[Dixielandjazz] An interesting Shilkret reference.

[Stan Brager]

Interesting that you should mention Nat Shilkret in that his Concerto for
Trombone which he wrote for Tommy Dorsey was recently played on the
classical music station in Los Angeles - KUSC. This recording featured
former Woody Herman trombonist Jim Pugh.

I used to have "The Genesis Suite" on a Capitol 45rpm album. I never cared
for the narration although I admired Edward Arnold as an actor.

Stan
Stan Brager

> -----Original Message-----
> From: M J (Mike) Logsdon [mailto:mjl at ix.netcom.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 02, 2012 11:47 AM
> To: DJML
> Cc: Dixieland Jazz Mailing List
> Subject: [Dixielandjazz] An interesting Shilkret reference.
> 
> [c Steve Schwartz 2012]
> 
> Schoenberg, Piston, et al.
> 
> *  "The Genesis Suite"
> 	-  Nathaniel Shilkret:  Creation
> 	-  Alexandre Tansman:  Adam and Eve
> 	-  Darius Milhaud:  Cain and Abel
> 	-  Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco:  Noah's Ark
> 	-  Ernst Toch:  The Covenant
> 	-  Igor Stravinsky:  Babel
> 	-  Arnold Schoenberg:  Postlude
> *  Walter Piston:  Symphony No. 2*
> 
> Edward Arnold, narrator
> Uncredited Chorus/Hugo Strelitzer
> Janssen Symphony Orchestra of Los Angeles/Werner Janssen *Boston
> Symphony Orchestra/G. Wallace Woodworth Pristine Audio PASC 306  Total
> time:  76:12
> 
> Summary for the Busy Executive:  Kunstmeisters and Kitschmeisters.
> 
> By the late Thirties, Los Angeles had become home to the cream of
> Jewish and anti-Fascist intellectuals fleeing from Europe.  Nathaniel
> Shilkret, conductor and at that time working for the studios as a film
> composer, got the idea of asking the most illustrious of them to
> compose movements of a collaborative work based on the Book of Genesis.
> Alexandre Tansman, Ernst Toch, and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco had also
> worked in the movies, often uncredited, although Tansman did earn a
> screen credit for the Rosalind Russell flick Sister Kenny and Toch
> eventually earned three Academy Award nominations.  With Arthur
> Honegger, Darius Milhaud had been one of the pioneer film composers in
> France, but Hollywood used him sparingly.  Arnold Schoenberg and Igor
> Stravinsky tried to break into films, but no studio was interested,
> although producers loved announcing to the press that they were
> "considering" one or the other for their latest Prestige Project, thus
> trading off the cachet of each composer's celebrity without actually
> having to take a real chance.  At any rate, Shilkret was enough of a
> hustler to get up a performance and to make a recording with Edward
> Arnold as narrator.
> The recording, turned down by every major distributor, didn't sell very
> well.  EMI acquired the rights to it years later, but for some reason
> couldn't use the Arnold narration.  It advertised Arnold, but anybody
> familiar with the actor's deep, round tones knew immediately the voice
> wasn't his.
> 
> Shilkret likely pursued the project as a way to advance himself.  He
> certainly had little respect for the men he worked with.  Schoenberg,
> for example, had written an orchestral prelude, which Shilkret placed
> at the
> *end* of the recording.  This allowed his piece to lead off the suite,
> which he justified by saying that his work had made a bigger hit with
> the audiences.  He moved the two "difficult" composers to last in line,
> so his listeners could tune out early.  The problem is that Schoenberg
> composed his Prelude with the idea that it would lead to something else
> and wrote the end accordingly.  In the Shilkret order, the music just
> peters out.  Shilkret also issued instructions to "his" collaborators
> about the type of music he wanted from them, something very much like
> the typical Forties film scoring he provided.  Tansman and Castelnuovo-
> Tedesco caved.  Schoenberg and Stravinsky, thank God, largely ignored
> Shilkret.  Milhaud and Toch to some extent modified their styles, but,
> thankfully, not to a fatal degree.  When I first saw the word
> "Narrator," my heart sank, since narrator plus orchestra is probably my
> least-favorite genre, despite the rare examples of masterpieces.  I
> usually feel either the music is so weak that it's unnecessary, as in
