01-18: Agent Orange : Real Live Sound 1990 - Handel : Teseo / James | Jones | Minkowski 1992 - Wagner : Tannhäuser Bayreuth 1930 / Pilinszky | Elmendorff

Not shown: Rudolf Wittelsbach & Burnet Corwin Tuthill

1580 – Antonio Scandello (Italian composer)
1659 – Benedikt Lechler (German priest, lutenist & composer)
1746 – Valeriano Pellegrini (Italian soprano castrato, creator of roles in several Handel operas)
1760 – Claudio Casciolini (Italian composer, singer & choirmaster)
1875 – Joseph Philbrick Webster (American song & hymn composer, singer & pianist)
1886 – Josef Tichatschek [Tichaček] (Czech Heldentenor, creator of title roles in Wagner's Rienzi & Tannhäuser)
1902 – Filippo Marchetti (Italian opera composer & teacher)
1912 – Hermann Winkelmann (German Heldentenor, creator of title role in Wagner's Parsifal)
1918 – Amalie Materna (Austrian soprano, creator of Kundry in Wagner's Parsifal & Brünnhilde in first complete performance of his Ring cycle)
1962 – Raymond Moulaert (Belgian composer, pianist & teacher)
1972 – Rudolf Wittelsbach (Turkish-born Swiss composer, pianist & teacher)
1977 – Paul Nordoff (American composer & music therapist)
1978 – Ivan Dzerzhinsky [Иван Дзержинский] (Russian composer & pianist)
1979 – Cyril Mockridge (English film & television composer)
1982 – Burnet Corwin Tuthill (American composer, son of Carnegie Hall architect William Burnet Tuthill)
1984 – Vassilis Tsitsanis [Βασίλης Τσιτσάνης] (Greek singer, songwriter & bouzouki player)
1990 – Melanie Appleby (British dance, pop & R&B singer, Mel & Kim)
1994 – Arthur Altman (American popular songwriter, "All Or Nothing At All")
1995 – Charles Baskerville (American doo wop, R&B & soul singer, The Limelites, The Drifters)
1996 – Jos Kunst (Dutch composer & musicologist)
2007 – Brent Liles (American punk rock bass guitarist & singer, Social Distortion, Agent Orange)
2008 – Frank Lewin (American composer, music theorist & teacher)

01-16a: Toscanini Wax Windfall !! : Beethoven Bizet Brahms Dukas Dvorak Gershwin Mozart Prokofiev Schubert Schumann Tchaikovsky & Wagner !!

1957 – Arturo Toscanini (Italian conductor)

That wasn't too clever of me, was it? Twelve albums by the greatest Italian conductor of the 20th century, and I somehow managed to not include a single Italian composer.

01-12a: Szymanowski Violin Concertos : Zehetmair / Rattle 1996 - Wagner Parsifal : Windgassen / Knappertsbusch Bayreuth 1951 - Stravinsky Chamber Works - Carissimi Oratorios / Roland Wilson 2003

Not shown: John Eccles, Michael Gottard Fischer, Koos van de Griend & Hervey Alan

1674 – Giacomo Carissimi (Italian composer & priest)
1735 – John Eccles (English composer)
1765 – Johann Melchior Molter (German composer & violinist)
1829 – Michael Gottard Fischer (German organist & composer)
1893 – Karl Hill (German baritone, creator of Alberich in the Ring cycle & Klingsor in Parsifal)
1921 – Gervase Elwes (English tenor)
1933 – Václav Suk [Вячеслав Сук] (Czech violinist, conductor & composer, active in Poland, Ukraine & Russia)
1934 – Paul Kochanski [Paweł Kochański] (Russian-born Polish violinist, composer & arranger, active also in the U.K. & U.S.)
1950 – Koos van de Griend (Dutch composer)
1953 – Simeón Roncal (Bolivian composer)
1958 – Arthur Shepherd (American composer & conductor)
1962 – Richard de Guide (Belgian composer)
1982 – Hervey Alan (English bass-baritone, creator of Mr. Redburn in Britten's Billy Budd)

The presence of the Szymanowski disc is thanks to his close friend Paweł Kochański, who performed the composer's works for violin and piano with him many times, collaborated with him on the violin parts of both his concertos, and was the dedicatee of those works and several others Szymanowski wrote for him.

