Rare recordings of two prodigies and some Christmas Danny Kaye for the littlies
Forgotten recordings by two child prodigies are among the Christmas batch of releases on the Eloquence label gleaned from Deutsche Grammophon and Decca’s archives.
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Forgotten recordings by two child prodigies are among the Christmas batch of releases on the Eloquence label gleaned from Deutsche Grammophon and Decca’s archives.
Pianist Ruth Slenczynska and violinist Ida Haendel had much in common. Both were daughters of ambitious Polish fathers, both were coached as children by legends of their respective instruments and both had careers that spanned more than seven decades. But their childhood experiences were very different. Whereas Haendel’s father Nathan, who was Jewish, moved the family out of Poland to London on the eve of the Nazi invasion and did everything he could to nurture Ida’s precocious talent, Josef Slenczynski was a bullying and violent tyrant who would beat his daughter with a shovel handle if she made a mistake.
Born in Sacramento, California, Slenczynska was giving recitals at the age of five before leaving for Europe in 1931 to be coached by such giants of the piano as Sergei Rachmaninov, Artur Schnabel and Alfred Cortot, and making a triumphant return at the New York Met three years later. As a young woman she finally escaped her father’s sadistic control, enrolled at Berkeley as a psychology major during the war years, got married and divorced and carved out a career for herself, eventually writing a shockingly honest autobiography detailing her traumatic childhood.
Her complete American Decca recordings are available in a 10-disc set, all of them in mono except for a 1964 pairing of Liszt’s first concerto and Saint-Saens’ second, both in stereo. The first six are taken up with her specialty, Chopin – both sets of etudes, waltzes, ballades, scherzos and preludes – with a Liszt album (Rhapsodie espagnole and the Paganini etudes) followed by a program of works to celebrate the 25th anniversary of her Met debut and a collection of “encores” by various composers including Bach, Mendelssohn, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev and Debussy.
The production is excellent, once the ear adjusts to mono sound, and as you would expect from the influence of her childhood mentors this is playing in the grand style.
The Haendel Decca collection of six CDs go back even further to the era of 78s when, as a teenager, the violinist emerged as a fully-fledged virtuoso with her trademark richness and evenness of tone, perfect intonation and accurate bowing already established. She’s already up there with Oistrakh and Menuhin for her 1940-1 sessions which include a rare chance to hear Australian virtuoso Noel Mewton-Wood who tragically poisoned himself a few years later, blaming himself over his gay partner’s death. Their performance of Beethoven’s Sonata No. 8 is a gem.
Other 78s – all magnificently transferred to CD – include performances of the Mendelssohn, Dvorak and Tchaikovsky concertos, some Kreisler and Sarasate virtuoso pieces as well as more serious fare from Szymanowski, Bartok and Stravinsky.
More recent recordings include a marvellous collaboration with pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy and a dazzling performance of Sibelius’s concerto with the Israeli Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta.
The Slenczynska set is available for $69.95 and the Haendel for $39.95 from Classicsdirect.com.au.
Also out now is Icon – a five-disc box set of Nadia Boulanger’s early music recordings for American Decca in the early 1950s. Best known as a teacher and composer – her students included Aaron Copland, Philip Glass and Lennox Berkeley among many others – Parisian Boulanger was also an extremely accomplished keyboardist and orchestra director and helped in the revival of Renaissance and Baroque music well ahead of her counterparts.
This set is worth the money alone for the gorgeous singing of Monteverdi madrigals and irresistible early French songs which are rife with hunting scenes and birdsongs. There is also a stirring Rameau collection featuring soloists and Boulanger’s Vocal and Instrumental Ensemble, as well as excerpts from Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Medee, all featuring the pure tone of Swiss soprano Flore Wend.
Less successful is the Brahms disc of Neue Liebeslieder Walzer and vocal quartets, for which Boulanger trades in the harpsichord for the piano. Wend here seems too lightweight.
The set is available from Classicsdirect.com.au for $34.95.
If opera is your thing – especially the best bits sung by a galaxy of star performers – then Decca Eloquence’s 20-disc box set Opera Gala is the perfect Christmas gift. Drawn mainly from recordings of the golden era of late 1950s and 1960s, Decca released a series of LPs featuring highlights of operas for those collectors who didn’t want the complete deal.
The collection is a positive who’s who, with stars including Joan Sutherland, Mario del Monaco, Kirsten Flagstad, Birgit Nilsson and Gottlob Frick in operas ranging from Adam to Wagner.
It’s available from Classicsdirect.com.au for $109.95.
Finally if Grandma and Grandpa still have a CD player in the house treat the littlies to two wonderful blasts from the past featuring Danny Kaye on single disc and a double set of Bing Crosby, Ronald Colman, Orson Welles and Loretta Young featuring in Stories for Christmas. The Kaye disc includes the soundtrack from Hans Christian Andersen with The Inch Worm, Thumbelina and The Ugly Duckling all massive chidren’s favourites, and the comic actor’s incomparable storytelling on Tubby The Tuba.
They are available from Classicsdirect.com.au for $9.95 (Kaye) and $14.95.
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