André Baugé, a Forgotten Great Baritone

A friend of mine who is an avid collector of records by classical singers (I’m not sure “avid” is the right word…maybe obsessed would be better, since he owns about 37,000 records) recently sent me a CD of a program he gave to fellow-collectors of two dozen recordings by various artists. One of the very few that struck me forcibly was an aria from an old French comic opera titled The Musketeers in a Convent (leave it to the French to even conceive something like that!), not so much for the quality of the music as for the quality of the singer. an old-school French baritone named André Baugé.

In a world of good but unexceptional French baritones, Baugé seemed to have it all: a beautiful voice with a bright, open tone quality but not the usual nagging brightness of many French singers past and present, a flawless singing technique, and an energy in his delivery that I found impossible to resist. Clearly, he had it all, but in poking around online, I discovered that he’s only well-known in his native France, and even there he belongs to a forgotten generation of past singers.

Curious, I went to YouTube to see what I could find, and came up with a surprisingly large number of outstanding recordings and performances by him: not only opera and operetta excerpts, but also art songs, popular French songs of the day, and even some older French tunes with peppy melodies and even a chorus to back him up. I also ran across duets that he made with contemporary French singers who are much better remembered than he, soprano Ninon Vallin and tenor Miguel Villabella.

After listening to them all, I came to the conclusion that Baugé was a lighter-voiced French equivalent of American baritone Lawrence Tibbett. They both had bright, open voices, sang with wonderful zest and, if you can believe it, also made movies during the exact same period in the early era of “talkies,” 1929-1935 before then returning to the more serious business of singing opera. But where Tibbett has remained a legendary singer, Baugé, as I said, is only remember in France and not terribly well.

So who was he and what was his background? Always ask Wikipedia. If a person is listed there, they have the answers. The information below is a distillation and rearrangement of the Wikipedia page on him.

Anna Tariol-Baugé

André Gaston Baugé was born in Toulouse on January 4, 1893, roughly three and a half years before Tibbett, but whereas Tibbett did not come from a musical family, discovered his voice fairly late and had to work his way up the ladder to success, Baugé had a couple of legs up on him since his mother, Anna Tariol, was a very good operetta soubrette (check out her 1906 Zonophone recording of Léon Vasseur’s “Chanson espagnole” from his operetta La Cruche Casse HERE) who married her voice teacher, Alphonse Baugé, thus becoming Anna Tariol-Baugé. Although not as stunning a voice as her son’s, it was clearly a well-trained instrument, thus between mama’s singing and papa’s vocal instruction, Baugé learned as a youth how to properly position his body and move his muscles to produce those glorious tones, much like other child singers who became stars like tenor Jussi Björling.

André made his debut at age 24 at the Paris Opéra-Comique as Fréderic in Lakmé. Possibly because his mother, though a well-grounded singer, did not have an especially distinctive or spectacular voice, she encouraged her son to take what he could get in terms of professional engagements, thus young André became a “pensionnaire”—a member of the junior class of singers and actors at the Opéra-Comique—until 1925, taking roles both large and small as they were meted out to him: Clément Marot in La Basoche, Sylvanus in Au Beau Jardin de France, Figaro in Le Barbier de Séville, Escamillo in Carmen, Alfio in Cavalleria Rusticana, Don Giovanni, Clavaroche in Fortunio, Lescaut in Manon, the title role in Mârouf, savetier du Caire, Ourrias in Mireille, Jean in Les noces de Jeannette, Silvio in Paillasse, Pelléas, d’Orbel in La Traviata, Marcel in La boheme, and Albert in Werther. I’m willing to bet that between performances, they also had him sweep the theatre after each performance and push the seats back. Probably to avoid detection by management for violating his contract with them, he also sang in the French provinces under the name André Grilland. By 1925 the Opéra-Comique finally moved him up almost permanently into leading roles such as Escamillo in Carmen and Germont in Traviata rather than d’Orbel. By that time, he was 32 years old.

That same friend who sent me the CDs with his voice on them also has this unsustainable belief that any singer of quality who sang at the same opera house for, say, 15-20 years was “an important singer,” but I would read the above paragraph veeerrryyy carefully. Singing for a long time at one opera house does not necessarily make you a “star quality” performer. What it means is that either you don’t really have any wanderlust to expand your performing realm because it’s comfortable to your lifestyle and/or that you’re so versatile in singing any role they throw at you that you become indispensable to them as a “house singer.” We will go into this in more detail below, but after investigating Baugé’s voice more thoroughly I learned that although he was an astonishing vocal technician with a gorgeous voice, he was far from being a viable stage actor. His recordings of arias from Carmen, Barber of Seville, Faust and Don Giovanni reveal all sorts of perfected vocal execution that you rarely if ever hear out of any baritones nowadays, but almost nothing in terms of presenting a character or a “face” through the voice. Such a singer, who also sang all his roles only in French, would not be very tempting to a foreign opera company which could get far more out of a real stage animal like Vanni-Marcoux. Thus Baugé stuck with the Opéra-Comique and his occasional appearances in the provinces (eventually, one would imagine, under his real name) along with making films (none of which, alas, exist online) for six years, also becoming an admired radio singer.

In addition to finally getting a few plum operatic roles in 1925, that year also marked the period in which Baugé began performing more and more comic operas, musicals and Viennese operettas, including a performance of Venise alongside his mother in 1927. Other gems that he performed during this period were Le Clown amoureux in 1929, Robert le Pirate in 1929, Cinésonor in 1930 (for which he wrote the text), Nina-Rosa in 1931, Valses de Vienne in 1933, Au temps des Merveilleuses in 1934, Au soleil du Mexique in 1935 and Le Chant du tzigane in 1937, all of them pretty much forgotten and neglected nowadays. In some of these, such as Véronique, he performed with his wife, soprano Suzanna Leydeker. To judge from the one recording on YouTube, she was a good singer but not as technically secure as his mother.

After World War II, Baugé withdrew from the stage to go into teaching, although he did make a surprise reappearance on television in 1955 and, in 1958, at the age of 65, sang the role of Johann Strauss senior in Valses de Vienna.

Baugé, then, apparently had a very happy life, singing his head off in any number of roles small and large, serious and comic, yet it is only in France that some of his recordings have been reissued on CD. Nonetheless, I strongly encourage you to seek him out on YouTube, where you will find a good number of his recordings, including duets with sopranos Fanely Revoil (a duet from Lehár’s One Night in Venice) and Ninon Vallin (duets from Die Zauberflöte, The Merry Widow and La noces de Jeanette) and tenor Miguel Villabella (Faure’s Crucifix and the famous Pearl Fishers duet) and recordings of La Marseillaise and rousing French songs like Auprès de ma blonde with a chorus. I was especially impressed by his recording of the aria “Ah! Combien perfidies sont les femmes” from Sigmund Romberg’s Nina Rosa, Martini’s Plaisir d’Amour, “Avant de quitter” from Faust, a song by Robert Stolz titled Près de toi, ma Cherie and, best of all from a vocal standpoint albeit an acoustic recording, a spectacular reading of the aria “Salut à vous Seigneur” from Edmond Audran’s La Mascotte, a throwaway piece of music which Baugé elevates to the status of art. Click on the titles above to be redirected to those YouTube videos.

Enjoy!

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

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The Best Early “Faust”? The Devil You Say!

GOUNOD: Faust (in Italian) / Giordano Romagnoli, ten (Faust); Gemma Bosini, sop (Marguerite); Fernando Autori, bass (Mephistopheles); Gilda Timitz, soprano (Siebel); Napoleone Umanta, bar (Wagner); Adolfo Pacini, bar (Valentine); Nelda Garrone, mezzo (Martha); Teatro alla Scala, Milan Orch. & Chorus; Carlo Sabajno, cond / Divine Art DDH 27810, also available for free streaming on YouTube

Gounod’s Faust and I have had a love-hate relationship since I was a teenager. My first exposure to the opera was through highlights recorded by Caruso and friends, and of course I loved the singing, but particularly the Mephistopheles of Marcel Journet. For me, he had it all: a rich, ringing, commanding bass voice, terrific “presence” as a character (often coming across with chuckles and jollity, which he alternated with sneers and menacing tones), plus adding a few unwritten trills to emphasize his character’s strangeness.

I finally got to hear the complete opera when my Uncle Sy gave me a copy of the De los Angeles-Gedda-Christoff Faust when I was 16 years old. I liked it, but I didn’t love it. Even to my then-young ears, it was a hodgepodge of bouncy tunes designed to keep audiences humming along combined with a few really dramatic scenes; but more to the point, I didn’t much like the recording. De los Angeles was just too consistently wimpy-sounding, plus she didn’t have the written trills for the “Jewel Song.” Gedda yelled a lot, even at times when he shouldn’t have, and for me Boris Christoff was a two-dimensional devil. All he did was snarl. In fact, if you go back and listen to Christoff sing any of his roles, regardless of composer or genre, that’s really all he did was snarl. I soon grew tired of it.

In the mid-1970s, however, I heard excerpts from a 1929-30 recording in English, conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham, that lightened the opera with a leaner orchestra, faster tempi, and much lighter voices than usual: Robert Easton as Mephistopheles, Heddle Nash as Faust, Miriam Licette as Marguerite and Harold Williams as Valentine—and I absolutely loved it, so much so that I eventually contacted an acquaintance in England and bought the complete performance on the original Columbia 78s. (It has since been issued complete on CD by Dutton Laboratories). This recording impressed me for two reasons: 1) the light, brisk performance seemed much more appropriate for this essentially lightweight music than the slower, more pompous versions I had heard, and 2) it taught me that the Big Name Star Singers who get pushed on modern-era complete opera recordings are not always the best for their roles. Easton’s voice, a fairly light bass with a flicker-vibrato, will surely not please all listeners, but there’s something oily and unctuous about his Mephisto that seemed perfect for the role. You may prefer Beecham’s later recording from the 1940s in French, but I sure don’t.

Eventually I also acquired, on 78s (this was really my big 78-rpm period), the complete 1930 Faust with my personal favorite Mephistopheles, Marcel Journet. He was a shade past his prime compared to the 1906-1912 recordings, but still in pretty good voice and his character portrayal of the complete role was, and remains, a treat to hear. The problem was the other principals. The Faust, César Vezzani, had a loud, obnoxious voice and a prominent vibrato. He sounded like a cross between an air-raid siren and a buzzsaw. Soprano Mirielle Berthon, as Marguerite, also had a squally voice and sang too loudly throughout, and the Valentine, one Louis Musy, had scarcely any voice at all. Yet there are people who think this the best Faust recording ever made. More power to them. But I do own it, just because of Journet.

I only saw two performances of Faust on the stage. The first was an interesting performance in Dayton with the then-very popular soprano Wilhelmina Fernandez (coming off her big film success in Diva) and an excellent light tenor, Vinson Cole, but the production was an early form of Regietheater (the soldiers’ chorus was sung by a half-dead and badly wounded group of soldiers, not quite what Gounod had in mind). The second was an utterly disastrous performance at the Cincinnati Opera featuring three of my favorite singers of the time, soprano Valerie Masterson, tenor John Brecknock and bass Giorgio Tozzi. Both Masterson and Brecknock had colds or some other respiratory problems and sang very poorly, and poor Tozzi was just too far past his sell-by date and sang a quarter-tone flat all evening. It was the first and only atonal Mephistopheles I ever heard in my life.

