Please enjoy this guest blog from our recording engineer Charles Lawson. He is the magic behind many of our NSO Showcase recordings, and it is a real treat to explore what someone with incredible ears as him enjoy listening to! To learn more about Charles and his unique perspective and role in classical music, check out the Classical Breakdown episode below.
Much of my summertime listening has involved concert recordings I have made with the National Symphony Orchestra, as I continue post-production for upcoming broadcasts. (Keep your eyes and ears on wetaclassical.org for schedules!) However, during meal breaks and other opportunities, I have been mining my personal library for performances conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, to commemorate his recent passing. I had the lucky opportunity to work with him a few times and found him to be extraordinary in most ways (and maddening in a few others…but that’s a story for another time).
A few months before MTT died, I acquired a budget-priced Sony Classical boxed set of his recordings of music by Charles Ives.
The entire four-disc collection was priced below $20 and, one day, it even showed up in a half-price sale so who could resist? I’m very glad I didn’t.
Most folks probably think of Ives as a bit prickly and ornery and, I suppose, those descriptors might apply to some of the more famous “contrarian” works, but if you have never explored any of Ives’s earlier compositions, you might be shocked to hear a “student piece:” the skillfully composed, lushly harmonic and Romantic Symphony No. 1 in D minor. I shamefully confess that I had no recollection of the work, and I had to double-check to make sure Sony had packaged the correct disc! (This is especially embarrassing considering the award-winning, world premier LP produced by one of my recording idols, Howard Scott…see the last entry below.) MTT leads the Chicago Symphony Orchestra here (as Morton Gould did in the LP mentioned above) in a marvelously articulated and recorded performance that might force you to revise your opinion of just how skilled Ives truly was―and how, even in his Yale senior thesis, he was already impishly winking at and gently tugging the beards of the established Grand Masters of the Past.
This boxed collection also contains a memorable rendition of Three Places in New England that I had not previously added to my library. I also noted that there were three different versions (!) of one of my favorite Ives works, The Unanswered Question. The original version and its revised successor are contained on the same disc, separated by Central Park in the Dark, another highly atmospheric Ives favorite of mine. The changes between original and revised versions of The Unanswered Question are simultaneously minor, yet monumental. Give them a listen to see what you think.
Another MTT favorite that came off my shelf this summer is the Grammy-winning (1997) album of music from Prokofiev’s Romeo & Juliet.
MTT, himself, arranged the suite contained on this disc, which was the first that Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony did with RCA Victor Red Seal. Performance and recording are both top-notch―still highly-recommended after nearly thirty years. Effervescent and shimmering.
I have a soft spot for the next item on the list because I was present for the recording sessions and it was the first time I encountered MTT in person and got to observe him directly in rehearsal and performance (as well as chat with him during lunch).
He treated the young musicians of The New World Symphony as fully-fledged professionals, but he reverted to teacher/mentor mode whenever it would help surmount any emerging or remaining problems in a performance. I was extraordinarily impressed with this orchestra and how smoothly all the recording sessions went. The outstanding Decca team of engineer Simon Eadon and producer Chris Hazell rendered a terrific, colorful disc that went out-of-print way too soon. Fortunately, as you can see in the image below, it is included in the big Michael Tilson Thomas box that was issued by Deutsche Grammophon recently. A worthy addition, to be sure.
Besides reminiscing with recordings of the past, I have been enjoying a couple of new(ish) British releases, one of which has become a current favorite.
John McCabe is beginning to get some fresh interest more than a decade after his death and this recent Signum release [SigCD 1007] is a very nice addition to the growing discography. Raphael Wallfisch is marvelous in the Cello Concerto which is recorded here in a warm, well-blended fashion.
