American Music with Foldes and Winograd

Today's subject - as it often is around here - is mid-century American music. The sources are two albums that are not often seen. The first is an anthology of piano works by eight composers performed by an artist whom I did not associate with this repertoire - Andor Foldes. The second is the first recording of Aaron Copland's Music for Movies, coupled with a suite derived from three of Kurt Weill's American musicals, as conducted by Arthur Winograd on one of his many M-G-M LPs.

Andor Foldes Plays Contemporary American Music

I was surprised to discover this 1947 album of Andor Foldes (1913-92) playing American piano music. I associate his name with the music of his teacher Bartók and other stalwarts of the European canon. He was, however, a naturalized American citizen, having emigrated here in the 1930s, remaining until he returned to Europe in 1960 for professional reasons.

Foldes' 1941 debut in New York was devoted to Bach-Busoni, Beethoven, Schumann, Liszt, Bartók and Kodaly, but by the time of his 1947 Town Hall program, he had added works by the Roy Harris, Virgil Thomson and Paul Bowles to the mix, likely the items on this Vox album.

In addition to the three Americans, the Vox collection includes short works by Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, Roger Sessions, Walter Piston and William Schuman. These were among the first recordings of these compositions.

The album was also among the first from the now-venerable American Vox label. (There had been a German Vox earlier in the century.) The US company started up in 1945, and made this recording the following year, per A Classical Discography. The resulting set apparently did not come out until 1947, when it was reviewed late in the year both in the New York Times and Saturday Review. Both brief notices are in the download, along with reviews of Foldes' 1941 and 1947 recitals.

Andor Foldes

The album reviews were good; the recital notices were mixed. Foldes was praised for his accuracy, but at least in 1941, the recital reviewer found his sound hard and his playing loud. By 1947, this had moderated into the notion that his secco tone was well suited to the contemporary repertoire, borne out by these recordings.

Copland - Music for Movies; Weill - Music for the Stage

Conductor Arthur Winograd (1920-2010), once the cellist of the Juilliard String Quartet, made any number of recordings for the M-G-M label in the 1950s, when it was active in the classical realm. Quite a good conductor, Winograd these days is remembered primarily for his long tenure as the head of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra.

This particular recording dates from 1956 and was made with the "M-G-M Chamber Orchestra," probably a New York studio group. The LP combines two appealing scores, one prepared by the composer, the second by other hands following the composer's death.

Aaron Copland's Music for Movies, which comes from 1942, assembles themes he wrote for The City, Of Mice and Men and Our Town. The best - and best known - are "New England Countryside" from The City and "Grovers Corners" from Our Town. I believe this was the first recording of this suite in orchestral form, although "Grovers Corners" had been recorded on piano twice - including by Andor Foldes in the album above, under the name "Story of Our Town." The other recording, by Leo Smit, is available on this blog in a remastered version. It is from a 1946-47 Concert Hall Society album Smit shared with Copland himself.

Arthur Winograd at work

Kurt Weill's Music for the Stage was arranged for this recording by M-G-M recording director Edward Cole and composer Marga Richter, whose own music has appeared here. The arrangers followed Weill's own procedure, utilized in Kleine Dreigroschenmusik, of employing the theater arrangements while substituting a solo instrument for any vocal lines. It works seamlessly for this suite assembled from lesser-known (to me, anyway) items from Johnny Johnson (three pieces), Lost in the Stars and Lady in the Dark (one each).

Contemporary reviewer Alfred Frankenstein pronounced the Copland suite to be effective and the Weill "trash," strange considering that the latter composer influenced the former. Reviewers were more to the point back then, and held (or at least expressed) stronger opinions.

Frankenstein also opined that the "recording and performance are of the best." I can agree with the latter judgment, but the recording is another matter. It was close and harsh, so I have added a small amount of reverberation to moderate those qualities. [Note (July 2023): these files have now been remastered in ambient stereo.]

By the way, Winograd had almost no conducting experience when he began recording for M-G-M. Edward Cole had turned up at a Juilliard concert that Winograd conducted, was impressed, and offered him a recording session. This anecdote is contained in an interview with the conductor included in the download. Also on this blog, Winograd can be heard conducting music by Paul Bowles.

Both these recordings were cleaned up from lossless needle drops found on Internet Archive.

LINK

Gold and Fizdale Perform Bowles and Poulenc

The compositions of Paul Bowles have been presented here a few times, notably in an M-G-M LP combining his music with that of Peggy Glanville-Hicks.

In today's post, his work is mated with a composition by Francis Poulenc. The source is a Columbia LP presenting two works commissioned by duo-pianists Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale.

For this post, in addition to the LP, I've added an early Concert Hall 78 set containing a Bowles sonata, also written for and performed by Gold and Fizdale.

Bowles - A Picnic Cantata

The main work on the Columbia album is "A Picnic Cantata," Bowles' setting of a poem by his contemporary, James Schuyler.

Paul Bowles, 1946

In the poem, four women make plans for a picnic, drive to Hat Hill Park, discuss its namesake (Henry Hat), then look into the Sunday newspaper, particularly the garden section. The protagonists are in turn robotic and dreamy. ("We can't go on a picnic/without ketchup and a car./Have you got a car?/You are in my car./So we are.") In a droll turn, the most colorful section of the poem comes not from a description of the park but from reading an ad for flowers - "tulips in balanced color,/flame pink, shaded rose,/glowing orange, shaded yellow". Similarly, the sole conflict in the poem is found not among the participants but in the newspaper's advice column. The friends do become reflective on the way home - "Is the evening star/Venus or Mars?/I see it set/in the peal of the moon,/a bit of ice/in an iced-tea sky."

