Ernest Ansermet A la Carte

No. 399 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series of audio montages is this week's Friday Blog and Podcast. It can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast399

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Original Post - TalkClassical, Blogger

Our final two Friday podcasts for 2022 (and conclusion to our long-running series) aren’t as much about new material as they are feeding ongoing curation initiatives we have undertaken for the past few years.

This penultimate montage is part of our A La Carte series that repackages old montages, in this case a 2019 odd-looking Vinyl’s Revenge post that we more aptly titles “Tape Deck’s Revenge” as it featured two old London VIVA cassette releases by Swiss conductor Ernest Ansermet. The VIVA series was a b udget re-issue platform at a time where digital releases we beginning to invade the shelves, often displacing these excellent recordings, which did merit reissue. The format of these reissues was both cassette and vinyl, not CD.

The first cassette on the original montage was packaging J.S Bach’s suites nos. 2 and 3 with a pair of filler tracks from his cantatas. Ansermet, at the time of the original release, also issued a pair of albums of Bach Cantatas, which London/Decca later packaged with this disk into a 2 CD Bach anthology by Ansermet.

The montage inserts Cantata 130 between the original A and B sides of the VIVA cassette.

I think you will (still) love this music too.

Jean Martinon (1910-1976)

No. 398 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series of audio montages is this week's Friday Blog and Podcast. It can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast398

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This week's Blog and Podcast picks up on a thread we started as part of Project 366 – montages featuring conductors who have more than one string up their bow. In this case, conductor and composer Jean Martinon.

Martinon entered the conservatory of Lyon, his hometown, at the age of thirteen. Three years later, he will leave to enter the National Conservatory in Paris. There he worked on the violin, composition (with Albert Roussel and Vincent d'Indy), and conducting (with Roger Désormière and Charles Munch). Quite the apprenticeship!

Working mainly as a violinist after his studies, he had the misfortune of being a prisoner of war for two years, interned in a stalag, where he composed several works for soloists, small ensembles and for choir.

It was after the war that Martinon took to the podium: first conductor of the Dublin Radio Symphony Orchestra (1947-1950), Colonne, Pasdeloup, and the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire (later the Orchestre de Paris) as substitute for Charles Munch.

From 1946 to 1948 he was associate conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra; it is with this orchestra that we find him as the curtain raiser of our montage, with three French operatic overtures from the 19th century.

From 1951 to 1958, he was president and conductor of the Concerts Lamoureux in Paris, then artistic director of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (1957-1959). In 1959, he was appointed to the post of general director of music in Düsseldorf (a prestigious post occupied in the 19th century by Schumann and Mendelssohn). His career then took him to the United States where, in 1963, he became musical director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Back in Paris, he became director of the National Orchestra of the ORTF, a position he held for six years. We find him with them on the montage for Bizet's bohemian dances.

Despite a busy schedule, he finds time to compose throughout his career. As an example, I have chosen one of his string quartets dating from 1966.

I think you will love this music too

David Zinman Conducts Richard Strauss

This is my post from this week's Tuesday Blog.

Other than updates to old posts, the one share I have planned for this month is a trio of selections from David Zinman’s anthology of orchestral works by Richard Strauss. His complete set (over 7 CDs) compares well to a similar set by Rudof Kempe that we sampled in these pages in the past.

American conductor Davis Zinman trained as a violinist and conductor, with a significant apprenticeship (along with Lorin Maazel) under French-American conductor Pierre Monteux. Monteux had a strong mastery of French repertoire and was renowned for premiering many seminal works from the first two decades of the 20^th century (such as Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring) but had a soft spot for German romantics (ditto for another French conductor who made his mark in Boston, Charles Munch).

Most of Zinman’s career has been based out of Europe – early stages in the Netherlands, and in the latter stages of  his memorable tenure  with the Baltimore Symphony (1985-1998), Zinman became music director of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich in 1995. 

Monteux’s influence on Zinman’s approach and his great all-around ability to navigate the entire Classical Music repertoire makes him in my mind one of the finest American conductors of his generation.

The below YouTube link points to the complete anthology, but the montage I ha eprepared focuses on three works, including the large tone poem Also Sprach Zarathustra. Aus Italien (From Italy), Strauss's first tone poem, is described by the composer as a "symphonic fantasy". It was completed in 1886 when he was 22 years old. It was inspired by the composer's visit to Italy in the summer of the same year, where he travelled to Rome, Bologna, Naples, Sorrento, Salerno, and Capri. He began to sketch the work while still on the journey.

Strauss’ single movement Romanze for cello and orchestra was composed bout the same time as his cello sonata. The piece somehow came to be forgotten, but was eventually published by Schott in 1987.

Happy Listening!

Richard STRAUSS (1864-1949)

Aus Italien, Symphonic Fantasy for large orchestra in G major, TrV 147 [Op.  16]

Romanze In F Major For Violincello & Orchestra, TrV 178 [AV 75]

Cello – Thomas Grossenbacher

 Also Sprach Zarathustra , tone poem freely after Nietzsche, for orchestra, TrV 176 [Op. 30]

Violin – Primož Novšak

Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich

Conductor – David Zinman

Discogs - https://www.discogs.com/release/20611123-Richard-Strauss-Tonhalle-Orchestra-Zurich-David-Zinman-Orchestral-Works

Arte Nova Classics – 74321 98495 2

Format: 7 x CD, Reissue

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLt_iN-ytBvZxyzGsOuVfSVkSKXpJ4YXRJ

Archive Page - https://archive.org/details/c2c-46