(There seems to be some controversy about the attribution of Malcolm Sargent as the conductor of this recording. I am not in a position to definitively decide the issue, though the evidence for excluding Sargent at this point seems compelling. For the present I will simply put the attribution in the title of the post in parenthesis with question marks, and leave it to the reader to decide the issue based on the comments quite far down on the list, below. Thanks for your forbearance.)Here at last is the Cherubini Requiem in C minor that I mentioned quite some time ago I would be posting. This one is for my old friend, Jerry Parker, a Cherubini expert who provided the LP for me.
Though issued originally on Capital Records with Roger Wagner listed as the conductor, a later LP release on Angel gave more accurate attributions and named Malcolm Sargent as the real leader of this performance. In his review on Amazon Jerry writes:
"Roger Wagner probably was merely the very fine chorus master for Sargent, who conducts with the kind of terrific power and expertise that have made Sir malcom Sargent's various recordings of oratorios so highly celebrated." (The full review, offering a handy overview of the recorded history of the work, can be found here: http://www.amazon.com/Cherubini-Requiem-Chorale-Philharmonic-Orchestra/dp/B001LEY7DA/ref=cm_cr-mr-title
In recent recordings of the work the wonderful and terrifying Marche funebre, meant to precede the Mass itself, has been included, as well as the "In Paradisum" from the rite for the burial service. Both of these are omitted on the present record, but a good mp3 of them can be downloaded if you care to hear them, or to add them to a CD. The recording by Chistoph Sperling can be found here: http://www.classicsonline.com/catalogue/product.aspx?pid=858986 and is highly recommended. The individual tracks can be downloaded.
The work was written after the restoration of the French monarchy to commemorate the execution by guillotine of King Louis XVI. In listening to the ferocity of some of the music, one is not surprised to learn that Cherubini was forced to play in bands that accompanied many beheadings. The gongs in both the Marche funebre and Dies Irae suggest the terrifying blade at least as forcefully as the slashing blade strokes of the guillotine in Dialogs of the Carmelites, and point to the abject terror inspired by final judgement in many guises.
I hope you enjoy this great and too often neglected masterpiece.
Link to all files
The work was written after the restoration of the French monarchy to commemorate the execution by guillotine of King Louis XVI. In listening to the ferocity of some of the music, one is not surprised to learn that Cherubini was forced to play in bands that accompanied many beheadings. The gongs in both the Marche funebre and Dies Irae suggest the terrifying blade at least as forcefully as the slashing blade strokes of the guillotine in Dialogs of the Carmelites, and point to the abject terror inspired by final judgement in many guises.
I hope you enjoy this great and too often neglected masterpiece.
Link to all files
Larry, Goodie, goodie! I get to be the first to thank you (as you thanked me in your own comments for furnishing you with the LP disc) for posting this glorious performance of Cherubini's Requiem No. 1, in C Minor, to "Vinyl Fatigue"! This recording is not the rarest in my LP collection (although I only have it in the mono alternative edition), but it is to me the single MOST IMPORTANT LP that I own. In fact, I so love this music, and Sir Malcolm Sargent's recording of it, that I hope that I have the presence of mind "on my deathbed" to ask for and to hear this music, this performance, just before slipping into eternity. (That sounds a bit melodramatic, I suppose, but it is the truth of how I feel!) Then, if there still is time for one other musical work, it would be Mozart's C Minor Mass in the never-excelled Vox LP recording of so many decades past. (Or maybe I simply would relisten to Cherubini Requiem music, this one in C Minor or the equally awesome Second Requiem, in D Minor, for that "last go" at hearing some sublime music)
ReplyDeleteBy the way, the "Marche funèbre" has an "e" at the end of "Marche", which users of Vinyl Fatigue may need to know to avoid trouble in finding this auxilliary work (of truly terrifying savagery, especially in Spering's all-out performance of this march) to the Requiem itself.
This recording has languished far too long unreissued; now that spell is broken with this downloadable venue to have it. Congratulations!
Pax, Jerry Parker
Glad your happy, Jerry, although I hope your deathbed fantasy won't be fulfilled anytime soon.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the typo correction. I assure you, though, that "March funebre", typed into Google will get you where you want to be. Search engines have come to expect mistakes from us mere mortals.
This is a work that I enjoy myself, although I've not encountered this version before. I do, however, have the Toscanini and Muti led versions. I read the Amazon review, and was struck by the usual special pleading accorded to Toscanini's recordings - that is, it doesn't sound bad because of the conductor, it sounds bad because of the engineer. And frankly, I didn't remember it sounding all that bad, so I dug out my HMV pressing of the recording and listened. It sounds just like I remembered - and like many of the recordings from the same source - like an ill-balanced performance with climaxes that are too loud for the hall. The overall sound is too bright and shallow, but can be made to sound OK with some adjustments.