Down the road I went through the decades, listening to other recordings of Faust as they came out—Plácido Domingo, Francisco Araiza, etc., none of them very good or attractive to listen to—until I lucked out, almost by accident, with the best complete Faust in French ever: Cecilia Gasdia, Jerry Hadley, Alexander Agache and Samuel Ramey, conducted by Carlo Rizzi. True, Gasdia only has a flutter to offer in place of the trills in the “Jewel Song,” but at least she tries and her characterization of the hapless (and not very bright) Marguerite is superb. Hadley is, by far, the most interesting and complex Faust on records. Ramey is unfortunately rather two-dimensional, but he does sing with spirit and manages to sound as suave as he does sinister, which suits the role. And Rizzi’s pacing and shaping of the score, although on the slow side, has a wonderful forward momentum and organic structure that pulls all the disparate elements of the score together.

This 1920 Faust (which Wikipedia attributes to 1918—not sure if that was the year of recording and 1920 was just the year of its release) was issued by Divine Art in 2004, a period in which I was not reviewing any records and so had no idea of its existence, but even when I first spotted it on the Naxos Music Library it didn’t look promising. Recorded acoustically (with those big, God-awful metal horns), sung in Italian and partly abridged, featuring a cast of singers I’d never even heard of before, it just seemed to me to be one more loser set that I didn’t need to hear, so I didn’t even listen to parts of it until a few months ago. It sounded surprisingly good for an acoustic recording, but…it was still Faust. But last week I finally downloaded it and listened to the whole thing.

Let’s get the negatives out of the way first. Aside from the sound quality and being in the wrong language, the chorus is exceptionally thin, perhaps 10 or 12 singers, which is inadequate for the big choral passages. The Wagner, one Napoleone Umanta, had no real singing voice at all. The Siebel, Gilda Timitz, had a small, overly-bright voice and sounds more like a child than a teenager of either gender. But that’s all you can say against it. Otherwise, on balance, this is the most exciting, well-sung and well-characterized Faust I’ve ever heard. The tenor had an extremely fine voice, the right style, and infuses his role with more real drama than anyone else except Hadley (though he does sing the high C in “Salve, dimora” at full voice). The bass, though not possessed of a powerful instrument, has the requisite range for his role and also sounds dramatically involved. An even bigger surprise to me was the soprano, who not only had just the right sound for Marguerite—youthful, impetuous, not terribly intelligent but warm and loving—and also had a good trill in the “Jewel song” (most Italian sopranos of that era, even the big names, had no trill at all). And the baritone singing Valentine, though clearly no Amato or Ruffo, also had an excellent voice and acted his part well.

In fact, the whole endeavor has the feel of a live performance rather than a studio recording. But I’m saving the best feature for last. Carlo Sabajno conducts the whole thing with an intensity and forward momentum that recalled, for me, the Beecham recording except with an overall more suitable cast. The only thing in the whole performance that I found questionable was that, every time the soprano sings “Ah! Je ris” (in Italian) in the jewel song, Sabajno tossed in a little cymbal crash that’s not in the score. Otherwise, this is a Faust that lives and breathes like no other. I’m sure that some out there will complain that the Garden Scene moves too quickly, and if you compare it to the score that is so, but I find it immeasurably more interesting at this tempo. It gives a certain impulsive quality to both the orchestral music and the singing. After all, since Faust has all this pent-up libido he needs to get out of his system with Marguerite, do you really think he’d sing in a languorous romantic style? I don’t.

Of course, there are some who prefer the 1911-12 Faust, the first recording of the opera in French, that was reissued on CD by Ward Marston, but there are pluses and minuses in that recording as well. The outstanding soprano Jeanne Campredon, as Marguerite, lives up to her reputation (these were her only recordings). Although  Léon Beyle had a high reputation as Faust, however, he was somewhat past his sell-by date by 1911-12, singing with a heavy voice and lacking flexibility. Baritone Jean Noté was clearly a major singer by any measure, and his Valentine is one of the set’s highlights…but “Avant de quitter” is omitted from this performance. On the other hand, André Gresse sings beautifully but is a rather faceless Mephistopheles. The conducting of one François Ruhlmann, however, is the weakest link of this performance as it often was on complete acoustic opera sets: sometimes too fast, sometimes too slow, but never really sounding as if there is any continuity of musical style. The only major role besides Valentine that is clearly better in the Pathé set was that of Siebel, sung by Marguerite d’Elty, a little-known soprano with a simply wonderful voice. The chorus is fuller here than on the Sabajno set, but they sound scrappy and ragged in places whereas Sabajno’s does not.

So who were these performers and how did they come to be selected for this Italian Faust? Here’s the scoop. Some of this info came from Wikipedia, some from a website called “Forgotten Opera Singers.” The info on Romagnoli came from a posting on YouTube; another singer only had biographical data in the Kutsch-Riemens book, A Concise Biographical Dictionary of Singers (1969 edition).

Faust: Giuliano Romagnoli, tenor (Rome, 1879-Milan 1952)

He studied with legendary 19th century baritone Antonio Cotogni. Romagnoli’s debut occurred in 1907 as Fernando in La Favorita at the Teatro Comunale of Cervignano. Apart from a few scattered performances in Egypt, Constantinople and Switzerland, Romagnoli’s career was mostly relegated to the secondary theaters of Italy. He was a frequent visitor to the opera houses and concert halls of Milan, Ravenna, Naples, Parma, Pisa, Bari, Florence, Palermo and Rome. Romagnoli’s repertoire, consisting of over two dozen roles encompassed everything from bel canto works to  such verismo operas as La Gioconda, Mefistofele, La Bohème, Tosca, Manon Lescaut, Andrea Chénier, Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci. Romagnoli retired from performing at the age of fifty and passed away in Milan in 1952. Aside from this complete Faust, Romagnoli’s voice is preserved on a mere handful of recordings for Columbia and The Gramophone Company.

Marguerite: Gemma Bosini (1890-1982) was an Italian operatic soprano who had an active international performance career in 1909–1930. She is especially associated with the role of Alice Ford in Giuseppe Verdi’s Falstaff, a role which she performed more than 400 times on stage during her career. She is also remembered for being the first soprano to record the role of Mimi in Giacomo Puccini’s La boheme in 1917. She also made this complete recording of Faust  and Lehar’s The Merry Widow. After retiring from performance in 1930, she devoted herself to teaching singing and managing the career of her husband, baritone Mariano Stabile. (No wonder she was such a good musician, her hubby was also an excellent one.)

Mephistopheles: Fernando Autori, bass (1886-1937)

First he studied medicine, but then wanted to become a painter, however, finally, he studied singing under Antonio Cantelli in Palermo. He made his debut in 1908 at the Teatro Bellini of Naples. In 1913  he was in Palermo, where at the Teatro Massimo he appeared as king in Isabeau of Mascagni. He successfully sang in this same opera house in 1916 and 1919. After a guest performance at the Teatro Carcano and at the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan he made his debut in 1924 at La Scala, Milan (beginning role: Geronte in Manon Lescaut of Puccini). Here he worked till 1936. He sang at La Scala in the premieres of the operas La cena delle beffe of Giordano  (12-20-1924), I Cavalieri di Ekebù of Zandonai (7-3-1925), La Sagredo of Franco Vittadini (27-4-1930), Guido del Popolo of Gino Robbiani (25-3-933) and l Campiello of E. Wolf Ferrari (12-2-1936). In 1927 att the Teatro Argentina in Rome he appeared in the premiere of the opera Basi e Bote of R. Pick-Mangiagalli. From 1924 to 1933 he made guest appearances with great success also at Covent Garden in London. There he sang in 1927 the role of Timur in the English première of Puccini’s Turandot. Autori also made guest appearances in Vienna, Copenhagen, Monte Carlo, Oslo, Hague, Barcelona etc. He retired from the stage in 1936. Like Enrico Caruso he was also a gifted caricaturist.

Valentine: Adolfo Pacini, baritone (1885 – ?)

He studied at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome with Antonio Cotogni. In 1904 he made his debut at the Teatro Dal Verme, Milan in Ruy Blas. In 1905 he undertook a guest performance tour through Central America and then became in 1907 a member of the Lombardi opuses Company with which he traveled through the USA and through Canada. After his return to Italy, he sang in Bologna (among other things in 1909 at the Teatro Verdi in Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci), Pisa and Napoli, then in 1910 in South America. In 1910 he was engaged by Teatro La Scala; here he sang in Simon Boccanegra and Sigfrido.  In 1912 he guested at the Teatro Liceo of Barcelona, where he appeared in Manon Lescaut, Sigfrido and Romeo et Juliette. In 1920 he performed in Cairo, 2 years later  in Istanbul. In 1928 he started to appear on the opera stages in comprimario roles. He retired from the stage in 1941.

Siebel: Gilda Timitz, soprano (pictured at right)

About this Italian singer almost nothing is known. Probably born in Trieste in the 1880s, she had a short career in Italian provincial opera houses during the First World War.

Marta: Nelda Garrone, mezzo-soprano

Nelda (or Nella) Garrone (born c. 1880) was an Italian mezzo-soprano, best known for her interpretations of comprimaria roles in some of the earliest complete opera recordings. There is no information on Garrone’s place of birth, her early years and her vocal studies. She probably made her debut in 1907 at the Teatro Lirico in Milan as Suzuki in Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. From that point she had a notable career as a comprimaria mezzo-soprano, performing parts like Maddalena in Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto, Afra in Alfredo Catalani’s La Wally, Contessa di Coigny and Madelon in Umberto Giordano’s Andrea Chénier, Marta and Pantalis in Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele, Wockle in Puccini’s La fanciulla del West and others. In 1908 she was heard as Suzuki at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires in the local premiere of Madama Butterfly opposite Maria Farneti as Cio-Cio-San and Amedeo Bassi as Pinkerton. The  next year she sang the same role at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice. In 1918 Garrone made her debut at La Scala, ap-pearing in the premiere of Alberto Favara’s new opera Urania, and kept singing there till 1925, often under the direction of Arturo Toscanini. In addition to that, in 1922 she was seen as Clorinda in Gioachino Rossini’s La Cenerentola at the Teatro Regio di Torino and in 1924 appeared at the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan in the premiere of Carlo Jachino’s opera Giocondo e il suo Re. Her last appearances were in 1925.

Carlo Sabajno (1874 in Rosasco – 1938 in Milan) was an Italian conductor. From 1904 to 1932, he was the Gramophone Company’s chief conductor and artistic director in Italy, responsible for some of the earliest full-length opera recordings, most of them with the orchestra of La Scala, Milan and prominent singers there.

Born into a family of landowners, Sabajno served as Toscanini’s assistant during the latter’s period as chief conductor at Turin and also conducted there himself. In 1904 he was engaged by Fred Gaisberg as The Gramophone Company’s Italian house conductor (an appointment which was in effect the equivalent of the Artists and Re pertoire’ manager of later years) with responsibility for all aspects of production, such as selection of repertoire and the engagement of artists, in addition to actually conducting in the studio: in France the conductor Piero Coppola held a similar position. Sabajno devoted himself to the nascent recording industry and seems subsequently to have conducted little if at all in the concert hall or opera house. He did however compose a little, writing songs especially for the gramophone.