James Schuyler by Fairfield Porter

As you can tell, I am taken with the Schuyler poem, and the setting by Bowles is entirely apt. It's been said that the work was inspired by Virgil Thomson's opera Four Saints in Three Acts, with libretto by Gertrude Stein, and there's that.

Gloria Davy as Aida

Bowles was a protégé of Thomson. The producers went so far as to cast three vocalists from the 1952 revival of Four Saints - sopranos Gloria Davy and Martha Flowers and contralto Gloria Wynder. The other singer was mezzo Mareda Gaither, who had recently been in Earl Robinson's Sandhog. Also participating in the recording was percussionist Al Howard.

The members of the vocal ensemble all had successful careers. Perhaps the most notable was Gloria Davy. In 1958, she was first Black artist to perform the role of Aida at the Metropolitan Opera. The download includes a lengthy New York Times obituary for her.

Poulenc - Sonata for Two Pianos (1953)

Francis Poulenc

Poulenc wrote two sonatas for duo pianists, among his many keyboard compositions. A Sonata for Piano Four Hands from 1918 had been recorded by Gold and Fizdale in 1953. This Sonata for Two Pianos, written in that same year, was commissioned for the pair.

A word about the artists: Arthur Gold (1917-90) and Robert Fizdale (1920-95) met at Juilliard and formed a lifelong partnership. They premiered a long list of works, including three by Poulenc and four by Bowles, as well as works by Germaine Tailleferre, Samuel Barber, John Cage and Vittorio Rieti.

Bowles - Sonata for Two Pianos

Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale, 1952

Among the works commissioned by Gold and Fizdale was the 1946-47 Sonata by Bowles. The transfer of this angular work comes from an early 78 rpm release on Concert Hall that I remastered from a lossless needle drop on Internet Archive. The sound is good enough, although there is some discoloration on the characteristically ringing tone of the pianists.

The download includes the usual restored front and back LP covers (with the text of "A Picnic Cantata"), label scans, photos and High Fidelity and Billboard reviews of the LP. I've also included an excellent New York Review of Books article, "So Why Did I Defend Paul Bowles?" by Hisham Aidi, which discusses the relation between Bowles and Tangier, where the composer-writer lived for many years. (The earlier post mentioned previously includes Peggy Glanville-Hicks' settings of Bowles' "Letters from Morocco.")

I do like the cover of the LP above, with all participants stuffed into a jitney for the trip to Hat Hill Park, except for the composer, who is buzzing by in a streamlined mini-car. I assume this signifies that Bowles was not on hand for the April 1954 recording session.

Paul Bowles and Peggy Glanville-Hicks

Here is a second entry in a series devoted to M-G-M's classical recordings of the 1950s. This LP presents two works by composer-author Paul Bowles, and one by composer Peggy Glanville-Hicks, setting words by Bowles. The two were close friends.

Bowles's "The Wind Remains" is a 1943 setting of an excerpt from Federico García Lorca's 1931 play Así que pasen cinco años. The work was introduced in 1943; this recorded version is an adaptation that Glanville-Hicks commissioned for a 1957 concert series at the Metropolitan Museum. It was prepared with her assistance and that of conductor Carlos Surinach, per Edward Cole's detailed notes. The recording was made shortly after the concert.

Paul Bowles

The M-G-M record does not include the text nor a translation, but the synopsis provided in the notes may be helpful. (Here is a link to the text of Lorca's play.)

Also by Bowles is "Music for a Farce," composed in 1938, performed here by an ensemble led by Arthur Winograd, who was just beginning a career as conductor after leaving the Juilliard Quartet, where he was the founding cellist.

Arthur Winograd

The contribution by Glanville-Hicks is "Letters from Morocco," her 1953 setting of excerpts from correspondence to her from Bowles. He had left the U.S. in 1947 to take up residence in Tangier, intending to write the novel that became The Sheltering Sky, a major literary success in 1949. Bowles had always been both a composer and writer, but the balance shifted to literary endeavors after the novel was published. Bowles said he was tired of writing things "for other people" - principally incidental music for plays. (An example of that output can be found on this blog - music for Jose Ferrer's 1946 production of Cyrano de Bergerac.)

Peggy Glanville-Hicks

Glanville-Hicks, born in Australia, was a music critic for the New York Herald-Tribune when these recordings were made. She in fact succeeded Bowles in the post. Both were appointed by Virgil Thomson. A few years ago I transferred a promotional recording of her brief "Prelude and Presto for Ancient American Instruments," which can be found on my other blog.

Loren Driscoll

Tenor Loren Driscoll is featured in "The Wind Remains" and "Letter from Morocco." A specialist in contemporary music, he sang the lead role in the 1958 production of Glanville-Hicks's opera The Transposed Heads. Soprano Dorothy Renzi, heard in "The Wind Remains," also was noted for performances of new music. She sang on the M-G-M recording of works by Marga Richter.

The performances here are sturdy (although I do not care for Driscoll's voice), and the sound is good. [Note (July 2023): I've now remastered the recording in ambient stereo.]

Quick note: this transfer is from a 1960s reissue series. To save money, M-G-M reprinted some of its classical titles in simpler packaging. The color covers were jettisoned, and the original back covers became the front. The cover you see above was sourced from the web. There are high-res scans of the front and back in the download.

Cyrano de Bergerac

José Ferrer could have made quite a career out of doing just this one role - Cyrano de Bergerac. He won a Tony Award on Broadway, followed by an Oscar for this filmed version in 1953. He also was nominated for an Emmy for a televised version.

This Capitol recording is primarily excerpts from the film, with linking narrative. There also is some incidental music by classical composer Paul Bowles.

This is in response to a request. I hope my friend filmpac doesn't mind that I appropriated his cover scans for this post!