Though not exactly a pastoral panorama, the concerto is something of a relief on the disc, coming after the opening Symphony No. 2, a five-movement meditation on “mankind’s recurring cycles of unthinking and unchanging violence” (Monica McCabe’s description in the accompanying booklet). The symphony’s orchestration and dynamics certainly run the gamut to convey such a subject, and everything is captured well in this recording. The five movements are performed attacca creating an uninterrupted experience that is intense but not unrelenting.
The concluding Symphony No. 3 (“Hommages”) is colorful and thoroughly enjoyable with all movements again played attacca. The “Hommages” are allusions to two of McCabe’s favorite composers: Haydn and Nielsen (not bad choices there). All the pieces on this disc are worth revisiting, and I plan to do so soon.
Speaking of homages, McCabe wrote a Concerto for Orchestra which is something of an homage to Bartók’s in its number of movements and their markings. Perhaps the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Kenneth Woods will think it worthwhile to record that one, too.
Clare Hammond’s 2025 British composers disc on BIS (BIS-2604) begins with a charming early work by William Walton. Originally written on spec for ballet impresario, Serge Diaghilev, it was rejected for dance use but later reworked into a Sinfonia Concertante. While not fully exhibiting the skills of a more elder Walton, it certainly speaks with his voice and makes a lovely opener to this SACD release featuring the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by George Vass.
Benjamin Britten’s Diversions was one of many left-hand piano works commissioned by Paul Wittgenstein, the virtuoso brother of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, after the former lost his right arm in World War I. The soloist was not really satisfied with the results, since Britten did not write a brilliantly athletic line for the pianist to follow. Consequently, Wittgenstein made many requests for changes which Britten largely refused. Wittgenstein instead began inserting his own improvisatory interludes into performances―to Britten’s extreme irritation. Eventually, when Wittgenstein’s term of exclusivity expired, Britten codified the piece into the version included on this disc. Clare Hammond beautifully brings Britten’s concept to life, and the work has quickly found its way onto my list of current favorites. (Funny how Britten has a way of doing that...) I can envision a concert program where this Britten concludes the first half and the soloist returns, after the intermission, for Ravel’s Left Hand Concerto―certainly the most famous of Wittgenstein’s commissions.
Michael Tippett’s Piano Concerto is new to me in spite of having been written more than seventy years ago. It opens atmospherically and lyrically, with delicate percussion accents and continues in similar, colorful fashion throughout the first movement. The second movement strikes one as somewhat more muddled on first hearing, but stick with it; the subsequent contemplative dialogues between piano and orchestra are very sweet. The sprightly third movement is delightfully playful with virtuosic demands made as much on the orchestra as the soloist. I can’t imagine why this work isn’t better known and performed more frequently. I hope that changes soon.
Finally, I serendipitously ran across a 1959 CBC/NFB documentary about Glenn Gould, filmed during recording sessions at Columbia Records’ legendary 30th Street studios in New York City.
Behind-the-scenes folks like me adore films such as this because they give us insights into the artists, their processes, and the technical details of how certain recordings were accomplished. 1959 was still something of a transitional period between the mono and stereo eras, so it’s interesting to see the mic setup(s) and to try to figure out exactly how the crew might have used them to generate compatible products. (While I recognize the classic Neumann microphones, I’m still on a search for additional technical details about this particular set of sessions.)
The producer looked familiar to me and I finally realized it is none other than Howard Scott, one of the developers of the LP disc and someone who recorded/produced some of the most spectacular sounding orchestral recordings of any era (including the previously referenced, Grammy-winning, Morton Gould-led performance of Ives’s Symphony No. 1 in 1967). This prompted me to dig out my CD copy of Glenn Gould’s rendition of Bach’s “Italian” Concerto, derived from these 1959 sessions, to have a listen. It’s available at various streaming locations, too, so give it a go. See if you can tell from this recording that Gould supposedly hated this piece!
And, if you are a true analogue audio fanatic, you can buy a quarter-inch/15ips “master tape” reel of this recording for your own enjoyment/archive. It’s only $495. Get ’em while they last! ;-)
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