> the Shilkret, Tansman, and Castelnuovo-Tedesco movements, or the music
> is so good, the words get in the way, as in the Toch and the Milhaud.
> Schoenberg omitted the narrator altogether.  With Babel and a
> characteristically elegant solution, Stravinsky actually found a way to
> convincingly integrate spoken word with music.  I should note that the
> longer pieces are the weakest.  Shilkret, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and
> Tansman all run around ten minutes, while the others last roughly five.
> 
> Aside from the two acknowledged masterpieces, Babel and Schoenberg's
> Prelude, Toch's contribution interested me the most, in that it's not
> as chromatic or as tortured as he usually gets.  Indeed, it sounds a
> little like Bloch.  During the Thirties and the subsequent war, Toch
> had been too depressed to compose.  He learned that the Nazis had wiped
> out the entire family he had left behind.  The war's end got him
> writing again, and the new music sang more deeply.  Unfortunately, the
> musical establishment had tuned its ears to new voices.  Toch never
> regained his European reputation, although in the United States, he won
> a Pulitzer.  I consider his neglect, especially in regard to his
> chamber music, a shame.
> 
> Speaking of neglect, Piston's Second Symphony comes from 1943.  This
> performance, a broadcast for the Armed Forces, I believe was its
> second.  G.
> Wallace Woodworth, known better as a choral director, turns out to be a
> capable conductor in a not-that-easy work, one which lacked both a
> performing tradition and a previous recording.  Piston wrote a
> beautiful symphonic cycle, but since the Sixties, it hasn't received
> much in the way of performance or recording.  The Second is both
> eloquent and elegant.
> 
> Pristine is known as an audiophile label.  I think its incarnation of
> Schnabel's recorded Beethoven amazing.  Both the Genesis and the Piston
> come, not from masters, but from actual records, and any digital
> cleanup is limited by the quality of the originals.  All that said,
> Pristine's Andrew Rose has done a great job.  I happen to have two
> other recordings of the Genesis Suite:  one by Angel Records
> (Capitol/EMI) and another by Naxos.
> The Angel recording is essentially this one, with someone else
> (identified by Wikipedia as Ted Osborne) substituting for Arnold.
> Since the narration was recorded separately from the music, this
> substitution was possible, but definitely not desirable.  It turns out
> that Arnold was a great reader of poetry, with  a theater-trained voice
> that could have come from one of the heads on Mt. Rushmore.
> Furthermore, he's a good actor and avoids hamming it up or larding the
> narration with cinematic piety.  The sound quality of the Pristine
> betters the Angel -- cleaner, clearer, not so bass-heavy.  Naxos's
> Genesis has the best sound quality because it's stereo, but the
> performance, led by Gerard Schwarz, leaves much to be desired.  He uses
> many narrators, for no good reason.  Naxos could have saved itself a
> bundle by sticking with Fritz Weaver throughout.  Furthermore, the
> orchestrations of many of these works were lost in a fire.  The
> Stravinsky and Schoenberg scores escaped, thank goodness.  Since then,
> others, particularly the Castelnuovo-Tedesco, have come to light.  You
> avoid all this if you get the Pristine, my preference, because it uses
> the original recording.  If you just want the Schoenberg and the
> Stravinsky, there are many other accounts that outdo Schwarz.
> 
> Woodworth's Piston, while interesting historically, has serious
> competition.
> Schwarz issued an okay version with the Seattle Symphony (now on
> Naxos).
> However, the best recording by far -- and a classic recording of
> American music -- is the young Michael Tilson Thomas directing the
> Boston Symphony (when I was hoping like mad he would succeed Steinberg;
> the conductorship went instead, of course, to Ozawa).  This performance
> sets the roof on fire, and the DG sound quality excites you all by
> itself.  In addition, you get Ives's Three Places in New England and
> Ruggles's Sun-treader, again in definitive performances.  You can get
> this disc as an ArkivCD from www.arkivmusic.com, worth every penny.
> 
> Steve Schwartz
> 
> Sent from my cOmputer
>