ReplyDeleteUh, I guess I have digressed. Looking forward to this performance!
Buster: Digressions welcome! I don't have the Toscanini record myself, but I do tend to give him less "benefit of doubt" than most people do. I usually find his interpretations reckless, and the loud tutti passage brutal, even if executed with technical precision by the orchestra and/or chorus. Conductors his younger contemporaries worshiped him; as I've said before,though, I just don't get it.
ReplyDeleteHope you like the performance.
There is an earlier EMI version on Columbia 33CX 1075 - which I gave a brief listen to a short while ago. It sounded pretty OK: Santa Cecilia Orchestra/Chorus - Carlo Maria Giulini (Gramophone reviewed 11/1953). A cursory check didn't reveal any CD issue. Sargent can't have conducted Cherubini all that much in his career, I would imagine....
ReplyDeleteTin Ear: I've not heard the Giulini performance, but this Sargent recording is awfully good, even if the conductor is presently out of fashion.
ReplyDeleteBuster, Larry, and Tin Ear,
ReplyDeleteWell, I am not one given to letting Toscanini "off the hook" for so many dreary recordings that he made. He usually was at fault for asking for the kind of excessively dry, shallow sound that he preferred. However, the matter of stupidly unmusical balances between chorus and orchestra in his recording of this Requiem really seems unlikely to be the fault of such a well schooled musician, so, for once, I think that the dead-wrong balances must have been due to the engineers. They do not have to bear all the blame, however, in such other, truly wrong-headed recordings as those that Toscanini made of music by Haydn, Mozart, and Schubert (and that's just for starters)!
The E.M.I. Giulini recording, from 1952, came two years after Toscanini's, from 1950 (and although there was a 1956 release, too, of Toscanini's recording, it was not the initial publication on LP of that recording). Giulini's terribly down-played and tepid (really, just plain wimpy!) recording is so utterly wrongheaded, that I much prefer Toscanini's somewhat earlier one, which better seizes the character of the work -- which, however, Sir Malcolm Sarget does just that much more so and in sound decently balanced. Giulini conducted other works by Cherubini very well, indeed; he just had a misconceived notion of how to approach the C Minor Requiem interpretively.
Happy listening, all of you!
Pax, Jerry Parker
Well you won't find me coming to the defense of Toscanini, whose deification has always baffled me. As for Haydn or Mozart: Give me Tommy Beecham any day!
ReplyDeleteI am transferring my copy of the Toscanini so we all can have a listen and see if we can figure out just why it is so odd sounding.
ReplyDeleteAnother point to ponder is why Sargent is treated so dismissively. I have many of his records and invariably enjoy them.
Buster: That's a great idea. Then we can all weigh in on where the problem is.
ReplyDeleteI ponder and ponder the current dismissive attitude toward Sargent, and I still find it incomprehensible. I can only think of two things: 1.) He is associated with many (to my mind great) recordings made in line with an older English choral tradition that is now out of favor. Perhaps the virile, full throttled choral sound of it smacks too much of empire to pass muster in our politically touchy times. Or 2.) Perhaps not having "specialized" in any composer, he is dismissed for being a musical generalist. albeit a very fine one. I don't know, really, and am just throwing those out to begin a dialog. He has always seemed a musician of substantial stature to me.
Can't really agree that the Guilini is 'wimpy' - as the faster sections (were it not for the rather 'warm' acoustic), would have quite some 'bite'. However, I'm unsympathetic towards most Requiems (& have the Markevitch/Toscanini/2 early Muti in The Cherubini-Line) - & actually 'drifted off' upon hearing Cherubini's Symphony in D (Wilfried Boettcher/New Philharmonia - Philips LP) nearly 40years back - so utterly tedious was its 'invention/inspiration'!
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, EMI UK didn't (AFAIK) 'bother' issuing the Sargent version.
Sargent appeared likewise lacking in 'inspiration'. Not sure he saw the 'whole picture' of larger-scale compositions - or maybe his, relatively few, Symphony recordings are unrepresentative: possibly 'over-rehearsed' (the BBC SO recordings wouldn't be subject to the typical 'sight-reading' recording-schedule (aside from, say, Philharmonia's with frequent tied-in concerts).
Maybe Sargent needed a live audience - as I do consider his Beethoven 'Emperor' with Moiseiwitsch (1963) to be 'top-class'. (on my blog...).
Well, I can't agree with you about Sargent. I don't listen to enough Cherubini to have formed an opinion about various performers.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure you'll hear more about Cherubini, though, from my friend Jerry. Let the games begin!
