Records
Sounds from the past
Peter Phillips
Recently EMI have dipped into their store-house of historical recordings and come out with two reissues of music by Vaughan Williams, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult. The older of them, from the point of view of recording dates, includes the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tanis and Job (made in 1940 and 1946 respective- ly, both with the BBC SO). The other includes The Wasps (1968), the Concerto for Two Pianos (1969 with Vitya Vronsky and Victor Babin as soloists), and the Fantasia on the `Old 104th' Psalm Tune (1970 with Peter Katin; all the music on the record was played by the LPO).
The LPs carry the serial numbers ED 29 0800 1 and ED 29 0653 1, though strangely they are on different labels: 'The HMV Treasury' and 'HMV Greensleeves'. This must have something to do with date of recording, and a useful distinction is drawn thereby, for the 1940s recordings seem to me to be quite unacceptably below stan- dard, while the later album is very well presented. Not only is the actual quality of the early recording rough — I'm sure I've heard cleaner cuts on products from the Thirties — but the orchestra plays seriously out of tune at times, for instance at the beginning of the Tallis Fantasia. When the strings have as much resonance as a tin whistle and the cymbals explode as if an anvil has been struck, then the vision of a conductor, however potent, must be cir- cumscribed; to expect otherwise is to place his role beyond rational limits. Even the appeal of first-rate music can be masked under these conditions. The only useful purpose served by such a release is the purely academic one of hearing what speeds the conductor adopted. To those who are thinking of buying the record on the strength of Boult's name, I would say that his tempi are familiar (perhaps he set a trend which others have since followed), and there are plenty of reliable modern versions to choose from for both pieces.
Since I am supposed to be boned up about these things I feel constrained to point out that Tallis's original melody was not harmonised by him in nine parts, as the sleeve-note states, but in four (of course). Tallis never wrote in nine parts, though Byrd did.
Conversely the recording of Vaughan Williams's Concerto for Two Pianos per- fectly conveys the strength of the soloists' interpretation. I would like to have heard just one of these redoubtable technicians playing the work in its original state, for a single piano. Apparently Boult himself said that the Herculean solo writing was well-nigh impossible and should be divided up. Piano technique, like fast bowling, has continued its steady climb towards invinci- bility since then, and there must now be a barrage of players who could do the work justice. On all fronts the public seems to be hungry for pyrotechnics — Vaughan Wil- liams's reputation would not suffer if his original version were to be restored. For all that, this traditional performance is suit- ably muscular, especially in the fugal finale where the complex texture of the music is clearly audible, and the percussiveness of the piano writing, thought so revolutionary in England in 1933, can be fully admired. Pyrotechnics of a different kind may be heard on an anomalous issue from DG entitled A. Paganini: virtuoso violin music (415 484-1). Casual observers could be forgiven for thinking they were buying a record of music by Paganini, a supposition heightened by the cover picture which shows the soloist, Gidon Kremer, acting the part of Paganini in a film called Frdhlingssinfonie. There are various intri- guing questions to be asked here, apart from explaining that the music on the disc is by Milstein, Schnittke, Ernst and Roch- berg. Why 'A.' Paganini, when the man's name was Nicolo? What has this film, quite unknown to me, to do with anything? The record is not 'music from the film', though the marketers obviously wish to establish some connection with it. And why, since all the music turns out to be sets of variations on themes by Paganini, is Ernst's setting of an Irish folk-song — 'The Last Rose' — included? This last query is answered by the sleeve-writer with the gnomic observation that Ernst's setting `also, in its own way, transcends the conventional'. What a hotch. Still, some of the music is worth hearing and it is certainly played with verve. The Nathan Milstein variations evidently were intended as an encore piece, couched in a quite conventional musical idiom, and must serve that purpose very well. The most substantial work is George Rochberg's Caprice Variations which should run to 51 variations, though only 24 of them are recorded here, and even these last a whole side. All are for unaccompanied violin, and chart many of the musical styles current around the year 1918, when the set was written. Such an exercise in eclecticism can seem bewildering, and Paganini's music, here as elsewhere on the record, is not the obviously helpful focal point it might have been.
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