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https://www.colinscolumn.com/category/music-that-time-forgot
Other recordings of ‘Polka & Fugue’ include Karajan (Polka only), Kempe, Mackerras, Martinon, and Ormandy.
This could become a series, “Music That Time Forgot”. Nominations welcome.
https://www.colinscolumn.com/category/music-that-time-forgot
Postscript: The Weinberger has come my way once during many years of concert-going: I can’t give a year with any certainty, but it was part of an LSO concert in the Barbican Centre (opened 1982) conducted by Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, which also included Nathan Milstein (who died in 1992) as soloist in Brahms’s Violin Concerto.
To which I should like to add Weinberger’s ‘Variations on ‘Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree” – which he wrote after seeing a newsreel of King George VI joining in a performance of the song by a group of Scouts, and which was once recorded on HMV 78s by Constant Lambert with the LPO – it’s a very good piece of music!
Sorry Bob, I cannot find the Lambert or any other recording of Weinberger’s Variations on YouTube, but there is this, George VI and other royals joining in, from Edward Johnson…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Phro6K-ATvY
I’ll keep looking for the Weinberger, I am keen to hear it.
Colin
Rodzinski’s Cleveland recording of “Spreading Chestnut” (I don’t know the date, presumably 1940s) is on youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aaWPD-oB7E. I grew up with Scherchen’s “Schwanda” Polka and Fugue on World Record Club (from Westminster). It’s well worth seeking out, but seems not to be on youtube.
Colin’s reference to “Schwanda the Bagpiper” reminded me of the Gramophone review of a Stokowski ‘Cala’ CD on which the piece was featured. It was the last of the fillers to his New York Philharmonic recording of the Vaughan Williams 6th Symphony and it came from a live broadcast on 16 January 1949. In those days, the NYPO would play a programme over three days, so Stokowski played “Schwanda” just those three times in his whole career. AA in the Gramophone gave the whole CD an excellent review but ended up by saying that the Weinberger “was very much a case of ed. Stokowski, with the original key of B transposed down a major third to G.”
The notion that Stokowski would go to the trouble of “editing” a piece he was only going to play three times was of course a nonsense. In fact, it was Weinberger himself who prepared a revised edition of the piece for his American publisher and not only did he change the key, he also amended the orchestration. For example, the triangle roll at the start in the original version became a part for the glockenspiel in the revision. The programme note for the Stokowski NYPO performances stated that it was the “First performance by the Society of the Revised Edition.” It might also be noted that this revised edition was recorded for ‘Mercury’ by Frederick Fennell and the Eastman-Rochester Pops Orchestra. Needless to say, no critic has ever accused him of “editing” the score and changing the key!
Colin’s upload of the splendid Reiner recording is of the the original version, so you now have the chance to compare it with the composer’s revision from Stokowski and Fennell. Finally, I wonder when any of these recordings were last heard on Radio 3!
Stokowski / New York Philharmonic …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEtPRpyhLIA
Fennell / Eastman-Rochester Pops …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqyPCY19wbQ