Really, if you like Faust at all, you need to hear this set, and if you don’t like it you should still listen to it because it just might change your mind about the opera. If you prefer the 1911-12 French set, more power to you, but the difference in cost–$56 for the French set, $16-$26 for the Italian—is yet another factor in favor of this one.

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

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Robert Craft’s Varèse Recordings

VARÈSE: Ionisation. Density 21.5. Intégrales. Octandre. Hyperprism. Poème electronique / Ensemble of Woodwinds, Brass & Percussion [Columbia Symphony Orchestra]; Robert Craft, cond . Sony Classical 196589666017

When I was growing up in the 1960s, all I knew about Edgard Varèse was that he wrote extremely noisy music and was Frank Zappa’s favorite composer. At least two of the Mothers of Invention albums included the quote from Varèse that “The modern-day composer refuses to die!”

Since I didn’t like his music, I paid no attention to him over the ensuing decades, but the sight of this reissue on Sony Classical piqued my interest, particularly since it was conducted by Robert Craft, whose work I value very highly in modern music. Craft always found a way to make the thorniest modern work sound like music and not just a mass of cluttered sound; he understood phrasing, forward momentum and, most important of all, musical structure.

Oddly, this CD appears to be only half of Craft’s Varèse recordings, originally issued as Columbia Masterworks MS 6146. The remaining pieces not included here  (Déserts, Offrandes for Soprano & Chamber Orchestra and Arcana) were also issued as a single LP, “A Sound Spectacular: Music of Edgar Varèse,” Columbia Masterworks MS 6362, with liner notes by, of all people, Igor Stravinsky! Several years later, the full collection was issued on a 2-LP set, CBS Masterworks MG 31078 (see cover at right). I would have thought that Sony Classical would have reissued the whole thing rather than just the first half of it, but Varèse’s heavy-handed music clearly doesn’t appeal to devotees of modern scores as much as Schoenberg or Webern.

Reading about Varèse’s background on Wikipedia, as well as Stravinsky’s liner notes, I began to understand him a little better. In a nutshell, he was part of that in-your-face Dadaist movement of the post-World War I movement which included the much older Erik Satie and the much younger George Antheil. Their goal was, literally, to turn music on its ear and use it as an in-your-face artistic weapon against the musical establishment. The ironic thing was that, at the same time that Antheil, an American, was living and working in Paris, Varèse, a Frenchman born in Paris, was living and working in America. In 1918 he conducted the Berlioz Requiem with the Philadelphia Orchestra, a performance that deeply impressed the orchestra’s music director, Leopold Stokowski, who became a friend and ally. It was Stokowski who premiered Varèse’s Ameriques, Hyperprism and Arcana in the 1920s. (I’ll just bet the old guard in Philly just LOVED hearing Varèse’s music screaming at them.) Varèse formed the International Composers’ Guild, dedicated to the performances of new compositions of both American and European composers with harpist-pianist-composer Carlos Salzedo in 1921, and in their manifesto we see the famous quote about how the modern-day composer refuses to die. A year later, while visiting Berlin, Varèse formed a similar European organization with Ferruccio Busoni. So whether you find value in his music or not, Varèse was clearly one of the primary movers and shakers of his time.

Some of Stravinsky’s comments on Varèse and his music are quite enlightening. He assures us that

Varèse has newly adjusted the limits of “human” and “mechanical,” and not merely theoretically but by the focus of his own humanizing creations. Varèse has tried to avoid conditions and description in his lifelong crusade to emphasize sound over scheme. “Flowers and vegetables existed before botany,” he says, “and now that we have entered the realm of pure sound itself we must stop thinking in the frame of ‘12 tones.’” (He calls the rest of us “Ici pomplere de douze sons.”) Few composers have dedicated themselves so exclusively to “purity of sound” as an ideal, and few if any have been so sensitive to the totality of sound characteristics.

We are naturally curious about the antecedents of such a man. They are either not apparent or else too apparent, by which I mean that the most obvious of them appear in his work like solecisms. This is the case with his frequent reference to Debussy—in measures 73-74, horns and trumpet, in Déserts, for instance, at the choral melody in number 12 in Equatorial, a melody that reappears in Density 21.5; and in Arcana, at numbers 13-14, at two measures before number 30, and at five measures before number 26, in the trumpets. But Varèse’s melodic characteristics are always Gallic.

Thus, it seems, the key to understanding Varèse is that he organized primeval sound, the sound of nature and particularly the sound of chaos in nature, as music, using every means at his disposal including the non-natural world of electronics (he met Leon Theremin in America during the 1920s, which is when he began using electronic sounds in his music). You can take him or leave him, but his basic aesthetic, though almost universally misunderstood during his lifetime, had a long-range effect on composer who emerged after his death.

So, now, on we go to the music.

It’s pretty much as I remembered it, loaded with percussion, air-raid sirens and the use of the orchestra as a “wall of sound.” (One immediately thinks of bandleader Stan Kenton as the next well-known creator to use a “wall of sound,” later co-opted for rock music by Phil Spector.) Yet there are also pieces like Density 21.5, which opens with, of all things, a long flute solo. Here one can better appreciate, without the distraction of the “Wall,” what Varèse was aiming at. Indeed, in this piece I would say that his music is surprisingly melodic and more respectful of older forms than we are used to, although at the three-minute mark he suddenly has the flute erupt in a series of loud, piercing high Ds. Interestingly, the programming of the works on this disc suggest a sort of music continuity, since Integrales also opens with a wind solo (clarinet) although here the music becomes denser and more aggressive as it moves along and other instruments are thrown into the mix. Varèse clearly had little interest in strings; nearly all of his music is played by piercing winds and brass instruments…and, of course, percussion.

Craft’s performances, as usual, pull the disparate elements of these crazy-quilt scores together and make coherent musical statements out of them. It is indeed quite interesting to hear this if you are used to, as I am, other performances of Varèse music that sound so completely disjointed that you can’t make heads or tails out of them. Thus I would say that this album is doubly important for that reason. It lets you hear Varèse’s music emerge as sound sculptures that quite probably convey his intent better than the disjointed ones. (Although he never recorded the Varèse performances he conducted in person, I’m willing to bet that Stokowski did the same thing. Love him or hate him, Stokie always approached every piece he conducted as music, not as some abstract experiment in sound. Even very late in his career, he did the same thing with the late symphonies of Havergal Brian, a composer who had a very strong vogue from the late 1960s through the early ‘80s but has now fallen off the face of the earth.)

As one goes through these pieces, we realize that not only was Varèse not a “one-voce” composer but, even more interestingly, that the majority of his music is not in the “wall of sound” style. Thus when we do return to this kind of music in Hyperprism, we can put it into perspective. All of Varèse.s music, whether loud or soft, wind-oriented or brass-and-percussion-driven, follows a similar pattern of vague and undefined rhythms, harmonies that are abrasive but not always atonal, is simply meant to be an acoustic environment that you are supposed to muddle your way through as best you can. It’s clearly an odd way of approaching music, whether as composer or listener, but he was quite serious about it and wasn’t just trying to annoy or tweak his listeners…although the “burpy-farty” electronic sounds in Poème electronique lead you to wonder if he wasn’t tweaking us a little. But then you hear the eerie, almost vocal-sounding effects that emerge around the four-minute mark, and you realize that he was quite serious. (This recording was made directly onto tape in 1958 fir its premiere at the Brussels World Fair.)

I got a very strange sensation listening to this album: I felt as if I were locked into a chamber in which this music was piped in, almost like being stuck in an elevator while it plays an MOR version of The Girl From Ipanema over and over and over. Is it just me, or have others felt this way when listening to Varèse? I’m curious to know. In any event, this is well recommended for lovers of the arcane in music.

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

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Yang Plays Antheil

ANTHEIL: Violin Sonatas Nos. 1-4 (complete) / Tianwa Yang, vln; Nicholas Rimmer, pno. dm on Sonata 2 / Naxos 8.559937

After having proved her mettle in more traditional, mainstream classical pieces such as the Ysaÿe sonatas and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Tianwa Yang here turns her attention to the “bad boy of American music,” the quirky and oft-revolutionary George Antheil, who wrote the score for Ballet Mécanique, a short Jazz Symphony, and gave piano recitals during the 1829s with a loaded revolver sitting atop his piano.

There’s a distinctly Kurt Weill vibe to the first sonata, but since Antheil was operating in France for most of the 1920s, probably didn’t know Weill, and Weill started writing his characteristic pieces later than Antheil, the question is, Who influenced who?? Even here, in the midst of this Weill-like music, Antheil throws in one of his patented moto perpetuo passages set to a stiff, mechanical rhythm, his trademark in the ‘20s. (In fact, another thought came to mind when listening to this piece, and that is that some of these devices Antheil was writing in the 1920s can also be heard in the supposedly “original” style of Frederic Rzewski decades later.) Even in the slow movement, Antheil indulges in stiff rhythms, microtonal string glissandi for the violinist, and utterly strange musical progressions. Only in the third movement, marked “Funèbre, lento espressive,” does one encounter a relatively normal-sounding theme—but not for long. After the first minute, it gets the Antheil treatment.

After this initial violin sonata, the composer evidently became bored with the traditional multi-movement form; the second sonata (also dated 1923) and third sonata (1924) are each only one movement, the first running less that nine minutes and the second a fairly lengthy 14:16. The second sonata, though not truly jazz-influenced (many expatriate Americans living abroad really didn’t know the difference between jazz and ragtime at this period in time), is clearly syncopated in a sort of ragtime manner but with skewed, asymmetric rhythm patterns and constantly shifting harmonies. Interestingly, the pianist also plays drums on this one (in the last passage), and there is a brief passage in tango rhythm. I really loved this piece because it tied so many different influences together!

Although written just one year later, the third sonata already shows a development in Antheil’s style. The music is a bit more linear and cohesive and less dependent on steadily-repeated hard rhythmic riffs. Indeed, this is clearly a kinder, gentler George Antheil.

Tbhe last sonata dates from 1947-48, by which time Antheil had mellowed somewhat, realizing that he didn’t always have to shock his audiences with the edgy stuff (would that one of our modern composers realized this as well!), but he still wrote occasional pieces related to his early works, and this particular violin sonata is one of them. Yet there is clearly a difference. Instead of writing odd themes which are juxtaposed against one another, Antheil figured out a way to remain himself yet still write music that developed in a semi-traditional manner. In a way, then, this sonata is, if not more interesting than the first two, clearly more cohesive. And this cohesion of musical style applies not only to the melodic lines and his use of harmony (stiff constantly shifting) but also to the rhythm, which is not only more regular (at least he sticks to the SAME rhythm for longer stretches of time) but more consistent without the frequent shifts of his early period. The early sonatas are clearly fun to listen to despite their being a bit disjointed, but this sonata as both innovative ideas and a clear form. Oddly, the last movement, a “Toccata-Rondo,” bears a striking resemblance to Prokofiev, except that at times Antheil’s rhythms appear to be running backwards rather than forwards.

Happily, Yang and Rimmer give everything they have to this project, which is considerable. AS in the case of Yang’s Ysaÿe sonatas, I have no hesitation in recommending this splendid CD.