The link above will take you to a scholarly article detailing Kochański's various collaborative efforts with composers. These efforts also produced works such as Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1, and violin sonatas by Arnold Bax and Ernest Bloch. Works dedicated to Kochański also include the violin/piano version of Stravinsky's Suite Italienne, which consists of material from Pulcinella, Stravinsky's 1920 ballet based on music (at the time thought to have been written) by Giovanni Pergolesi.

When Kochański was helping Szymanowski with his Second Concerto, he was already sick with the cancer that would cut his life short at the age of 47. Still, he forged ahead and gave the premiere of the work. Szymanowski's score, published after his friend's death, contained a moving dedication to him. The pall-bearers at Kochański's funeral, held at the Juilliard School, included Arturo Toscanini, Frank and Walter Damrosch, Jascha Heifetz, Vladimir Horowitz, Serge Koussevitzky, Efrem Zimbalist, Sr., and Leopold Stokowski.

No less affecting was the passing of the great concert and recital tenor Gervase Elwes, who perished hours after a horrific accident at a railway station in Boston when he leaned over too far as he attempted to return to the conductor an overcoat which had fallen off a train. His death was mourned all over Britain, and concerts in his memory took place across the nation. Edward Elgar wrote "my personal loss is greater than I can bear to think upon, but this is nothing - or I must call it so - compared to the general artistic loss - a gap impossible to fill - in the musical world."

01-11a: Kalinnikov : Symphonies 1 & 2 / Kuchar 1994 - Cimarosa : Requiem in G minor / Varoli 2000 - Max Lorenz in Recital 1927-1930 - Oscar Straus : The Chocolate Soldier / Stevens | Eddy 1941

Not shown: Rose Sutro

1791 – William Williams Pantycelyn (Welsh Calvinist hymnist, poet & author)
1801 – Domenico Cimarosa (Italian composer)
1901 – Vasily Kalinnikov [Василий Калинников] (Russian composer, bassoonist, timpanist & violinist)
1947 – Eva Tanguay (Canadian singer & entertainer, "the girl who made vaudeville famous")
1952 – Aureliano Pertile (Italian lyric-dramatic tenor)
1954 – Oscar Straus (Austrian composer, The Chocolate Soldier)
1957 – Rose Sutro (American duo-pianist with her sister Ottilie)
1958 – Alec Rowley (English composer, pianist, organist & author)
1961 – Elena Gerhardt (German mezzo-soprano, most associated with Lieder repertoire)
1975 – Max Lorenz (German heldentenor, associated with Wagner roles)
1987 – Albert Ferber (Swiss pianist & teacher, active in England)

Max Lorenz was very blessed to have that voice. Living in Germany at the height of the Nazi regime, and considering that his wife was Jewish, and that his marriage to her was intended to hide the not-so-well-kept secret that he was gay, one would think they'd have been whisked away to a concentration camp without much fuss. But in fact Lorenz was so prized as the leading Wagnerian Heldentenor of his day, his family was under the protection of Hermann Göring himself, who gave strict instructions to the S.S. that they were not to be bothered. I guess when it came to their hatred of minorities, their love of Wagner was one of the few things that could make the Nazis look the other way.

12-25b: Wagner : Siegfried / Windgassen | Nilsson | Hotter | Sutherland | Solti 1962

2005 – Birgit Nilsson (Swedish dramatic soprano)


As promised.

12-07: The Germs : GI 1979 - Kirsten Flagstad : Mahler 1957 | Wagner 1956 - Willaert Missa Mente Tota / Cinquecento 2009 - Clara Haskil : Mozart Piano Concertos 20 & 23 1956

Shown above: Adrian Willaert, Nicolas-Prosper Levasseur, Antoni Kątski, Ludwig Minkus, Adele Aus der Ohe, a book by Cecil Forsyth, Clara Haskil (many years before she achieved recognition), Kirsten Flagstad, Darby Crash, Victor de Narke, Dee Clark, John Addison, Frederick Fennell, Jerry Scoggins & Jay McShann.