Personally, I suspect that Larry's ideas are close to the mark; anyway, there can be multiple reasons for Sir Malcolm Sargent's neglect. Like Sir Thomas Beecham, Sargent had a very ebullient character. Like Sir Tommy, too, Sargent enjoyed conducting "proms" concerts (concerts for a large, popular public). This sits ill with snobs who look down on these things, i.e. on a zesty, hearty personality (as opposed to directorial pomp or austerity of demeanor) and who berate conductors who have a wide following among listeners who may not frequent most concert series. However, that does not address what a conductor really accomplishes (or has done so in the past). A frequent object of similar scorn is Leonard Bernstein, who, like Beecham and Sargent, "had the popular touch".
ReplyDeleteSargent's well known choral recordings, which, like Beecham's, continue to be reissued despite the contempt which "H.I.P." (so-called "historically informed") musicians and their followers pour on them. They are great music-making which rises to the sheer splendour of works by Handel, Haydn, Bach, and other 17th and 18th century masters, which the quaint ditherings of the "H.I.P." crowd ignore and downplay. I'm for Sargent and Beecham (and Klemperer, Scherchen, and Fritz Lehmann, and others of the same glorious kind of musician)! Best of all, perhaps, are musicians like Antonio Janigro or Mogens Woeldike, who combined an early awareness of Baroque and Classical style with real interpretive flair, even grandiloquence when appropriate, but I am more certain than Sargent and Beecham's recordings will survive than those of such too frequently spiritually dead conductors as Harmoncourt Pinnock, and those of their pedantic brotherhood. For those who enjoy the performances of Pinnock et alia, which lend themselves to "background music" or "elevator music" use, they know where to find them. To each his own---.
Pax, Jerry Parker
I couldn't agree more on conductors like Mogens Woeldike. On the other hand, I heartily dislike most Leonard Bernstein recordings. Not sure what this signifies other than I have my likes and dislikes!
ReplyDeleteI'll have the transfer of the Toscanini-Cherubini later this week.
Buster, like Larry Austin, I am a "true blue" fan of Leonard Bernstein, from childhood onwards. I think that the man's exuberance and, let's admit it, excesses, put some folks off. That's okay. There are lots of wonderful conductors. A good example is Karl Boehm, who so often gets overlooked, but who was so wonderfully sane and invigoratingly human in his interpretions, the perfect antidote to Bernstein for those who dislike the latter.
ReplyDeleteI have to temper my enthusiasm for Bernstein, though. Although so many of his recordings for Columbia/Sony and for Decca/London were fabulously life-affirming, his work for the D.G.G. label just leaves me cold. Bernstein simply seems to have burnt his wick to the end of it by then. But those New York Philharmonic recordings, most of them, still really "twangle my pancreas" after all these years!
Pax, Jerry Parker
Buster, Good luck with Toscanini's recording of Cherubini's C Minor Requiem. Personally, I think that the sound, in terms of warmth and that sort of thing, is better than what one hears on other recordings by Toscanini (and is better than the sound on Toscanini's recordings of overtures by Cherubini, for example). It is the unbearably unmusical balances that set me off into frustration and near-anger. Over-focus on the chorus is a typical fault of a lot of choral-orchestral recordings, but it seldom wreaks so much harm to the music itself as it does in this glorious Requiem! When the counterpoint in the orhcestra that interacts with the contrapuntal lines of the chorus, in some passages of this work, is so out of whack with the equality of emphasis that the music cries out for, I get discouraged. When gorgeously lovely and subtle touches of orchestration just go for naught, because they are inaudible in this recording, I can get a bit bonkers, too. It is torture to listen to Toscanini's recording while following a score!
ReplyDeleteHow many folks hearing this Requiem for the first time even realise what a seemless texture of counterpoint the whole work is at the points in the music to which I refer? Alas, that is the kind of thing that simply may be impossible to set right, whosever fault it was (Toscanini's, which I very much doubt, or the idiotic recording engineers, which seems very likely). -- Jerry Parker
Jerry,
ReplyDeleteWell, I've listened to it a couple of times and there is no question it is ill-balanced, for whatever reason. I will also be posting a recording that Toscanini made in Carnegie Hall with a single mike, as a kind of control. You will hear the familiar harshness and brutal fortes there as well.
Interestingly, you mention Karl Boehm - one of my favorite conductors! And I certainly would agree that Bernstein's DG recordings are his worst.
But, as you say, whatever twangles your pancreas - Lenny or whomever.
I suppose I should weigh in. It is true that I like much of Bernstein's work a lot, especially his NY Haydn recordings. Lenny's strong point is his unfailing sense of rhythm, I believe, at least in his NY work. I should add, though, that I find his Mahler loathsome. Ibe of the most memorable concert experiences of my life was hearing Bernstein conduct the BSO in Beethoven's 9th in Symphony Hall, Boston during the composer's Bicentennial. the audience was so galvanized by the drive and intensity of the finale that it leapt to its oud, stomping ovation. Anyone who can bring a staid, New England audience to that point has something going for them. I will leave to others any detailed analysis of what it is. For me it comprises an almost infallible sense of rhythmic thrust, admittedly more important in some music than in others.