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

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Budnik & Mania Play Weinberg & Shostakovich

WEINBERG: Viola Sonata, Op. 28. SHOSTAKOVICH: Viola Sonata, Op. 147 / Katarzyna Budnik, vla; Grzegorz Mania, pno / SPMK 18

Here’s a disc combining two 30th-century viola sonatas by Soviet composers, one of them an assimilated Soviet (Weinberg) and the other native born (Shostakovich). Perhaps not too surprisingly, it’s the early (1945) Weinberg piece that is the less common, not the late (1975) Shostakovich work.

At this particular stage in his career, Weinberg’s music was not quite as sad and dolorous-sounding as it later became. In these years, happy to be safe in Soviet Russia and not in danger of his life in Nazi-run Poland, there’s even a touch of optimism in his music, but this was a few years before the powers-that-be murdered his father-in-law in order to keep him “in line” and not write such “decadent” music.

Which isn’t to say that there aren’t some sad moments in this music, and of course the progress of the score is very much in line with his unusually quirky, personal style, which although similar in form and harmonic manipulation to his new friend Shostakovich was even less conventional. Even in the first movement, the piano accompaniment plays odd harmonies using whole tones and modes that sound peculiarly Eastern, based in part on Jewish folk music but taken to a much higher level. Also typically of Weinberg, the music almost never maintains a steady pulse for too long; even when there is one, he usually moves away from it as the movement progresses. Small wonder that his music remained outside of the mainstream during his lifetime, and has had so much trouble fitting in even today, but I give Polish musicians a lot of credit, considering the strong anti-Semitic feelings that have always permeated that country, for embracing him as one of their own. I would say that more than half of the Weinberg recordings I’ve seen going by in the past few years have come out of Poland, so at least the arts community in that country is finally embracing him as one of their own.

And I have to tell you, violist Katarzyna Budnik and pianist Grzegorz Mania are really outstanding interpreters. They dig into this music as if they had written it themselves, making every note and phrase count. You can’t take your ears off them; they possess this music fully and get every ounce of emotion out of it without exaggerating anything to extremes.

I would also credit the outstanding recorded sound for the success of this disc. The instruments are well forward in the soundspace, which makes it feel as if they are actually playing in your living room, particularly in the case of the piano. Indeed, the third movement of the Weinberg sonata opens with an extended piano solo (the viola doesn’t enter until after the two-minute mark) that is just about as emotionally powerful as you’re ever going to hear. One might speculate whether it is Budnik who pulls Mania into this emotional vortex or vice-versa, yet although both musicians are superb I have the instinctive feeling that Mania’s vortex is the one that pulls Budnik in. Typically of Weinberg from almost any period, he turns one’s expectations of the form of the sonata on its ear, giving the fast movement second and ending with the slow movement, and here one is indeed pulled into the vortex of Weinberg’s more tragic and sorrowful side.

As for the Shostakovich sonata, it too has its own compositional “fingerprint,” the use of unusual harmonies and harmonic sequences taken from Russian music but put through, you might say, a catalytic converter that extracts their quirkiest essence. Like so many 20th-century composers, Shostakovich was not immune to the innovations of Stravinsky but he found his own way early on in his career and for the most part never deviated too much from that. I would say that the difference between his orchestral and chamber works is one of degree of emotion vs. conciseness of form: too often, for me, his symphonies wander in a way that I don’t particularly like (the exceptions being the First, Fifth, Seventh and Tenth), whereas his chamber music’s more outward emotions seem to be reined in by a tighter, more concise form and less “crying on your shoulder.” In other words, the chamber music form actually helped Shostakovich to internalize more of his feelings rather than bashing the listener with somewhat hysterical ranting. Like his string quartets and other chamber works I’ve heard, this is an excellent piece, full of feeling without overdoing it.

And, to be honest, I also hear in this late work some Weinberg influence, e.g. the sudden slow section of the first movement where the piano falls away and lets the viola express its own internal sorrow; and when the piano does return, it is with minimal figures played deep in the bass range. Yet one can also compare the quick second movement here to Weinberg’s, and note the entirely different approach to harmony although this movement, though clearly in the Shostakovich style, bears a certain kinship to Hassidic music as well. (Remember, they were VERY close friends up ‘til Shostakovich’s death, and they vetted each others’ music almost constantly during that period. Weinberg even acted as the page-turner in premieres of Shostakovich’s chamber works with piano.) In the second half of this movement, I also heard a close relationship to the exact sort of tempo and rhythmic feel that one hears in the second movement of the Weinberg sonata. Also like Weinberg, Shostakovich ends his sonata with a dolorous slow movement built along the same lines.

It is very seldom that I hear a CD that is not only well programmed but so consistently excellent in both performance and sound quality as this one. This is a very special disc that will give you goosebumps just listening to it. This recording is really deep.

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

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The Krugly Band’s “Polyphonic Circle”

DAVIS-JEFFERSON: So What. MONK-HANIGHEN: ‘Round About Midnight. G. & I. GERSHWIN-HEYWARD: Doctor Jesus. My Man’s Gone Now. MONK-HAWKINS-HENDRICKS: I Mean You. COLEMAN-NICOLLE: The Blessing. FISCHER-CAREY: You’ve Changed. POWELL: Bouoncinb With Bud. COLEMAN-GURYAN: Lonely Woman / Karina Kozhevnikova, voc; Krugly Band: Alexey Kruglov, a-sax; Nikolay Zatolochny, bs; Petr Ivshin, dm / Leo Records LR936/37, available for streaming or purchase at Bandcamp

The liner notes for this CD, written by saxist Alexey Kruglov, give us the following information:

The idea of [this] program is to create the polyphonic sound based on the music of iconic jazzmen and composers who played at the intersection of melody and improvisation, made references to the Third Stream, searched for the unity between jazz in its different polystylistic spaces and academic music, moved many art directions towards each other.

Pretty heavy stuff by any measure! But when one actually listens to the music, what one hears is a set of performances that are quite out of the ordinary for Leo Records in that they are much more mainstream than almost anything else in their catalog. Or, to put it another way, the Krugle band and their extraordinary singer create a music that combines “inside” and “outside” jazz in a unique fusion that is both fascinating and enjoyable.

Some perspective on the CD is also given in the accompanying publicity sheet:

The war is raging on. People are killing each other. But art is stranger than life. In the middle of this wr, we are celebrating the emergence of a world-class singer from Russia who cansing everything from Jazz to scat to classical and everything in between. Her name is Karina Kozhevnikova.

Karina Kozhevnikova

I tried to check out Kozhevnikova online but did not come up with much information, but she has several videos uploaded on YouTube. She is a terrific singer who sounds like a cross between Ella Fitzgerald and Norah Jones. Her only drawback is that she moves too much when she sings; waving her arms, wriggling around like a worm. It’s too much and it looks like what it is, an act. I would strongly recommend that she cut this out. If you watch any of the videos of Ella singing, her movements were always natural and in synch with her singing. She never exaggerated.

Kozhevnikov’s English pronunciation is also pretty dicey, at times very good but at other nearly unintelligible to ears used to English (or, more accurately, American English).  Still, she has a beautiful vocal timbre, she swings and she can scat solos, which she does almost immediately on the opening selection, Miles Davis’ So What. One of the things I really enjoyed about these performances was the way bassist Nikolay Zatolochny underpins both her singing and Kruglov’s wildly inventive solos with his steady 4 beat while drummer Petr Ivshin plays consistently wild rhythmic patterns, scarcely even on the beat, behind all of them. Yet oddly, when Ivshin accompanies Zatolochny in his solo, he, too, switches to a straight 4.

There are other subtle little things in this and the ensuing performances, particularly in the way Kozhevnikova, singing wordlessly, interacts with Kruglov’s alto sax in synchronized lines. These appear to have been worked out ahead of time; I sincerely doubt that she could improvise either the exact lines Kruglov plays or, in other passages, harmony to them without pre-rehearsal. But it doesn’t matter because it works.

Of course, all of this intricate detail is noticeable if you pay close attention to what is going on, but as I mentioned earlier, all of these performances are just so enjoyable that one can just sit back and absorb them all. Even so, it’s hard to overlook the high level of ingenuity that went into these arrangements, such as their incredibly inventive version of Monk’s classic ‘Round Midnight. Here, the rhythm is almost constantly in flux, mostly thanks to Ivshin, but so too is the harmony, which is ingeniously rewritten to make the tune sound entirely fresh and new. It is also taken at a faster-than-normal pace, more of a medium tempo rather than the usual slow one. Although Kozhevnikova is, as already mentioned, a highly gifted scat singer, her improvisations are more interesting in the way she fractures rhythm than in harmony, where she sticks fairly close to Monk’s original chords (though her sung lines are highly varied in their note-choices and are sung at double time). Zatolochny plays an extraordinary bowed solo on this one, drawing a bit on his Slavic heritage for ideas yet shifting Monk’s song around in a way that I think the composer would have liked. When she returns for another vocal chorus, Kruglov creates some truly extraordinary lines behind and around her voice.

There’s a certain raspy edge to his playing that makes him sound, to me at least, much closer to Charlie Parker than most, although he also tosses in a few screams here and there that Parker would never have done and he uses more chromatic passages as well. This is evident on Horace Silver’s Strolling, one of the few pieces on this set where Ivshin keeps a relatively steady beat, though he does break up the rhythmic pattern in his superb solo, some of which backs the singer and saxist.

By the end of Strolling I had pretty much made up my mind to just sit back and enjoy the proceedings without trying too hard to break down the details. Besides, I think that my breaking down the first three tracks for you gives an excellent indication of how this little band approaches everything in this set. Yes, there are other surprises, such as the way Kozhevnkova plays with the rhythm on Doctor Jesus from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, a work that has occupied a bizarre artistic space ever since its 1935 premiere. Neither truly classical nor entirely pop music, its component pieces have nonetheless provided fodder for jazz musicians since at least 1939, when Sidney Bechet made the first jazz recording of Summertime.

As I alluded to earlier, it’s sometimes hard to tell which sections of these arrangements were pre-written, although some of them were clearly composed ahead of time. The fact that Kruglov’s little band, along with the singer, make all of it sound improvised speaks volumes for their high level of musicianship and skill at manipulating the harmonic-rhythmic components. I was most surprised at the inclusion of two pieces by Ornette Coleman, not because of his position as a jazz composer (though there are still some musicians who would deny that Coleman knew what he was doing in music) but because I never knew or suspected that any of his compositions had ever been set to lyrics, and I was truly shocked to discover that the words for Lonely Woman were written by Margo Guryan, most of whose work was purely in the pop field. Her lyrics for Lonely Woman were written for jazz singer Chris Connor in 1962 following studies at the Lenox School of Jazz in 1959 with Gunther Schuller, Bill Evans, Jim Hall and John Lewis. She also worked with Coleman at that time.  Kozhevnikova and the trio also make a pretty, happy, upbeat scat vehicle out of Coleman’s The Blessing, on which Kruglov sounds like a cross between Coleman and Ivo Perelman. Yet surprisingly, it’s not Carl Fischer’s 1941 song You’ve Changed that gets the most swing performance on CD 2, but Bu Powell’s Bouncing With Bud, an arrangement that, for the Krugly band, is surprisingly tonal throughout.

The singer’s diction flaws aside (and I sincerely hope that Kozhevnikova takes my advice and works on her English pronunciation; it really does need to be better), there’s absolutely nothing to criticize negatively in this fascinating and brilliantly conceived program. Every piece has its own moments of surprise and innovation. Even better, the music is so rich that one can listen to these recordings over and over, discovering new little details each time you listen.

