Month: August 2024

Following my discographic survey of EMI’s 20 CD-set from 2010 “Paul Tortelier The Great EMI Recordings“ (a set recently acquired at a very satisfying price on eBay) I’ve also posted a similar discographic review of Erato’s 36 CD-set “Michel Corboz The Complete Erato Recordings – Classical & Romantic Eras“, 5054197186783 (2023), compiling the recordings made by the Swiss choral conductor (1934-2021) not only for Erato (1969-1989), but also for the short-lived FNAC Music (1989-1997).

As a complement and bonus, I also provide a list of recordings by Corboz for his last two labels, the Swiss Cascavelle (1989-1997) and the French Mirare (2006-2014).

I just bought this set on eBay, for 20 euros, and at one euro per CD I think I made a good deal:

 

 

 

 

Paul Tortelier The Great EMI Recordings, 20 CDs EMI 6 88627 2 (2010) (link to my review will open a new tab).

That said, the insufficient online documentation makes it a bit difficult to determine the exact contents of the 2010 set, if only to establish what had already been published on CD before and what was here new to CD. In particular, the set’s entry on Discogs.com only occasionally provides the credits of performers, making it difficult to determine exact content and sources, especially in the cases where Tortelier re-recorded some pieces, or with the shorter trinkets and “encores”.

So – after purchasing the set rather than before, and to find out after-the-fact if it was worth purchasing – I made my own research, which I can now share with the improbable music lover with an interest. It turns out that most of the material gathered on the set had previously been published on CD, mainly on EMI’s early and valuable mid-price Studio collection, in 1988 and 1989 (many of which I have – but not all), but a few recordings appear to have made there their first appearance on CD: Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata and Saint-Saëns’ Cello Sonata No. 1 with Maria de La Pau, Tcherepnin’s chamber pieces (but the more complete content of the original double LP was later reissued by EMI on 2 CDs), Schumann’s First Trio with Andre Previn and Kyung-Wha Chung (the original companion piece, Mendelssohn’s First Trio, had already been reissued in a Mendelssohn Chamber Music collection).

Note: my article is not a review of the music, but a discographic survey. I hope this is useful to one or two record collectors…

When I posted my review of Arthur Honegger’s La Danse des Morts on Troubadisc TRO-CD 01441, five days ago (August 3), on a CD which paired it with Frank Martin’s Requiem, I concluded the review with these words: I’ll return to Frank Martin’s Requiem… “in due time”.

Typically, when I write things like that, it means that I’ll probably return in 20 years or more: I’m a patient reviewer.

But not this time. It happens that I had in my collection the composer’s own recording, on the Swiss label Jecklin-Disco JD 631-2 – the live premiere performance of the composition, on May 4, 1973. So I pulled it out, completed the review of the Troubadisc CD and pubished a review of the Jecklin CD.

The Requiem is a masterpiece and both versions are fine, Troubadisc having, with Honegger’s La Danse des Morts, the advantage of a substantial filler (despite its inadequate narrator). I’ve just ordered another recording of the composition.

For once I have cheated on my own rule, which is to review only CDs that I have in my possession, not uploads of recordings on YouTube. Not only do you not get booklet and liner notes, which may be an important asset or detriment of the CD, but in my experience sonics on YouTube, while perfectly ok for a casual listening, or often compressed and deteriorated, and the uploads are not always pitch-right.

But there was this improbable version of Honegger’s mighty La Danse des Morts, recorded live in Hamburg in 2010 by artistic forces hitherto unknown to me and released two years later on Troubadisc TRO-CD 01441, that I didn’t even know if it was sung in the original French or in the German translation (turns out it is in French), and for which I did not feel like shelling out the sum demanded for it on the marketplace.

As I found out that someone had uploaded it (and its complement, Frank Martin’s Requiem) on YouTube and the sonics seemed fine, I decided to make an exception and review it.

It may not be very gracious of me to say so since it is on his website that the recording is available, but it turns out that, very much like the versions of Michel Corboz and Edmon Colomer, despite the fine things the performance has to offer sonically and musically, it fails upon an inadequate narrator. German-accented (which, in itself, would pass), mild-mannered, somewhat professoral, Christoph Bantzer sounds more like a German Captain Kangaroo or some Catholic priest genially reciting his homilies at Sunday church, than as a mythical Hebrew prophet. And he has those constant breath intakes that seems located haphazardly and at points that make no sense grammatically and syntactically. I may buy the CD if occasion and cheap price warrants, pel piacer di porle in lista as Don Giovanni once put it, to add it to my collection, and for everything else than the narrator (and especially the bass trombone). With that, I think I’ve heard and reviewed all the Danses des Morts released on CD.

Now I’ll move on to King David and Joan at the Stake.