1562 – Adrian Willaert (Flemish composer, founder of Venetian School, teacher of Zarlino)
1811 – Ignaz Spangler (German composer)
1823 – Johann Gottlieb Schwencke (German composer, organist & cantor)
1829 – Johann Christoph Kienlen (German composer)
1834 – Ludwig Schuncke (German pianist & composer, friend of Schumann)
1839 – Jan August Vitásek (Czech composer)
1841 – Johann Daniel Ferstenberg (composer)
1867 – Rudolf Viole (pianist & composer)
1871 – Nicolas-Prosper Levasseur (French operatic bass)
1899 – Antoni Kątski [Anton de Kontski] (Polish pianist & composer)
1917 – Ludwig Minkus [Léon Minkus, Людвиг Минкус] (Austrian ballet composer & violinist of Czech & Hungarian ancestry, active in Russia)
1937 – Adele Aus der Ohe (German pianist & composer, pupil of Liszt)
1941 – Cecil Forsyth (English composer, musicologist, violist & author)
1944 – Julius Von Raatz-Brockmann (German baritone)
1948 – Godfrey Turner (American composer)
1960 – Clara Haskil (Romanian-born Swiss pianist)
1960 – Lila Robeson (American mezzo-soprano)
1962 – Kirsten Flagstad (Norwegian dramatic soprano)
1980 – Darby Crash (American punk rock singer & songwriter, The Germs)
1986 – Victor de Narke (Argentine operatic bass)
1990 – Dee Clark (American soul singer, "Raindrops")
1998 – John Addison (English film composer, Tom Jones, A Bridge Too Far, Murder, She Wrote)
2004 – Frederick Fennell (American band conductor, percussionist & teacher, Eastman Wind Ensemble)
2004 – Jerry Scoggins (American country singer & guitarist, "The Ballad of Jed Clampett")
2006 – Jay McShann (American blues & jazz bandleader, singer, pianist & composer)

Really been slacking off. I slacked off so much on the collage, I'm now telling you who IS in it, instead of who isn't. Slacked off so much on Johann Daniel Ferstenberg and Rudolf Viole I didn't even dig deep enough to determine their nationalities. I should have put down Ferstenberg as Swedish and Viole as Belgian just so you wouldn't lie awake tonight wondering about it.

Anyway, looks like I'll be slacking off on this part too. But is me telling you that Willaert was one of the most important composers of the 16th century, or that Haskil was one of the supreme interpreters of Mozart and Beethoven, or that Flagstad was probably the Wagnerian soprano par excellence, or that Frederick Fennell did more than anyone else to elevate the artistic level of wind-band music really going to change anything?

You know... this blog is really for me, if you hadn't figured that out by now. It's for my own personal edification, and it gives me a sort-of fun hobby to work on. I only offer you these "goodies" to get butts in the seats, as it were. But once again, what other blog in the world will give you serene sacred works from the Renaissance and brutal late-70s punk rock in the same post? I mean, fer realz.

12-06: Pavlos Sidiropoulos & Spiridoula : Flou 1978 - Wagner Die Walküre : King / Crespin / Frick / Nilsson / Hotter / Ludwig / Fassbaender / Watts / Solti 1965 - The Definitive Leadbelly 3 Discs