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

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Sinclair Conducts Ives’ Sets for Chamber Orchestra

IVES: Sets for Chamber Orchestra Nos. 1-10. Set for Theatre Orchestra / Orchestra New England; James Sinclair, cond / Naxos 8.559917

Very seldom, nowadays, does one run across a recording of this integrity, and I use the word “integrity” here in both of its meanings. Ives’ series of Orchestral Sets is given here complete, which it never had been on record before—sets numbers 4 and 6-10 are first recordings—and in addition, conductor James Sinclair’s commitment to Ives seems to go much deeper than usual. In addition to the performances themselves, Sinclair himself wrote the liner notes and gives us the literary lines that inspired many of the pieces in these sets, poems by the likes of Wordsworth, Kipling, Milton, Shakespeare, Byron, Westendorf, Cooper, Underwood, Holmes, Keats, Arnold, Ives himself and his wife, Harmony Twitchell Ives, who was both a nurse and a poet. This is quite the revelatory production, then, from both a musical and a literary perspective.

Interestingly, Sets 4-10 are the products of his last period, 1925-34, the very years when Ives would often cry out in frustration that his muse had left him. It was for this reason that he refrained from finishing his late masterpiece, the Universe Symphony, leaving it to the equally brilliant composer Larry Austin to finish decades later. Yet even the earliest sets were written from 1915 onward, thus this is music from Ives’ prime.

Listening to it, it still strikes the ear as incredibly avant-garde. Although not composed in the 12-tone format of Schoenberg and company, the music is clearly atonal, the scoring lean and tending towards the use of brass and wind instruments rather than strings, which would have softened the blow of this music. It is also incredibly dense music and written in an extremely terse style; none of the component pieces of these sets run longer than 2:50, and most of them run a minute or less, yet regardless of the length of each piece Ives manages to say exactly what he wanted to, no more and no less. Small wonder that his music was marginalized until the 1940s and ‘50s, near the end of his life. It has much more in common with Ligeti and Stockhausen than it does with his gifted but not as forward-looking younger contemporary Charles Griffes. One of the most complex pieces is the fifth in the first set, titled “Caldium Night Light,” in which one hears one of his trademark sounds, playing two entirely different themes in opposing rhythms against one another. Surprisingly, the last piece in this set, “Incantation,” is tonal and more lyrical, but when I say “tonal” I refer primarily to the lead line. The accompanying harmony is “rootless” which thus sets up an uncomfortable quality.

In context, it’s easy to hear why the second set is the most popular and the one recorded the most often, as the music is generally more accessible. Even the edgy second movement, “Gyp the Blood or Heart?.” isn’t quite as fragmented in structure as most of Set One. Oddly, this piece bears a strong similarity to the music of George Antheil, who didn’t start writing orchestral pieces until the early 1920s, but since much of Ives’ music wasn’t published until long after it was written (and not performed for longer yet), I don’t see how Antheil could have known about it.

Thankfully, Sinclair understands this music perfectly, thus one only hears a lyrical approach in those component pieces written in a lyrical style. Otherwise, the clashing harmonies and instruments in these works come across with exactly the right kind of edge one expects. And happily, although there is a certain amount of ambience around the instruments, engineers Benjamin Schwartz and Jonathan Galle achieved a bright, forward sound profile that gives the music its proper edge. Several wealthy individuals and foundations contributed to the production of this album, among them Charles Ives Tyler, the composer’s grandson, but the first institution listed is the Charles Ives Society, Inc. It’s absolutely despicable that here, in 2023, for God’s sake, that Ives’ music is still not performed very often, not even in his home country, known, and recorded more than once in a blue moon like this. Classical music lovers really need to get a music education and learn to appreciate music of genius. It’s not Ives’ fault that the Musical Establishment of the late 17th and early 18th centuries wrote rules in stone that eliminated clashing harmonies and lack of tonality because they all wanted their music to sound pretty and singable by the masses. Great art is not always lovely. Sometimes it bites and has claws. Ives, like modern-day composer Edward Cowie, composed his music from the natural world as well as from the environment that surrounded him. This is music of LIFE, and if your life is a bed of roses, honey, mine sure isn’t.

Another really tuneful and rhythmically regular piece is No. 4 in the fifth set, “Ann Street,” which he turned into a song. But even though it has become one of his most popular songs, it wasn’t recorded until the late 1930s or early ‘40s by the enterprising American baritone, Mordecai Bauman (who, unfortunately, was also an avowed Communist, which hindered his career). I could go on about each and every one of these pieces, but won’t in order to save time, but I guarantee you that this is not only required listening but a lesson in composing and how to balance different styles and formats of music.

The music from Set No. 6 onward tends more towards lyricism than the earlier ones. Although Set No. 7, written between 1925 and 1930, is titled Watercolors and thus is a natural fit for this less abrasive style, I think that part of the reason was Ives’ afore-mentioned lack if ideas during this period. This doesn’t make the music less effective or interesting, however, but it does make it, to my ears, more conventional. There are still flashes of the earlier, edgier Ives, but flashes only. Of course, some of this change in temperament may simply be a result of his mellowing somewhat over the years (he turned 49 in 1925), but the first piece in the Watercolors set, “At Sea,” could have been written by any number of composers during the period 1925-30. One of the most complex pieces in these later sets is the second piece in Set &, “Swimmers.”  Another surprisingly edgy piece is the first one of Set No. 8, Songs Without Voices, in which he uses a piano played against what sounds like a baritone saxophone. Here, too, he included a different, more bitonal version of Ann Street. The second piece of Set No. 9 also harks back to the earlier Ives style, but I was really shocked to discover that in this set Ives stole from himself by inserting his 1908 masterpiece, The Unanswered Question, as the third and last piece. Of course, this runs much longer than any of the other pieces on this CD (4:41), but since it wasn’t written during the time he compiled the set I don’t really consider it a 1934 piece.

Flashes of the old Ives show up here and there in these late sets, particularly in the second piece of Set No. 10, but since Sinclair ends this recording with the 1915 Set for Theatre Orchestra, hearing the lucid flow of brilliant ideas and novel orchestration from this younger version of Ives sets the later pieces in perspective. I was particularly surprised by the second piece in this set, “In the Inn (Potpourri),” which clearly borrows from ragtime although Ives speeds up and slows down his themes and infuses them with several of his atonal harmonies. Even so, this set makes an excellent closer to this revelatory program.

To say that I recommend this recording would be an understatement. Every admirer of Charles Ives needs to own it. Save your money on the latest BS vrsion of Brahms or Chopin and get some challenging music into your collection!

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

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Sensation! The Full Story of the O.D.J.B.

I. Sensation

On January 27, 1917, a five-piece band of New Orleans musicians who had been setting Chicago on fire without threatening Mrs. O’Leary’s cow opened at the prestigious Reisenweber’s Café on Columbus Circle in New York City. They called themselves the Original Dixieland Jass Band.

Of the native New Yorkers present that night, only the café’s owners knew what the audience was in store for. The band kicked off one of its hot numbers—and I do mean hot—sounded like a 10-piece band instead of just five musicians, and literally scared the living shit out of the audience.

As number followed number, Reisenweber’s patrons just sat there in a state of numbed shock and disbelief. They had never heard anything like this before; not even Jim Europe’s Concert Band, which played hot ragtime just a few years previously behind the sexy dancing of Vernon and Irene Castle, sounded anything like this. Cornetist Nick La Rocca, one of the most powerful players in New Orleans—he was often compared to Freddie Keppard, who in turn was compared to young Louis Armstrong—played with such force and volume that he sounded like two cornetists playing in unison. Eddie Edwards’ tailgate trombone was sliding all over the place, clarinetist Larry Shields was peppering their musical stew with hot, glissando breaks the likes of which had never been heard in New York before, and drummer Tony Sbarbaro whacked his woodblocks, snare and bass drums with so much force that the café’s floor was shaking.

After three numbers, Reisenweber’s manager strolled to the center of the stage and announced that “This music is for dancing.” DANCING? What the hell kind of dance could you do to a musical explosion? Nonetheless. one couple came unglued from their seats and gingerly improvised some steps. Then another, and then a third. By the end of the evening, probably lubricated by some potent adult beverages, the whole place was stomping, laughing and cheering their new heroes on. The musicians, who billed themselves as the Original Dixieland Jass Band—no one other than the musicians knew what “jass” was, and they weren’t talking—were a surprise hit. In the next few days, people flocked to Reisenweber’s to hear this new sensation. It got so bad at one point that management had to rope off the entrance to the café and limit the number of those who wanted to enter in order to comply with the city’s fire codes.

Four days after their incendiary opening night, the O.D.J.B. was invited to record—not with Victor, but with rival Columbia. They entered the studio, they made some test recordings, and they left. Columbia’s engineers were utterly defeated by the thunderous whacks of Sbarbaro’s bass drum and the piercing quality of LaRocca’s lead cornet, and the masters were destroyed without even being recorded in their ledgers. From that day to this, no one knows what tunes were recorded.

Hearing of Columbia’s dilemma but confident that they could do better, the band was invited by Victor to record two titles on February 26. They had the same problems with LaRocca and Sbarbaro that Columbia did, but by putting their best recording engineer in charge and moving the musicians around a bit, they managed to make masters acceptable for release. Dixieland Jass Band One-Step and Livery Stable Blues, credited to The Original Dixieland Jazz Band as composers, was released on Victor 18255, the first bona-fide jazz recording in history. Even so, the company waited until May to release the record, possibly for fear that people would think they were insane. To ease some of the expected outrage, they advertised it as “A brass band gone crazy!,” adding

we can’t tell you what a “Jass” Band is because we don’t know ourselves. As for what it does—it makes dancers want to dance more—and more…and yet more!

They shouldn’t have worried. The record began selling like hot dogs at Coney Island, first throughout the New York area, but eventually all through the country. The jazz age bad begun, whether anyone was ready for it or wanted it. They were heard and admired by Enrico Caruso, W.C. Handy and John Philip Sousa (one of the few members of the Old Guard musicians who had an enthusiasm for jazz) and a little-known ragtime pianist named Jimmy Durante, who formed a band in imitation of theirs with none other than Johnny Stein, the original drummer-leader of the group when they were still in Chicago. Handy even recorded a cover version of Livery Stable Blues for Columbia. They were a hot property and everyone knew it.

But just who were these musicians, and where did this band come from?

II. The Origins of “Originality”

To explain both the background of the band and its component members as well as their then-revolutionary but now-antiquated style, we need to give a crash course on the history of jazz. This may be confusing to some readers for no other reason than that the origins of jazz are hazy, murky and often unclearly defined, even to scholars, but I’ll give it my best shot and hope you can follow me.

Here we go.

The ancient ancestors of American jazz were the “ring shouts” and gospel music of the black slaves who worked on plantations prior to emancipation. They were purposely kept uneducated by their owners and overlords who considered them to be a mentally and morally inferior race. Aside from working them half to death, the only skills that the whites conceded to blacks was their uncanny ability in music, thus they were encouraged to sing, even when working. In their few hours of spare time, they also indulged in some, shall we say, raunchy singing and dancing. I leave this to your imagination, but that’s where both jazz and the blues had their origins. If you don’t believe me, just read Thomas Brothers’ book Louis Armstrong’s New Orleans for the complete picture.

