Landowska: The Well-tempered Musician
td
the short-lived United Archives project. And one of the very last.
It contains all of the recordings made for HMV (Gaisberg was her
producer, I think) by Wanda Landowska in Europe from 1928-1940. These
recordings predate Landowska's decision to abandon her beloved villa
in Saint Leu-la- Foret in France and relocate to the safety of the
USA, where she made her many recordings for RCA Victor.
The EIGHT CDs in this volume are accompanied by a really beautifully
constructed booklet, packed with fascinating photos of WL (all in B&W,
of course) and many other musicians. One particularly interesting one
shows a group of Russian musicians visiting Paris in 1907. They
include Koussevitzky, Rachmaninoff, Rimsky-Korsakov, Landowska (well,
she was Polish, but still....) together with French musicians such as
Camille Saint-Saens. A memorable photo.
The entire Landowska project was supervised by Philippe Morin, a
physician now retired to the southwest of France and a noted collector
of 78 RPM recordings.
I have to wonder how many realize that Landowska's beautiful reading
of the big A minor English Suite actually appeared in Album No. 5 of
Edwin Fischer's WTC. I recall making a dub of these 78s about forty
years ago from a copy at the public library in Winnipeg, Manitoba, but
I cannot recall seeing it reissued over the years. It probably has
been, of course, but I must have missed it if it was.
Morin, incidentally, was also one of the collectors involved in the
DANTE project as well as the many ANDANTE volumes featuring 78 RPM
recordings.
The whole series was the brainchild of Eric Guillemaud, late of Sony,
France.
One of the more troublesome aspects of this release is its
unavailability. The publication date is 2007, so this, along with the
George Szell series, was one of the very last items produced by United
Archives. No idea how many were printed, but I would guess that the
number was small, maybe even in the hundreds. Lovers of Landowska
probably snapped up all the available copies.
Highly recommended, however, if you can locate a copy of this
treasure.
TD
Mark
evening quietly imagining how marvellous the recordings on this set might
be...
Mark
"td" <tomde...@mac.com> wrote in message
news:b34073eb-5742-424c...@g7g2000yqe.googlegroups.com...
td
> Thanks for sharing that Tom. I shall now be able to spend a wonderful
> evening quietly imagining how marvellous the recordings on this set might
> be...
Or, go on the hunt for a copy somewhere. They are sure to turn up, I
think, either on the amazons, or eBay, or elsewhere.
You usually end up finding everything, you know, if you look hard
enough.
TD
> "td" <tomdedea...@mac.com> wrote in message
Matthew B. Tepper
be typed in news:5YQmn.257390$zD4....@newsfe19.ams2:
Since I inferred that the preceding post contained discographic information
of record (so to speak), and not a Yosemite Sam-style tantrum, I broke my
usual rule and read it. I will break my other rule and comment on it because
I found one of the names familiar.
Historical collectors (such as myself) who are familiar with the Danté label,
and its sub-label Lys, will remember that much of the product seemed to be
sloppy pirated transfers from LPs. Until 1998, in my case at least, when
there appeared a 3CD issue on Lys of Jean Fournet's recordings of Berlioz'
Grande Messe des morts (its first commercial recording, done for French
Columbia in occupied Paris in 1943 with a retake of the Quaerens me in 1944)
and his 1942 "La damnation de Faust."
I bought this set, thinking that it was probably another slapdash job; but it
sounded much better than I had expected, and a production note in the booklet
claimed, "This re-edition has been made from records that date from the time
of the recording, but that are esssentially [sic] brand new. The noise we
hear is due to the technology of the day." There follows a paragraph of
vague yadda yadda about the transferring task. When all is said and done, I
suspect that somebody found sets of these albums in excellent condition, and
these were used to make the CD edition.
Anyway, the inside back cover gives technical and other credits, and Philippe
Morin is credited with Direction Artistiques & Textes, as well as a mention
in a list of Remerciements. Transferts are credited to Christopher Hénault
(Studio DANTE).
--
Matthew B. Tepper: WWW, science fiction, classical music, ducks!
Read about "Proty" here: http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/proty.html
To write to me, do for my address what Androcles did for the lion
Opinions expressed here are not necessarily those of my employers
Benoit D
<oyþ@earthlink.net> wrote:
>Anyway, the inside back cover gives technical and other credits, and Philippe
>Morin is credited with Direction Artistiques & Textes, as well as a mention
>in a list of Remerciements. Transferts are credited to Christopher Hénault
>(Studio DANTE).
Christophe Hénault and Philippe Morin are old fellows...
After the Dante/Lys experience, they founded the "Studio Art et son"
(art & sound studio) in Paris, which remastered a lot of recordings
for various labels: Cascavelle ("Flash back" series), EMI France ("Les
rarissimes de...", and the compelete recordings of Yves Nat, Marcelle
Meyer, Cziffra, Aldo Ciccolini), United Archives (Koussevitzky's set,
and, iirc, George Szell's series), Andante, etc.
--
Benoit
td
Indeed. They have been responsible for many, many, many transfers of
old recordings for a variety of labels. I presume - I would have to
look - that they also did the Ravel volume(s) for Cascavelle. I hadn't
looked at the Koussevitzky set, but that doesn't surprise me.
One also has to assume that for the Yves Nat, Marcelle Meyer, Cziffra
and Ciccolini sets they also used EMI masters, when available, on tape
as well as 78 RPM shellacs.
TD
td
> "Mark" <m...@thepiano.co.uk> appears to have caused the following letters to
> be typed innews:5YQmn.257390$zD4....@newsfe19.ams2:
>
> Since I inferred that the preceding post contained discographic information
> of record (so to speak), and not a Yosemite Sam-style tantrum, I broke my
> usual rule and read it. I will break my other rule and comment on it because
> I found one of the names familiar.
It is also permitted to admit that you learned something, Tepper. I
know, this is unusual for you, the fount of knowledge that you are (ha
ha). But it must happen from time to time.
TD