I was tempted to express surprise that a month and a half have gone by since my previous post. But, given that I teach 16 to 19 year olds, and this was the half term leading up to exams, things have been somewhat hectic.

On Saturday May 8th, we went to see “The Gift of Music: An evening with Julie Andrews” at the O2 arena here in London. It was a wonderful event, with the first half devoted to the music of Rodgers & Hammerstein, and the second half to a musical version of “Simeon’s Gift”, one of the children’s books which Dame Julie has written with her daughter. As Dame Julie acknowledges, at the age of 74, and after a disastrously botched throat operation more than a decade ago, she can no longer sing as she used to. So most of the evening’s songs were performed by a quintet of Broadway stars, including the wonderful Jubilant Sykes (who sang on Marin Alsop’s 2009 Naxos recording of Bernstein’s Mass). Dame Julie introduced parts of songs, sang parts of various songs, and got two songs entirely to herself (though with vocal lines adapted for her reduced range): My Funny Valentine and Cock-eyed optimist. Particularly nice was the sequence from “Cinderella” – as expected she sang the fairy godmother’s part in “Impossible – It’s possible!” There has been much written about disappointed fans wanting their money back, and leaving at the interval. It disappoints me to think that some people went to this performance expecting, presumably, to hear the voice that was immortalised on film more than forty years ago. If you went with your expectations tempered appropriately, then there was such a lot to enjoy. The quality of Dame Julie’s singing, despite the years and the operation is testament to the hard work she has put in to recover sufficient voice to sing as well as she did. There are numerous clips on youtube (just search for “Julie Andrews O2”.)

This hasn’t really been about 78s though. So to get back to the theme, in the run up to this concert I took the opportunity to remaster the various recordings in my collection by Lilian Stiles-Allen, one of the original sixteen singers in Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music, and Dame Julie’s vocal teacher. These will be on my site within the next few days. I also have two of the 78s Julie Andrews recorded as a child, and these will be uploaded soon as well.

Once I’ve sorted out a few issues with uploading to Mediafire, my site update will be completed. This will also include Hamilton Harty’s recordings of Schubert’s Rosamunde music (including both overtures), Henry Wood’s electrical recordings of the Unfinished Symphony, from 1926 and 1933, the English winners of Columbia’s Schubert competition (Merrick’s Two Movements in Symphonic Form, a completion of the Unfinished Symphony, and John St. Anthony Johnson’s Pax Vobiscum) conducted by Stanford Robinson. There’s also a late acoustic orchestral selection from Lilac Time, with Schubert’s music arranged by Clutsam, with George W Byng conducting the Mayfair Orchestra.

www.damians78s.co.uk

The first is an unusual recording by the wonderful British baritone Dennis Noble, and is not listed in the discography of Noble which appeared in The Record Collector in 2004. The record label is a private EMI pressing made to promote the National Savings scheme. The songs on one side are a “Silver Lining Medley”, and on the other “Look for the Silver Lining.” These were presumably chosen to tie in with the film “Look for the Silver Lining”, a 1949 biopic of Marilyn Miller. In the medley, Noble sings two songs, and C Wright (a very English tenor crooner) sings another. A fourth is assigned to the chorus. The second side has Noble singing with the chorus. Both sides are introduced by actor Norman Shelley (“Hello everyone! Are you a national saver?”).

Around the same time, Eugene Goossens was conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and can be heard in Delius’s The Walk to the Paradise Garden.

Some decades before, a Russian conductor made recordings in the US – Vassily Andreyev took his Balalaika Orchestra on tour there in 1911. One of the sides he made cropped up as a filler side for Landon Ronald’s abridged recording of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony. The recordings this time are from a Victrola 78.

An altogether different sound comes from an early single-side Zonophone of Fucik’s “Entry of the Gladiators”, recorded a little before it acquired its circus connotations. The “Zonophone Military Band” credited on the label is actually the Band of H.M. Colstream Guards, conducted by John Mackenzie-Rogan.

Maintaining the Czech theme, Dvorak’s New World Symphony receives a compelling performance from Jascha Horenstein on a Vox LP. The tempi are occasionally slower than one might expect, but the conductor’s attention to detail makes for a highly satisfying account.

And finally, Dean Dixon makes a long overdue appearance on my site. He claimed he could divide his career into three phases, where he was respectively “the black conductor Dean Dixon”, “the American conductor Dean Dixon”, and then after success in Europe, simply “the conductor Dean Dixon.” He recorded extensively in Europe, through to the 1970s, and indeed I have more recordings by him than can appear on my site, as many are still in copyright. The three LPs I’ve uploaded this time include Schumann’s 3rd and 4th Symphonies, Schubert’s 4th and 5th Symphonies, and Schubert’s Rosamunde music. All were recorded in the 1950s.

I listened to yesterday to the new Naxos Historical issue of Bartok’s American recordings – highly enjoyable, and in excellent sound. The excerpts from Mikrokosmos were a particular delight. Last weekend I finally found time to listen to the Gobbi/Christoff/de los Angeles recording of Simon Boccanegra, also reissued on Naxos Historical, with the vocal score to hand. It’s a fascinating work, and hearing Gobbi heading the cast makes me curious to hear quite what Placido Domingo does with the title role – I understand there will be a live BBC relay of one of his Covent Garden performances later this year.

On the website side of things, there are several new items, which will be appearing within the next few days, including symphonies conducted by Dean Dixon and Jascha Horenstein, an early “Entry of the Gladiators” nominally by the “Zonophone Military Band”, but actually John Mackenzie-Rogan and the Coldstream Guards Band. There will also be a balalaika orchestra, and one of Eugene Goossens recordings for Victor.

There will be also be a late 1940s 78 featuring Dennis Noble, but one which the baritone’s discography in The Record Collector doesn’t include. It was a private issue by EMI promoting the National Savings scheme. Noble gets a few brief solos, as does a C Wright, presumably a singer of lighter fare, whose first name I have been unable to track down.