The music that the freed slaves sang and did some pelvic grinds to was called “jass.” It was not a polite term. It indicated some genital-to-genital bumping and grinding. Aside from its sung forms, it also emerged from street performers who didn’t even own real instruments, but played kazoos and cheap tin horns, producing some very dirty sounds.

Nor was this activity confined to New Orleans, even though this is where most of it gestated. There were similar trends going on in Missouri and Texas, two other states where a large number of freed slaves went to live. And each of these three geographical locations developed the music slightly differently. Ragtime came out of Missouri, the blues came out of both Missouri and Texas, and in all three locations there was this syncopated music.

Since most of these music-makers were either poorly educated or completely so, they relied entirely on their ears, thus keeping the music at a very simple melodic and harmonic level. It was in rhythm that they were most innovative, drawing on their African heritage (though most of it was forgotten down through the generations of slavery) to infuse their music with a looseness of pulse, a “slow drag” style of playing and low-down, “funky” sounds like growls and slurs.

But then there was that ragtime influence, also spearheaded by African-Americans, of which Scott Joplin was the most famous. Joplin was the first, you might say, to try to make “a lady out of “jass” by pouring it into a form recognizable to musically educated listeners. It is often forgotten that Joplin was a staunch supporter of education for his people, not only to give them the mental tools to compete in the job market with whites but also to elevate them above a plethora of superstitions—and their bump-and-grind music.

In New Orleans, the “dirty” but vitally exciting music of uptown eventually blended with the “cleaner,” more formal ragtime of downtown, where the Creoles and whites lived. Yes, there were some of both races who were prejudiced against the blacks and would never change, but most of them eventually came to some form of musical compromise, and that’s when jass was born out of ragtime.

Yet this early jazz was not a music of constant improvisation, not a music where the full band would stop playing to allow one star soloists to carry on for a full chorus or two. That really didn’t really come along until the 1920s, first in the bands of King Oliver and the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, then bursting out full bloom in the playing of Louis Armstrong, Johnny Dodds and Earl Hines. One could truthfully argue that it wasn’t until the solo style emerged around 1923-24 that jazz as we know it was born, but “jass” was built on a constant, almost hypnotic repetition of the principal melody over a strong, forceful beat, having the lead instruments interplay with one another—always “keeping the melody going”—with the black bands sounding rhythmically looser and the white and Creole bands rhythmically tighter.

One of the first white musicians to throw himself wholeheartedly into “jass” was Papa Jack Laine, who never made a record in his prime but can be heard playing drums on one recording made in 1951. Laine was far looser in his musical thinking than most of his peers; he heard the potential in this vital new music rolling out of the north side of New Orleans, and he recruited and trained numerous musicians over the years. All of the component members of the group that eventually became known as the Original Dixieland Jazz Band originally played with Papa Laine.

Freddie Keppard, a Creole trumpeter with a huge tone but a fairly choppy style, toured the country from San Francisco to New York as part of a group variously billed as the Original Creole Orchestra or Creole Ragtime Band. In fact, this band played at the famous Winter Garden theater in New York in 1915, got good reviews, and was invited to make records, but declined the offer because Keppard was afraid that other musicians would then be able to “steal his stuff.” But please note that Keppard’s band, though garnering good reviews, did not set the town on fire. His choppy style, which can be heard on the few recordings he did make in 1923-24, was intriguing to New York ears but not exciting as the O.D.J.B. or the later arrival of Louis Armstrong were. So I don’t want to hear that the O.D.J.B. was “lucky” to become the band that finally ushered jazz into the broader American culture. They weren’t lucky. They were, truly, sensational.

As a footnote to this, I think I may have stumbled across the reason why the word jass was converted to jazz. Look at the Reisenweber’s Cafe ad at the top of this article; it clearly says “The First Eastern Appearance of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band.” yet the band’s record labels in 1917-18 still said JASS. My guess is that the promoters changed it, either because word jass wasn’t pronounced as we think it was, with soft s’s, but with a Z sound as in the word “jasmine.” What this means is that the music was always called “jazz,” but since the Southerners and Northerners had different spellings for it, the Northern promoters simplified matters by changing the s’s to z’s. The other possible reason is that they asked what “jass” meant, were told it, and decided to change the spelling to keep patrons from finding out what it meant. I don’t have proof of this, but when you put 2 + 2 together, doesn’t it make sense?

III. The Band’s Real Origins

As mentioned above, all of the members of the O.D.J.B., as well as those who were part of the troupe of white and Creole musicians who emigrated first to Chicago in 1916, were at one time or another members of Papa Laine’s bands. In his first autobiography, Swing That Music (1936), Louis Armstrong is quoted as saying that “in 1909, the first great jazz orchestra was formed in New Orleans by a cornet player named Dominick James LaRocca. They called him ‘Nick’ LaRocca. His orchestra had only five pieces but they were the hottest five pieces that had ever been known before, LaRocca named the band ‘The Old Dixieland Jass Band.’ He had an instrumentation different from anything before, an instrumentation that made the old songs sound new. Besides himself at the cornet, LaRocca had Larry Shields, clarinet, Eddie Edwards, trombone, Ragas, piano, and Sbarbaro, drums. They all came to be famous players and the Dixieland Band has gone down now in musical history.”

I’m sure that Armstrong probably thought he was remembering correctly, but we have to remember that in 1909 he was only eight years old, thus his memory 27 years later probably played him a few tricks. Much as I’d like to believe it, I don’t think the “famous five” were actually playing together as a unit as far back as 1909, though they probably did know one another. LaRocca, the oldest of them, was born in 1889 so he would have been 20 in 1909, and it was quite possible that this precocious talent broke off from Laine’s group to form his own five-piece band, but there is no evidence that they played together as a unit that far back. Edwards would have been 18 at the time, so that’s possible, but Shields was only 16 that year, clearly not mature enough to have been a formidable clarinetist at that age, and drummer Tony Sbarbaro was only 12 years old in 1909, thus it’s out of the question. But I’m sure that Armstrong must have heard and been impressed by LaRocca. No other New Orleans cornetist or trumpeter of my experience had his combination of tone, power, technical control and feeling for “ragtime swing,” although the lighter, sweeter-toned Willie “Bunk” Johnson—not to mention Armstrong’s personal mentor, Joe “King” Oliver—were the other two outstanding New Orleans brass players whose work influenced Armstrong heavily.

The true story of the O.D.J.B. goes like this, most of it courtesy of Wikipedia (and some of it courtesy of collector Tim Gracyk on his YouTube postings). A Chicago promoter approached clarinetist Alcide “Yellow” Nunez (1884-1934) and drummer Johnny Stein (1891-1962) asking them to bring a New Orleans-styled band to Chicago, where trombonist Tom Brown’s band had been successful for about a year. Nunez and Stein invited trombonist Edwards, pianist Henry Ragas and cornetist Frank Christian to join, and all agreed, but just before they left New Orleans Christian backed out and they decided to take LaRocca instead. They started their gig at Schiller’s Café on March 3, 1916 as Stein’s Dixie Jass Band and were an immediate hit. They soon received offers with higher pay to play elsewhere, but Stein didn’t want to go, so the others broke off, brought drummer Tony Sbarbaro north to join them, and began playing on June 5 as the Dixie Jass Band, simply leaving Stein’s name off.

A rare photo of the Dixieland Jass Band from 1916, with Alcide Nunez on clarinet.

But there were quarrels and conflicts between LaRocca and Nunez. Like every jazz band of that time and earlier, many of the numbers they played were pretty much improvised into being by combining different riffs or licks that the players came up with into a completed “composition,” and Nunez was no exception, but LaRocca kept taking credit for his and the others’ ideas. Eventually things came to a head and on October 30, the LaRocca and Tom Brown band agreed to switch clarinetists, which is how the O.D.J.B. got Larry Shields.

The arrival of Shields in the Dixie Jass Band was akin to the Cincinnati Reds of the 1970s acquiring second baseman Joe Morgan; he was a superstar clarinetist whereas Nunez was just a pretty good one. If you don’t believe me, go and listen to Nunez’ many recordings, all made after he left LaRocca’s group. He had a lovely tone and some interesting ideas in the breaks, but was nothing like Shields, who could produce an extraordinarily powerful tone and was capable of playing in both the low and high ranges of his instrument with a smooth transition between registers. In later years, Benny Goodman acknowledged that Shields was his model and favorite clarinetist in the years before he heard Johnny Dodds and, later Jimmie Noone.

Working together as a unit, these five dynamic players soon drew the biggest crowds in the Windy City, which brought them to the attention of promoter Max Hart. Hart used their rave Chicago reviews to convince Reisenweber’s owner to book the band into his club, and that’s how they arrived there as a functioning unit.

What set the O.D.J.B. apart from every other jazz band of their time were three things: their much more aggressive use of the ragtime beat, the lack of both banjo and tuba which made them sound less old-fashioned and even quaint to contemporary ears, and their explosive style. I make no exaggeration about this; the records don’t lie. Go ahead and compare them to both the bands that Nunez played in or any of Tom Brown’s bands on records. They sound like cornballs next to the O.D.J.B., no matter how professional they were in other respects, playing with a jerky, “yukka-pukka” sort of beat and including both banjo and tuba. They were the happy-go-lucky local trains of the jazz music business. The O.D.J.B. was the Super Chief, roaring down the line with a “get-the-hell-out-of-my-way” aggression that is still startling more than a century later.

IV. Sensational Lawsuits

The surprise success of Victor’s first “jass” record, unfortunately, spawned two lawsuits against the band—one for each side of the disc! The first came from an obscure ragtime composer named Joe Jordan, who claimed that the third melody or “trio strain” of the A side, Dixieland Jass Band One-Step, was lifted from his 1909 composition, That Teasin’ Rag. Victor almost had a stroke when they found this out, since sales of the disc were going through the roof and they were worried about a separate lawsuit against them. But these were less strict times in the copyright game, and the judge ruled that as long as Victor acknowledged Jordan’s composition on the label, it would be O.K. Interestingly, however, when they changed the label to read “Introducing ‘That Teasin’ Rag’ on the label, they still didn’t credit Jordan as the composer. In addition, they slightly changed the song’s title from Dixieland Jass Band One-Step to Dixie Jass Band One-Step. But sales remained brisk, and they might have sold even more copies had they not been forced to cut back production due to America’s involvement in World War I.

The other lawsuit, as you can probably imagine, came from Alcide Nunez, who claimed that Livery Stable Blues was his composition but that he called it Barnyard Blues. When asked for proof, however, Nunez could offer none, since he had not yet copyrighted the tune; it was just that LaRocca stole his music and put his name on it. The case might have been thrown out of court except for one thing: in the Victor ledger for that recording date, the original title for side B was given as Barnyard Blues but crossed out and replaced with Livery Stable Blues. In a way, however, this worked out to the band’s favor, since Nunez was able to copyright his music under its original title, although later remakes of this record by the O.D.J.B. now had to use his title.