1716 – Benedictus Buns (Dutch Carmelite priest & composer)
1746 – Lady Grisel Baillie (Scottish songwriter)
1785 – Kitty Clive (English actress & soprano)
1865 – Sebastián Iradier Salaberri (Basque composer of habaneras "La Paloma" & "El Arreglito," the latter used by Bizet in Carmen)
1867 – Giovanni Pacini (Italian opera composer)
1903 – Frederic Grant Gleason (American composer)
1920 – Karel Kovařovic (Czech composer, conductor, harpist, clarinetist & pianist)
1933 – Auguste Chapuis (French composer, organist, choirmaster & teacher)
1939 – Charles Dalmorès (French operatic tenor)
1943 – Hermann Löhr (British composer of Austrian ancestry, active also in Australia)
1946 – Maximilian Steinberg [Максимилиан Штейнберг] (Russian composer, pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov, peer of Stravinsky, teacher of Shostakovich)
1949 – Lead Belly [Huddie Ledbetter] (American blues & folk singer, guitarist, accordionist, pianist, violinist & songwriter)
1951 – Léon Rothier (French operatic bass & violinist)
1957 – Evan Gorga (Italian lyric tenor, creator of Rodolfo in Puccini's La bohème in 1896)
1958 – Erwin Bodky (German-born American pianist, harpsichordist, clavichordist, composer & author)
1966 – Hermann Heiß (German composer, pupil of J.M. Hauer)
1971 – Hugo Godron (Dutch composer, violinist & teacher)
1973 – Justus Hermann Wetzel (German composer, author & teacher)
1983 – Lucienne Boyer (French diseuse & cabaret singer, "Parlez-moi d'amour")
1988 – Bill Harris (American R&B guitarist, The Clovers)
1988 – Roy Orbison (American rock & country singer, guitarist & songwriter)
1989 – Sammy Fain (American pop song composer & pianist, "I'll Be Seeing You")
1990 – Pavlos Sidiropoulos [Παύλος Σιδηρόπουλος] (Greek rock singer, songwriter & guitarist)
1995 – Claire Polin (American composer, musicologist & flutist)
1997 – Eliot Daniel (American popular composer, "I Love Lucy", "Lavender Blue (Dilly Dilly)")
2000 – Aziz Mian Qawwal [عزیز میاں قوال] (Pakistani quawwali singer, songwriter, harmonium player, poet, author & philosopher)
2003 – Hans Hotter (German bass-baritone)
2005 – Danny Williams (South African pop singer)

I'd been wanting to get through an entire Ring cycle before this blog has run its course. (No, we won't be here forever!) We've already had a fine Das Rheingold, and now Hans Hotter's moving and authoritative Wotan provides us with our next opportunity, in the superbly sung and recorded Die Walküre we have for you tonight. I mean, just look at that cast. And with Solti reining them all in... this particular installment of his studio Ring cycle is a sonic and performative landmark.

And Lead Belly. King of the 12-string. I guess with Wagnerian opera coming before, you could say he serves as the foil. This particular compilation is supposed to be the best, unless you want to have every song the man ever recorded.

Now about our headliner. Pavlos Sidiropoulos is considered perhaps the greatest singer in the history of Greek rock music. In the 70s, when almost all Greek rock musicians were still singing in English, he went against the grain and insisted on singing in Greek. He had substance abuse issues, and died young - but he's still one of the most popular rock singers in Greece, more than 20 years later. His 1978 album Φλου (Flou), recorded with the group Spiridoula, is one of his very best, and still gets a lot of airplay in Greece. I downloaded it, and listened to it, and of course I didn't understand a word... but I can understand how this music is loved and appreciated, and I hope to listen to it a lot more, and get it under my skin. You should too! Expand your minds, open your hearts. It's a big world out there, and maybe we no speak-a the same language, but music is universal.

10-18: Anna Russell : Ring of the Nibelungs Analysis 1953 - Marion Brown : Sweet Earth Flying 1974 - John TaveRner / BBC Singers 2010 - Gounod Sept Paroles | Symphony 2 / Petit 1993