ReplyDeleteThat would be "One of the most". My hand moved over a letter.
ReplyDeleteBuster,
ReplyDeleteHave you made (or are you about to make) a post of another performance, live (single microphone, in Carnegie Hall), of Cherubini's C Minor Requiem conducted by Toscanini? Or were you referring to a live performance of another work (probably by another composer)? If it is the former, what will be very striking, indeed, to hear! I searched your WWW site quickly but did not see anything of this kind just yet. (It is a lovely site, full of great stuff and with interesting graphics.)
Pax, Jerry Parker
Jerry,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the kind words! I will be posting the Cherubini Requiem, but it will be the 8H version. I wasn't clear in my earlier message - the Carnegie Hall recording is of a different work.
Hope to get to this on the weekend. Been working long hours on my job.
Buster,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the clarification. I am not aware of any other performance preserved as a recording of Toscanini conducting Cherubini's First Requiem, in C Minor, but I do not own the discographies that would list all of his performances and/or recordings of them. I just don't care enough about Toscanini to bother with those books. Some of his recordings, for all that, are among my favourites for certain works, especially of Wagner, Berlioz, Cherubini, Catalani, Puccini, Verdi, and Beethoven (but not of all of his recordings of these and other composers that he conducted particularly well).
Good luck, and I am pleased that my own words have motivated you to do your own postings of some important recordings among the many which you already have digitised.
Pax, Jerry Parker
Buster, I forgot to express how pleased it makes me to hear your warm comments about Karl Boehm. That man made a lot of wonderful recordings, so many, I suspect, and over such a long period that it is easy to "take him for granted". I am not sure, off hand, if he recorded any of Cherubini's music, although he may have done a recording at least of the Anacréon overture somewhere down the line, or broadcast it, that being one of the composer's works that has stayed resolutely in the repertoire even in times when Cherubini's works tended to be neglected and which is of the kind of music that Boehm does particularly well. One can hope---.
ReplyDeleteBoehm's Mozart recordings are especially dear to me, the complete set of the symphonies (to counter those tatty complete sets by the "Early Musicke Mafia" and to do the whole lot of them better, in rather the same healthily mainstream way, but better and more rehearsed, than Leinsdorf managed to do, on account of circumstances). Then there are his wonderfully humane and warm accounts of the operas (my own favourite being Boehm's treasurable studio account of "Die Entfuehrung aus dem Seraglio"). He was quite the musician to treasure and to savour!
Pax, Jerry Parker
Jerry,
ReplyDeleteCouldn't agree more. I listened to the Boehm-VPO Bruckner 4 today from 1973. A great recording by a great combination! I will post some of Boehm's mono Deccas one of these days (he said wistfully). Truth is, I just don't have the time lately to do much!
However, I did transfer the Toscanini Cherubini Requiem (and the Weber-Berlioz Invitation to the Dance, which is the single-mike Carnegie Hall recording). I will get around to writing about these on my blog eventually, but if you want to hear the transfers now, they are available here:
http://rapidshare.com/files/410696948/Cherubini_-_Requiem_in_C_minor.zip.html
Buster, Great! I'll try to figure out how to listen to this digital restoration that you have made of Toscanini's fine but flawed recording of Cherubini's Requiem in C Minor sometime next week (being up to the gills in urgent work at the moment). I'm very new to this technical kind of thing. You're great! -- Pax, Jerry Parker
ReplyDeleteI'm puzzled by the claim that "a later LP release named Sargent as the real leader" of this performance because the Seraphim reissue specifically states "conducted by Roger Wagner" on the front, whereas the original Capitol LP did not. See the Seraphim cover illustration via this link ...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bh2000.net/special/patzak/detail.php?id=2344
So can anyone supply a link to a scan of the LP cover which does have Sargent's name shown thereon, so as to clear this puzzle up? Thanks!
It's a pity that the Comment section here doesn't seem to be currently active, as it can now be confirmed that Sargent had nothing whatsoever to do with this recording at all. Both the orginal 'Capitol' LP and the Angel reissue on 'Seraphim' clearly stated that Roger Wagner was the conductor and this has now been confirmed by EMI itself. A comment to that effect has been added by James H. North under the utterly misleading and inaccurate original Amazon review.
ReplyDeleteZipp, Your comment surprises me, but I would suppose that what you write is true. James North, an exceptionally fine record critic, who has written for "Fanfare", certainly is a reliable source of information.
ReplyDeleteZipp, I once came across an illustration of the rare Angel Records reissue (one in stereo) of the performance which gave the information about Sargent.
ReplyDelete