. During this time he became known for his conducting. His initial recordings were in Berlin in 1932. He began his association with EMI in 1946. Later on he became the director of the Dallas Symphony and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande.

Wagner - Music from Tannhäuser and Tristan und Isolde

These Wagner recordings, dating from June 1953, were made in London's Kingsway Hall. Although mono, the sound is quite good. [Note (October 2023): the sound has now been refurbished in ambient stereo.]

Kletzki programmed the Overture and Venusberg Music from Tannhäuser along with the Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde, two glorious pieces of music that Kletzki handles beautifully.

Andrew Porter in The Gramophone was laudatory: "[Kletzki] is astonishingly versatile and does extraordinarily well whatever he turns his hand to." However, he also thought that in the Prelude and Liebestod there wasn't sufficient ecstasy, a verdict shared by the American Record Guide's Peter Hugh Reed. The latter added, though, "Those who like their Wagner played with less emotional stress will do well to investigate this excellently recorded disc with its evidence of musical care and veracity."

Ad in The Gramophone, February 1954 (click to enlarge)

Wagner - Siegfried Idyll, Träume; Brahms - Haydn Variations

The two Wagner pieces in this program are a contrast to the previous pair in that they were written for chamber forces, not the full orchestra of Tannhäuser and Tristan. However, it's possible that Kletzki has expanded the scoring for this recording. 

The Siegfried Idyll was a present to the composer's wife Cosima upon the birth of their son Siegfried. It is tender and loving music, handsomely done here. The critic Paul Affelder wrote, "Kletzki is not a showy conductor. He allows the music to sing, to emerge frankly and naturally, and in so doing serves it best."

The second Wagner item on this program is connected to both Tristan and, in a way, to the Siegfried Idyll. It is an orchestral transcription of Träume, the last of the five Wesendonck Lieder, settings of poems by Mathilde Wesendonck. The composer originally wrote them for voice and piano, and later added a version with chamber orchestra. The arrangement without voice was done to serenade Wesendonck outside her window, as Wagner was later to do for his wife with the Siegfried Idyll.

Paul Kletzki

The composer was working on Tristan at the same time as the lieder, and the music of Träume is related to Tristan. In the recorded arrangement, the vocal part is given to violin, here played by Hugh Bean, the concertmaster of the Philharmonia.

It has been speculated that Wagner and Wesendonck were lovers (she was the wife of his patron Otto Wesendonck). Brahms' Haydn Variations were related to his own love for Clara Schumann, the wife of Robert Schumann, and it too was probably not conceived as an orchestral work. Brahms wrote it for performance by Clara and him, but also transcribed it into the orchestral guise in which it is usually heard today.

The given name of the work is the Variations on a Theme of Haydn, but it sometimes called the St. Antoni Variations because it was based on a melody called the "St. Antoni Chorale" found in one of Haydn's wind partitas. Today the theme is thought probably to have been written by one of Haydn's students.

These recordings date from August and September 1958 and are in excellent stereo. The Siegfried Idyll is a remake of a mono recording that Kletzki did for EMI in 1947.