1545 – John Taverner (English composer & organist)
1634 – Pierre De La Barre (French court organist & composer)
1771 – Robert Praelisauer (German priest, composer, organist & choir director)
1788 – Jean-Guillain Cardon (French court violinist & composer)
1817 – Étienne Nicolas Méhul (French composer & keyboardist)
1832 – Othon-Joseph Vandenbroek (Belgian hornist & composer)
1864 – Jacques-François Gallay (French hornist, tuba player, teacher & composer)
1893 – Charles Gounod (French composer & pianist)
1953 – Federico Gerdes (Peruvian pianist, conductor & composer)
1963 – Cláudio Carneyro (Portuguese composer & violinist)
1965 – Frank Hutchens (New Zealand-born pianist, teacher & composer, active in Australia)
1994 – Lee Allen (American R&B & rock saxophonist)
2000 – Julie London (American pop & jazz singer & actress)
2001 – Micheline Ostermeyer (French champion Olympic athlete & concert pianist)
2002 – Lo Man,羅文  [Tam Pak-Sin, 譚百先] (Hong Kong Cantopop singer & actor)
2006 – Anna Russell (English-born Canadian music satirist, contralto & pianist)
2007 – Lucky Dube (South African reggae & mbaqanga singer & keyboardist)
2008 – Dee Dee Warwick (American soul singer, sister of Dionne, niece of Cissy Houston & cousin of Whitney Houston)
2010 – Marion Brown (American jazz alto saxophonist, composer & ethnomusicologist)

Another day of international poopery here at YiDM. We've got one of the greatest English composers of the first half of the 16th century, John Taverner. (Be sure not to confuse him with the still-living composer who doesn't have the 'r' in the middle of his surname.) We also have some important French opera composers, one of whom, Charles Gounod, also wrote much sacred music. Micheline Ostermeyer, a champ both on the concert stage and in the discus circle. Some notables from South Africa, Portugal, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and Peru! It almost makes you wish they all weren't dead, doesn't it?

And then there's free-jazz alto sax player Marion Brown, who's probably most famous for having appeared, early in his career, on John Coltrane's Ascension (1965), an album which restaurant workers often keep on hand to get rid of thoughtless patrons who linger at their tables too long after closing time.

But to start off, there's something special. Are you a music-lover who's been putting off getting to know the gargantuan music dramas of Richard Wagner? Are you baffled and intimidated by The Ring, and wonder what it all could possibly mean? Afraid you'll embarrass yourself and doze off during Der Walküre because you just can't relate to what's going on? Well, Anna Russell is here to save the day! In just 21 short minutes, she'll explain (and play, and sing!) everything you need to know about Der Ring des Nibelungen, and she may even have you rolling on the floor with laughter in the process (notwithstanding that her cultural references are half a century out of date). "I'm not making this up, you know!" And the funniest part is that she isn't.

UPDATE: See, I didn't realize I'd forgotten to put up the link for this post. I only figured it out by stumbling across it. Maybe if some of you would leave a COMMENT about links that aren't working or aren't there, I could fix things...

10-16b: Eyedea & Abilities : By The Throat 2009 - Toše Proeski : Božilak 2006 - Blakey & Jazz Messengers : Free For All 1964 - Mozart String Quintets / Grumiaux et al 1976 - Wagner-Liszt Tannhäuser Overture / Bolet 1973

1983 – George Liberace (American violinist & arranger, older brother & business partner of the pianist)
1983 – Jakov Gotovac (Croatian composer & conductor)
1986 – Arthur Grumiaux (Belgian violinist & pianist)
1990 – Jorge Bolet (Cuban-born pianist & teacher, active mostly in America)
1990 – Art Blakey [Abdullah Ibn Buhaina] (American jazz drummer & bandleader, The Jazz Messengers)
1991 – Ole Beich (American rock bass guitarist, L.A. Guns, Guns N' Roses)
2005 – Len Dresslar (American jazz singer & advertising voice actor, The Jolly Green Giant)
2005 – David Reilly (American rock & electronica singer, songwriter & producer, God Lives Underwater)
2006 – Tommy Johnson (American orchestral & soundtrack tuba player, Jaws, etc.)
2007 – Toše Proeski [Тоше Проески] (Macedonian classical, pop & rock singer, songwriter, keyboardist, guitarist, actor & humanitarian)
2010 – Eyedea [Micheal Larsen] (American rapper, singer, producer & guitarist, Eyedea & Abilities)

I'm doing 10-16b before 10-16a? Well, yes, I am. Why? Because I feel like it. If you don't like it, start your own blog that nobody ever bothers to leave a comment on. ;>

Sorry, but I'll have to skip the write-up tonight. There is just too much on my plate right now. I'd love to drone on and on about Art Blakey, perhaps the quintessential hard bop drummer, but it would take me too long. I don't write quickly, tend to be too perfectionistic about my spellnig & syntax my too also, as well. Even this write-up telling you there will be no write-up is taking me forever!