Prior to the lawsuits coming to court, the O.D.J.B. was invited by Columbia on May 31 to return to their studio and record two sides, but the band would only agree after they promised to actually issue them this time. Concerned about possible future litigation regarding their “original” material, they were told to record established songs by other composers. The band reluctantly agreed, and turned out performances of Darktown Strutters’ Ball and (Back Home Again in) Indiana. The performances were far from their best work, having been put together in some haste and not part of their repertoire, but although there were other recordings of these songs made at the time—a group called the Six Brown Brothers recorded the first-named a few weeks earlier, on May 7, 1917—the O.D.J.B.’s much livelier performances established these tunes as jazz classics, which they have remained forever since.

Also while awaiting the court’s decision in their lawsuits, the band was invited by the Aeolian-Vocalion company to record a few sides for them, On August 17 they re-recorded Livery Stable Blues as Barnyard Blues plus three new tunes, At the Jass Band Ball, Ostrich Walk and Tiger Rag, all several months before their 1918 remakes for Victor. These recordings, too, sold in large quantities; by now, the O.D.J.B. was synonymous with the hottest music in town, and everyone wanted a piece of them. They returned to the Vocalion studios on November 21 and 24 to record three more titles: Reisenweber Rag, a pseudonym for Dixieland Jass Band One-Step, Look At ‘Em Doing It Now, a Larry Shields tune, again before the Victor recording, and one of their exotic specialties, Soudan. The first of these is remarkable for the fact that here the band invented their OWN trio strain for the third melody, replacing That Teasin’ Rag for the first and only time in the tune’s history…but the original recording had so implanted Jordan’s melody in the public mind that this version is unfortunately forgotten.

Soudan, which they later re-recorded for English Columbia in May 1920, is even more remarkable. This tune and The Sphinx were their exotic specialty numbers, but the former was actually a classical piece titled Dervish Chorus from “In the Soudan” by the little-known Czech composer named Gabriel Šenek. So how did the O.D.J.B. even know about this piece? Well, I’ll tell you. It had been recorded for Victor on August 20, 1903 by Sousa’s Band, a strange little seven-inch 78. One of them must have gotten hold of a copy of it, liked it, and thus they converted it into a jazz vehicle, one of the very first instances of a band “jazzing the classics.” Although the Columbia version has superior sound, this is still a very interesting and unusual recording. Unfortunately, with the war going on, Vocalion had even less resources for pressing records than Victor, thus copies of these discs are very rare indeed.

Interestingly, during this same period Victor decided to sign another New York-based jazz band to make records called Earl Fuller’s Famous Jazz Band, The Fuller band played at Rector’s Restaurant and had a loyal following of its own, though not on the same level as the O.D.J.B. which was still packing them in. The musicians in the band were cornetist Walter Kahn, trombonist Harry Raderman, Fuller on piano, John Lucas on drums and a young clarinetist, later to become a famous bandleader, named Ted Lewis. Listening to their records today, they played with much of the same fire as as the O.D.J.B. but their sense of rhythm was stiffer and, although technically proficient, none of the three horns could play with the kind of imagination one hears from LaRocca, Edwards and Shields. The Fuller band’s playing was just too stiff. Nonetheless, records like Slippery Hank (made at their first Victor session in June 1917) started selling pretty well but, since the prodigal sons returned to the fold in 1918, clearly not as well as their models.

V. Competition and a Trip to London

In 1918 the O.D.J.B. returned to the Victor studios, their lawsuits behind them, and were very busy making records, of which the most famous was the remake of Tiger Rag, but by the fall of that year competition showed up in the form of bands led by Nunez, Tom Brown and, yes, Frank Christian. Although none of these bands was quite as hot, they did take some business away from them, thus LaRocca asked his manager, Hart, to line up a tour of London. It was about this time that Hart began promoting them as the “Originators of Jazz,” the spelling having changed from ‘jass,” but regardless of the spelling it wasn’t true…yet LaRocca convinced himself that it was. In London, of course, he wouldn’t have any competition, so he could promote this fiction and make it work to his advantage.

But the band was hit with a double whammy. Near the end of July 1918, Edwards was drafted, serving in the Army until his discharge in March 1919, being replaced by Emile Christian. On February 18, 1919, pianist Henry Ragas died during the devastating flu pandemic that hit near the end of the World War. Emile Christian deputized on trombone until Edwards’ return, while British pianist Billy Jones filled in for the duration of the band’s British jaunt.

Despite this, they were a smash hit once again and England went wild over them. Their April 7, 1919 performance at the Hippodrome in a revue titled Joy Bells was so successful that they received an invitation for a command performance before King George V at Buckingham Palace. The concert did not start auspiciously; LaRocca reported that the assembled aristocracy, which included French Marshal Philippe Pétain, stared at them through opra glasses “as though there were bugs on us,” but eventually the audience loosened up and began applauding wildly, the biggest applause coming for their rendition of Tiger Rag, at which the king roared and applauded uproariously. But if His Majesty liked them his son, Prince of Wales Edward who was a huge jazz fan (later in the 1920s there was a tune written in his honor titled Prince of Wails), was absolutely smitten with them. Yet the tour ended on a sour note. Lord Harrington, incensed that his daughter was smitten with one of the musicians [Wikipedia says “the band’s singer,” but they didn’t have one], chased them to the docks and made sure that they embarked for the trip back to America.

Back in the U.S., they replaced Ragas with J. Russel Robinson who was not only a fine pianist but also an accomplished songwriter. Unfortunately, he helped to soften the O.D.J.B.’s music profile by writing pop tunes like Margie and Palesteena for them to play and adding alto saxist Benny Krueger. This turned out to be a double-edged sword for the band: the records sold very well and were very popular, but the style began veering further away from jazz. By 1923 both Shields and Robinson were gone, replaced by Artie Seaberg and Henry Vanicelli respectively. (Krueger was also gone, replaced by one Don Parker.) For a brief period in 1921, Robinson himself was replaced by another fine pianist-songwriter, Frank Signorelli, but by 1926 it didn’t much matter. King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton were then on the scene playing music that was hotter than the O.D.J.B.’s, and worse yet, Louis Armstrong’s coming-out party on his Hot Five recordings established an entirely new style of jazz based more on full improvised solo choruses and not just on “hot breaks.” By 1927 LaRocca himself left the band, being replaced by a 19-year-old trumpeter named Henry “Hot Lips” Levine. Thirteen years later, Levine led a pretty nice Dixieland combo on NBC radio’s surprise hit program The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street.

VI. Revival Day

The O.D.J.B. seemed to have faded forever from the American music scene. By the early 1930s, such hot bands as those of Casa Loma, Earl Hines and Bennie Moten were ushering in an even hotter style of jazz which came to be known as swing; once Benny Goodman’s band hit the big time in mid-1935, thus officially starting The Swing Era, all older forms of jazz were considered obsolete. It looked as if the O.D.J.B. would be as forgotten as flagpole sitters and bathtub gin.

But a surprise was in store for the group, just as it would be a couple of years later for Jelly Roll Morton, similarly forgotten after 1930. In 1936, the original five (excepting Robinson on piano in place of the deceased Ragas) played a reunion performance on network radio that garnered surprisingly high ratings. This led to their appearing in a short documentary on early recording, in which they were lined up in a studio playing Livery Stable (Barnyard) Blues (see photo). Victor, sensing a money-making proposition, invited them back to make records, which they did for the next two years, but there was a catch. (Isn’t there always when a big corporation is involved in artistic matters??) The catch was that they had to expend their sound to big band proportions and record tunes, including some of their old hits as a quintet, with this larger group. The results were sort of a musical bastard, producing such performances as Bluin’ the Blues featuring some cornball on muted trumpet (not LaRocca, I guarantee you!) and an undistinguished tenor sax solo in place of the original vibrant, no-holds-barred style of the past.

There was, however, a silver lining—small but decidedly precious. Between September and November 1936, the original five were allowed to cut remakes of their past hits for the label, but since the big band was now called the O.D.J.B., the pioneers were now named The Original Dixieland Five on the labels. Yet these were extraordinarily excellent records, and for once LaRocca and Shields played full-chorus solos, not just short breaks. Thanks to their vastly superior electrical sound, these remain the most tonally satisfying of all O.D.J.B. performances.

The small group, spurred by the attention their broadcasts and recordings had given them, even toured briefly; Shields, in particular, came in for a great deal of praise for his solos and even shocked many young swing fans who thought that all the band ever played was cornball music. Unfortunately, LaRocca began suffering heart-related health problems and had to retire soon after. Moving back to New Orleans with his wife, Nick licensed the band name to Phil Zito to use. Zito formed a new O.D.J.B. that was neither fish nor fowl; they used a leaner ensemble but still leaned towards swing, which won them a contract to make records for RCA’s Bluebird label, the best of which was a sweet little song titled In My Little Red Book. This edition of the O.D.J.B. was defunct, however, by 1940. In that year, Edwards and Sbarbaro decided to revive the band name in more modern but still small-scaled performances of the old repertoire, using different trumpeters and clarinetists (Shields retired in 1940). This combination recorded some excellent performances for V-Disc in 1943 which were issued I 1944, but alas, only for use by Armed Forces radio since V-Discs could not be sold commercially.

Although Edwards and Sbarbaro soldiered on into the early 1950s, it just wasn’t the same. The best years and best performances of the O.D.J.B. lay behind them, not in front of them, and by the time they called it a day the band had become a synonym for corny pseudo-jazz…not just the modern product but, sadly, also the recordings from their prime years.

VII. Influence

During their heyday, a great number of cornetists and clarinetists were influenced by LaRocca and Shields, among them Beiderbecke, George Mitchell and Red Nichols (cornets) and Leon Roppolo, Sidney Arodin and, of course, Goodman (clarinets). Yet in a way it was the band’s overall drive and force that was to have the greatest long-term influence in the Swing Era. One could argue, in fact, that the hot drive of the band left a general long-term effect on New York jazz in general, where the slow-drag, bluesy style of King Oliver and even Morton was laughed at when they came to New York (exception a few musicians, of course). All one need do is to compare the bands led by New Orleans musicians to those led by New Yorkers in the late 1920s-early ‘30s to hear the difference.

I would also argue that the band’s 1936 recordings, made two years before Hughes Panassie arrived from France to record small-group jazz featuring some New Orleans players like Tommy Ladnier, and four years before Bill Russell began recording such black and Creole old-timers as Kid Rena, Louis “Big Eye” Nelson and Bunk Johnson, helped kick-start the New Orleans revival movement. The sad thing is that so many of these later trad jazz bands insisted on including banjos and tubas because they were convinced that this was “authentic,” despite the fact that not only the O.D.J.B. but also the bands of Kid Rena and Bunk Johnson never used either.

Despite the paucity of solo work in most of the records from their prime and the frequent “march time” drumming of Tony Sbarbaro, you really should investigate this pioneer jazz aggregation. As long as you are willing to accept the fact that you won’t hear extended solos, I think you’ll find several of their recordings to be as exciting and invigorating as the day they were made. Here are my favorites (click on the titles to listen):

Dixieland Jass Band One-Step – their very first record and a real killer, even today. By the way, it still amazes me that Victor was able to record Sbarbaro’s full drum kit, including his booming bass drum thumps, whereas from 1921 onward nearly ALL record companies absolutely refused to record a full drum kit until those 1928 recordings by McKenzie and Condon’s Chicagoans with young Gene Krupa.

Livery Stable Blues – I much prefer the 1936 remake to the 1917 original, and not just because Larry Shields took much fuller solos in these records. You get a better feel for how the band balanced their sound in live performances, and there’s more elasticity in the beat.

