Julian Bream: Fretworks (Fernando Sor, Federico Moreno Torroba, Joaquin Turina, Manuel de Falla, John Dowland, Heiter Villa-Lobos). 2 MCA Double Decker MCAD2-9830 (1990) barcode 076732983027
Julian Bream in 1956/57: pleasurable, rarely substantial
Originally posted on Amazon.com, 3 July 2009
I’m not particularly a guitar fan, and it is a collector’s compulsion rather than a particular interest in Julian Bream or the repertoire that prompted me to buy this disc: I’ve enjoyed these “Double Deckers” (double CDs in two separate jewel boxes, sometimes bound by a cardboard holder) that MCA released in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and, now that they are gone and available only on the secondary market, I am slowly completing my collection whenever I can find them at affordable prices.
They brought back valuable material from the Westminster catalog from the 1950s (and most wasn’t even available anymore in the late LP days), in mono or early stereo, at (when they were new) cheap prices. The sonic restoration was sometimes wanting, and now that Deutsche Grammophon has acquired the Westminster catalog, they are re-releasing some of those programs (along with other Westminster stuff) in much improved transfers, whenever I’ve been able to check. But a lot of what you could find in these early Double Deckers has not (yet?) been reissued, and even some of these DG re-releases are not so easy to find at affordable prices.
This Julian Bream recital was recorded in 1956 (the Spanish pieces) and 1957 (Dowland) – he was 23. I’ve read comments that this Dowland recording was Bream’s first and was made in 1954, but that is not the date given by MCA; in fact, I think that date of 1954 derives from a confusion with the rest of the Dowland program on the DG reissue, see anon. 
Anyway, MCA has collated here three Westminster LPs: XWN 18135 had Sor, Turina and Falla (link will open new tab to the listing on Discogs.com),
18137 had Torroba and Villa Lobos, and 18429 had the 14 Dowland tracks (played on lute). The sound is mono, 
but with a guitar/lute recital it isn’t so important: here the sound is vivid and clear, with a soft background of tape hiss which I do not find obtrusive at all, even heard on headphones. Frankly, I’d have been told it was in stereo, I wouldn’t have been shocked.
The compositions are pretty and pleasurable but, guitar aficionados forgive, with a few exceptions (Villa-Lobos and Falla), I wouldn’t call them substantial. Fernando Sor may, re the liner notes, be a composer whose “classical style resembles that of Haydn, Mozart or Beethoven”, I hear nothing in the small snippets presented here that is on the level of even the lesser Piano Sonatas of the three composers mentioned. They are written in the gallant style of the salons of that era. Even Torroba’s pieces (who didn’t know it, but was more than a quarter century away from his death when the recital was recorded) are trifles, background music for tourists. Dowland of course inhabits an entirely different musical universe, but the moods traversed are basically two: the brooding meditative and the simple folk-like ballad or slow dance in ternary rhythm. Again: very pretty, but somewhat repetitive (although the last piece in the recital, Forlorne Hope Fancy, a canon on a descending six-note chromatic scale, is quite beautiful and hints at Bach’s Art of Fugue). It won’t come as a surprise (not to me at least) that the pieces I prefer are those whose Spanish flavor is the most pronounced: namely, Turina’s. As for Falla’s Homenajes, it is in a category of its own: a short, brooding and moving dirge in the memory of Debussy. Villa-Lobos’ Preludes need no advocacy, but I do find them mostly interesting for their subdued and pensive character – not something often associated with the composer.
Informative liner notes. TT respectively 67’ and 60’. In 2008 
DG-Westminster reissued the Dowland pieces on a 2-CD set, 477 7550 barcode 028947775508 (using the same cover art as the original Westminster Dowland LP) with a program of Bach (reissue of Westminster XWN 18428) and more Dowland, a Bream-accompanied recital of 4-voice songs with the Golden Age Singers excerpted from three Westminster LPs, XWN 18711, 18761 and 18763 – the original collection included 18762, but DG has selected no excerpt from that particular LP; 18711 is the one that was recorded in 1954, possibly leading to the confusion mentioned above about the date of the Dowland lute recital). Likewise, the Spanish program is now on “Julian Bream spanish guitar music”, Deutsche Grammophon 471 2362 barcode 028947123620 (with a replica of the original “cubist” cover from XWN 18135, a nice touch) shorn of one of the Turina pieces (Andante) and two from Torroba (including, absurdly, the initial movement of the Sonata). So, independent of price considerations, choosing between this set and the DG reissues is a close call: I suspect that sonics have been improved by DG, but they are nothing to complain about here. With the two CDs you get more (and to me the Bach recital would be more attractive than the Dowland songs) but a few cuts in the Spanish repertoire. Now it is your call.