Anyway, Eyedea. He wasn't one of those rappers who sang about "ho's" a lot, but we'll we're on the subject, of course the guy who voiced the Jolly Green Giant was a legitimate musician, even if you never heard him sing anything but three different notes and just that one syllable. And that little tune was so short and simple: first down a major 2nd, and then down a perfect 4th. But I bet it made you run out and grab some Niblets, didn't it?

10-11 XTRA: Wagner Lohengrin Bayreuth 1962 : Sawallisch / Thomas / Silja / Varnay / Vinay / Crass

Well... that took longer than expected.

Some things you may find of interest and/or help:

Libretto to Lohengrin

Complete Full Score of Lohengrin, Browsable Online

Gallery of Lohengrin Postcards

STOKOWSKI SPECIAL !! | 36 tracks, 222 minutes! | Acoustic, Electric & Stereo recordings 1917-1975



"Leo-pold !!"

 I'm really only posting this because I'm hoping it will keep me from running out of label space for the next post! But I hope you enjoy this sampler of the remarkable and sometimes controversial but never boring and very creative Leopold Stokowski. It is the work of... many hands, shall we say? It's going up now...! In it, you'll hear him conducting:

The Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra
The Philadelphia Orchestra
The RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra
The Hollywood Bowl* Symphony Orchestra
The NBC Symphony Orchestra
The New Philharmonia Orchestra
The Symphony of the Air
and The All-American Symphony Orchestra

* the venue in which he's depicted above, in Warner Bros.' Long-Haired Hare (1948):

playing works by... those among The Dead and Dying... including Emmanuel Chabrier (who is also on the list with Leopold), and

~~~~~~~  ROMÂN  ~~~~~~~

compozitor George Enescu! And others I still didn't have room for in just this post's labels... such as Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, and Camille Saint-Saëns, and Alexander Glazunov, and Antonín Dvořák, and and Mikhail Mikhailovich Ippolitov-Ivanov.  Crap, that last guy's practically your whole label limit right there.

09-02: Russ Columbo 1928-1934 - Francesco Landini : Hortus Musicus 1976 | Anonymous 4 2000 - Otto Luening CRI 334 1974 - Wagner Das Rheingold Karajan 1967

1397 – Francesco Landini (Italian composer & organist)
1715 – Constantin Christian Dedekind (German poet & composer)
1870 – Arthur Saint-Léon (French dancer, choreographer, violinist)
1891 – Ferdinand Praeger (German composer, friend & biographer of Richard Wagner)
1905 – Walter Cecil Macfarren (English pianist, composer, piano teacher & music critic)
1916 – Max Schlosser (German tenor)
1934 – Alcide "Yellow" Nunez (American early jazz clarinetist & guitarist)
1934 – Russ Columbo (American pop singer, violinist, actor & composer)
1949 – Giuseppina Cobelli (Italian operatic dramatic soprano)
1955 – Rudolf Kattnigg (Austrian composer, pianist & conductor)
1961 – Greet Koeman (Dutch operatic dramatic soprano)
1963 – László Szemere (Hungarian operatic tenor)
1970 – Kees van Baaren (Dutch composer & teacher)
1973 – Ralph Errolle (American tenor)
1980 – William Douglas Denny (American composer)
1981 – Tadeusz Baird (Polish composer & pianist of Scottish decent)
1996 – Otto Luening (American composer, conductor & pioneer of tape & electronic music)
1996 – Lee Gannon (American composer)
1997 – Sir Rudolf Bing (Austrian-born British opera impresario, General Manager of the Met 1950–72)
1999 – Giuseppe Modesti (Italian operatic bass-baritone)
2007 – Rajae Belmlih (Moroccan singer & champion of women's rights)

Write-up pending...