At the Jazz Band Ball – I wish there was an electrical remake of this jazz classic—this 1918 recording is just a bit stiff—but once again Shields’ clarinet fills are exquisite and the ferocious drive of the group comes through clearly.

Soudan [Dervish Chorus] – although the Vocalion recording came first, this classic English Columbia recording is looser and has a nice “coochy” feel to it.

Reisenweber Rag – much of this recording sounds identical to the Victor version, but it’s interesting to hear the band play an entirely different trio melody. It’s a good thing that this wasn’t part of the original version, however, since the Teasin’ Rag theme is the one part of this tune that most people remember and identify with the O.D.J.B.

Bluin’ the Blues
Clarinet Marmalade – two more of their outstanding 1936 recordings.

Ostrich Walk – this one comes out a bit looser than Jazz Band Ball, so I really like it.

Sensation Rag – one of the outstanding remnants of the 1943 band with Bobby Hackett on cornet, playing much higher than he usually did in order to simulate the LaRocca style.

Some of These Days – a strange relic of the 1923 band, which included Don Parker on alto sax, and on which Larry Shields and J. Russel Robinson were replaced by the little-known Artie Seaberg and Henry Vanicelli, but it came out quite good.

Tiger Rag – the single most influential O.D.J.B. piece of them all, so popular, in fact, that Jelly Roll Morton claimed composer credit for it, but Johnny St. Cyr set the record straight: “I never heard that tune before the Dixieland Band started playing it.”

Satanic Blues – one of the better English Columbia performances with Emile Christian on trombone and Billy Jones on piano.

In My Little Red Book – this one may turn off some O.D.J.B. fanciers, but honestly, I love this little tune and the relaxed arrangement and playing. Sharkey Bonano, another cornetist-trumpeter initially influenced by LaRocca, plays beautifully on it.

Fidgety Feet – similar in performance style to Jazz Band Ball, but again, a lot of fun to listen to if you just accept that it’s really “hot ragtime.”

Skeleton Jangle – one of the very best of the 1936 recordings.

Mournin’ Blues – this often-overlooked gem is, really, the band’s best blues recording after Bluin’ the Blues.

Lazy Daddy – an excellent tune, one of their best although not one that was copied by too many other bands. I don’t understand why.

Jazz Me Blues – although this electrical remake was not made by the authentic musicians, it does feature three outstanding New Orleans-born players who understand the style perfectly, trumpeter Wingy Manone, trombonist George Brunies (formerly with the New Orleans Rhythm Kings) and little-known but excellent clarinetist Sidney Arodin, who back in the day played with – you guessed it – Johnny Stein’s New Orleans Jazz Band after the O.D.J.B. players broke off.

The Sphinx– again, I much prefer this 1943 remake to the 1920 original.

Original Dixieland One-Step – we end where we began, with the tune that started all the fuss, in this splendid electrical remake from 1936.

And that’s the whole lot! I hope you enjoyed reading this retrospective as much as I enjoyed writing it!

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

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The Kungsbacka Piano Trio’s Schumann

SCHUMANN: Fantasiestücke. Piano Trios Nos. 1 & 2 / Kungsbacka Piano Trio / Bis SACD-2437

SCHUMANN: Piano Trio No. 3. Sechs Studien in kanonischer Form (arr. T. Kirschner). Piano Quartet in C min.* / Kungsbacka Piano Trio; *Lawrence Power, vla / Bis SACD-2477

Playing the chamber music of Schubert or Brahms is pretty easy. Beethoven is a bit trickier. But Schumann is a post-graduate course.

The ill-fated German genius wrote some of the most complex music of his time—complex in both form and technical demands. Even listening to Schumann is not very easy, which is one reason why, despite his being a major old-timey composer and one who is revered by performers, his music has never really been as popular as the two Bs or Schubert.

Yet here, on these two Bis discs, the Kungsbacka Piano Trio, possibly to celebrate their 25th anniversary as a full-time chamber ensemble, have recorded all three of Schumann’s numbered trios as well as his Fantasiestücke, a special arrangement for trio of his 6 Studies in Canon Form as well as the Piano Quartet, and after listening to them I have no hesitation in saying that they go straight to the top in terms of both execution and performance style.

To begin with, I’m happy to report that neither violinist Malin Broman nor cellist Jesper Svedberg subscribe to the false doctrine of straight tone in playing this music. They have apparently done their homework and discovered that string players of that time—as I’ve been screaming about for years—played with vibrato in held notes and only switched to straight tone for the faster, trickier passages. (As the late Casey Stengel used to say, “You can look it up.” But they usually don’t.) For another, they eschew the modern tendency towards angular, clipped phrasing in fast passages, instead playing with an almost breathtaking legato sweep that carries the listener away. The end result are performances that literally throb with life and energy, sweeping the listener away into a higher realm. Dare I say it? These performances put me in mind of the Thibaud-Casals-Cortot trio of sainted memory (and primitive early-electrical sound). The only real difference is that Svedberg has a lighter, leaner sound than Casals’ intensely rich, almost bass-like cello tone. But Casals was one of a kind, particularly from the 1910s into the early ‘30s, which is why he was the acknowledged King of Cellists. (Emanuel Feuermann was the Prince Regent.)

Indeed, Kungsbacka’s playing incorporates almost infinite gradations of volume and tone color; no two phrases, and sometimes different notes within a phrase, are given different sounds and stresses without overdoing or exaggerating it. One can almost follow the musical flow of Schumann’s mind just by listening to the way they play the music—note, particularly, the brilliant way they handle the tricky syncopations (which almost makes the music sound as if it were running backward) in the second-movement Scherzo of the first trio. To their credit, they don’t make it sound completely easy—that would detract from the music’s intended edginess—but they do it so well that you can almost envision how this music emerged from Schumann’s mind and onto score paper. In the slower middle section of this movement, they play the criss-crossing lines with great virtuosity, making them sound easy (they’re anything but) without losing that undercurrent of unease that is always the key to performing Schumann.

The Fantasiestücke is a perfect example of the reason why Schumann is so admired by musicians but often met with indifference by audiences. There is absolutely nothing flashy in this music; it is exceptional in every way, particularly in its artful construction, but since it doesn’t reach out and grab the listener by the throat, the way Liszt’s bullshit pieces do, it’s seldom played in concert. By Schumann’s standards, the piano part is relatively simple in places, only occasionally challenging the technique of a medium-grade student; the themes sound much closer related to German folk music than even most of Beethoven or Brahms; and the overall structure of the piece is meaty but lacking in “attractive” tunes that the people can hum on their way out of the concert hall.

The relatively conventional, and thus somewhat weak, second trio is given about as good a performance here as you are likely to hear, but the music is what it is. Not even the hottest spitfire chamber trio in the world could make the music sound any better; it was, simply, an odd, weak work in Schumann’s otherwise spotless musical resumé. Fortunately, the third trio makes up for it. Perhaps the Kungsbacka Trio opted to spread these over two CDs because putting all three on one disc would have run longer than 82 minutes, always a bit of a danger even for a commercial CD (or SACD), thus they came up with these other filler works, of which only the Fantasiestücke was really written by Schumann himself for piano trio.

As good as their performance of the third Piano Trio or the Studies in Canon Form are, it is Kungsbacka’s blistering rendition of the Piano Quartet that steals the show on CD 2. This is Schumann at his absolute best, and the group makes the most of it. I daresay there are very few recorded performances of this quartet that can match this one both in terms of energy and stylistic accuracy.

These are, really indispensable CDs for Schumann- lovers, and I recommend them highly.

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

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A 20th-Century Duo Recital

POULENC: Violin Sonata. MESSIAEN: Theme and Variations for Violin & Piano. KNAPIK: Partita for Violin & Piano /Malgorzata Wasiucionek-Potera, vln; Sylwia Michalik, pno / SPMK 27

This album, issued on a small Polish label, came my way courtesy of clarinetist Tomasz Wawer, an outstanding performer on his instrument. It is exactly the kind of CD I enjoy, a program of relatively modern music including at least one composer new to me, in this case Eugeniusz Knapik (b. 1951).

The Poulenc Sonata is a relatively familiar work, but the Messiaen is not and the Knapik I didn’t even know about previously. The artists’ approach to the first of these is in the typical modern style of brisk, edgy playing, which happens to suit Poulenc to a tee. In the midst of the first movement, the music suddenly relaxes into an almost café-music slow theme, and this they play with wonderful schmaltz which also suits the music…although, in the second movement which is all legato, I felt that they became a bit too soft, The performance here lacks bite.

The duo applies the same style of soft contours and a “lovely” legato to the Messiaen piece, but here, I felt, it sounded more suitable to the music. Messiaen’s goal was to present music as mysticism—his mother was a self-proclaimed Catholic mystic, and young Olivier tried to follow suit—and in playing the music in this style, this duo brings out a feeling of seamless continuity which was one of Messiaen’s goals as a composer. Very well done, and in the fact passages they play with brio.

The Knapik piece, as it turns out, rather combines elements of both of the previous works on this disc—in fact, it does so in more ways than one since it is a resolutely bitonal piece from the very opening of the “Entrée” (the other movements are marked “Air 1,” Mouvement,” “Recitatif” and “Air 2”). Here, I felt that Wasciucionek-Potera and Michalik were entirely in their element; this music they clearly felt from the inside, getting under the skin of the piece much better than they did in the Poulenc Sonata. Indeed, they almost sounded as if they were on a mission to “sell” this piece to listeners as a great work, and they certainly come close. There were a few moments, but not many, where I felt that Knapik tended to overdo or repeat things that weren’t called for, yet overall I would say that this closing piece was the real highlight of this disc. It is certainly a work that bears repeated listening as the majority of it is cleverly and masterfully constructed. Interestingly, Knapik completely resolves his dissonances in the “Entrée” by throwing in a tonal chord.  This sounds for all the world like the end of this section, but no! Knapik goes on to write a sort of solo cadenza for the violin, which I took to be “Air 1” but was not, before continuing in his edgy-but-cohesive style to the end of the piece. Some of the violin passages towards the end—which does end on a resolved chord—requite some very fancy fingering.

Interestingly, I felt that “Air 1” bore a striking resemblance to Messiaen in both the choice of theme and the way Knapik harmonized it. In the midst of it, however, Knapik suddenly jumps from a mystic-legato theme to explosive and harmonically jumbled fast passages, and oddly, these are later developed a bit amidst returns to the slow air.

Indeed, the next section, “Mouvement,” sounded to my ears even more like Messiaen, specifically the Messian of the Quartet for the End of Time. Listen to it and see if you don’t agree.

As for the last two movements, the “Recitatif,” which lasts five and a half minutes, opens up as a bitonal rhapsody for the solo violin. When the piano enters at around 3:39, they play a fascinating theme in unison, the pianist sticking to single notes, then back to more a cappella rhapsodizing by the fiddle before close piano chords, some quite aggressive-sounding, signal another change of tempo and mood. Then we go into “Air 2” which, again, has a strong Messiaen-like feeling.

The fascinating and (for the most part) well-conceived Knapik piece make this CD, I think, a valuable one for lovers of contemporary music and, as I said earlier, Messiaen’s Theme and Variations are expertly paced and interpreted. Over all, then, a very fine accomplishment for these two very fine and conscientious artists.

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

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