'Avant que j'oublie ... '

I am now posting at a new location and hope to see you there. I will be maintaining the Pony Archives as they stand, although some of the transfers here may eventually be replaced with improved or rearranged programs at 'Avant que j'oublie'. Thanks to everyone for their patronage, comments and contributions.

UPDATE 11 JANUARY 2011: I have decided to leave The High Pony Tail archives up for as long as there is demand --- unfortunately I have very little time to re-up any files that have become lost or deleted by Mediafire. I am glad to know that I am not alone in experiencing difficulties with MF, I have heard many similar sob stories to mine. My understanding is that Mediafire is simply overextended for storage space --- as a 'MF Pro' user, the files should never be deleted as long as I pay my monthly fee. It's too bad that they have become unreliable, as they remain my favorite company to deal with, they are the only ones that don't impose waiting limits on free users and allow unlimited simultaneous downloads. There are no pop-ups and little of the sleaze I associate with Rapidshare, Megaupload and Fileserve etcetera. Hopefully, they will find a way to improve their service and I'll be able to return to them.

In the meantime, please let me know about problem files and missing folders and visit me at the new address.

Cornelius Cardew: 'Bun No 1' at the Proms (and at Five against Four)

I am just about ready to begin posting again. My new blog name and address is Avant que j'oublie. I'll be maintaining the posts here at the High Pony Tail as best as I can, but you'll find the new stuff at the new place. I hope that some of you will follow me there.

The most exciting music on the internet this week is a recent Proms performance of Cornelius Cardew's exceptionally rigorous and beautiful orchestral piece 'Bun No 1' (1965) posted at the Five against four blogspot. My advice to you is --- don't miss it! It's certainly the musical event of my month and I don't feel in the least bit guilty putting off my own new posts for another week or so and indulging in repeat listenings to this lost post-serial treasure.

Thanks to everyone whose has encouraged me at the High Pony Tail. I'll be getting to your requests at Avant que j'oublie soon, beginning with some great stuff shared by Olde Edo and R. Pitts. If that sounds promising, make sure and add it to your bookmarks. Take care and see you soon.

Late Summer

Hello to the (surprisingly numerous) High Pony Tail followers. It's been a while since the last bunch of posts. I actually have a large number of LP transfers and out-of-print CDs uploaded and ready to go – probably enough to keep us occupied until the end of the year. And I've been enthusiastically scanning covers and writing the usual fol-de-rol to introduce each item. Unfortunately this new-found enthusiasm has coincided with a total meltdown at Mediafire headquarters: I have been spending all of my time reuploading parts of previous posts that have 'gone missing' without rhyme, reason or pattern.

I have 'spoken' to the people in Harris County, Texas and they ensure me that their servers are working perfectly. I have paid for extra bandwidth but that has had no apparent effect.

So for now I am putting a hold on any further posts. Please don't hesitate to let me know about files that aren't downloading for you – I don't blame you! I continue to be grateful for and amazed by the intelligence and generosity of the people who have found this blog. Perhaps things will clear up at MF as the summer ends. (Yes, I've thought about moving to a different service, but the alternatives – Megaupload and Rapidshare – don't appeal to me for numerous reasons. And can you imagine reuploading all of these files to another service?)

I especially want to apologize to those of you who recently sent me hard-to-find recordings to share. (You know who you are.) I was planning to begin again by posting your offerings. But for now I can't see continuing to post links just to watch them disappear.

Again, please feel free to leave comments here about any and all DL problems and I'll try to take care of them as quickly as I am able.

Soccer Committee: sC (2007)

This small set of tiny songs by the Dutch artist Mariska Baars a/k/a 'Soccer Committee' is an impressive achievement that stands the test of time. While it appears to be one thing it quickly becomes something else and then something else again. As far as I know, this 2007 release was a limited-edition release. I wish I could remember where I found it – I had thought it was HERE but apparently not, although you'll find other SC stuff at that address. And HERE is the delightful SC web site.

By the way, the above picture has nothing to do with this recording – 'thank you' to the people who have sent me a message in the last month or so – more posts soon. A special thanks to Olde Edo and R. Pitts who have shared a couple of CDs and requested I crawl out of my hole and share them with the rest of you. I hope to have those (and many more) up in time for autumn!

**************

BUT ---- THE FOLLOWING DAY... Yesterday I posted this and JvG got in touch to let me know that the third selection didn't download properly. In the meantime I discovered that this wonderful recording, while physically out of print, is available as an MP3 download – for about the price of a beanburger and chips – from BOOMKAT. (I just checked it out myself and the interface works very well. The MP3 is much higher quality than the files I've provided – although I hope that it won't be much longer before lossless downloads become the norm on commercial music sites.)

So, I can't really justify providing this one for free. On the other hand, I feel very strongly that this piece of music ought to be more widely known (which is why I posted it in the first place.) And what about JvG and the other 20 people who downloaded this and are stuck with that truncated third track?

HERE are the first three pieces from this recording – if you picked this up yesterday, you'll need to replace track three, and if you like what you hear, you'll be wanting to buy the whole package HERE.

Summertime blues

I am just beginning to emerge from a catatonic state of depression, undoubtedly worsened by a recent heat wave.

During my depressive spells, just as during my occasional bad migraines, listening to music becomes painful. At my lowest point, the following selection was all that I could bring myself to listen to, over and over again, weakly reaching for my IPod and a fresh bottle of Gerolsteiner water. My thanks to the composers and musicians who made it possible (and to friends and acquaintances who put up with me – hi Susan!)

Heinz Holliger: 'Vier Lieder Ohne Worte' for violin and piano (1982-83) – Akiko Tatsumi (violin) and Yuji Takahashi (piano); – from an out-of-print 1989 Camerata CD

Michael Moser: 'NNO – Fernaumoos' (1993) – Polwechsel: Radu Malfatti (trombone), Burkhard Stangl (guitar), Michael Moser (cello), Werner Dafeldecker (double bass and guitar) – from 'Polwechsel' (Hat Hut CD)

Werner Dafeldecker: 'Hyogo' (1998) – Polwechsel: John Butcher (saxophones), Burkhard Stangl (guitar), Michael Moser (cello and guitar), Werner Dafeldecker (double bass, guitar and electronics) – from 'Polwechsel 2' (Hat Hut CD)

The Polwechsel CDs are available – and at a bargain price – from Hat Hut's U.S. distributor. Also worth a visit – the Polwechsel website, which includes scores and more.

Summertime blues MP3

Summertime blues FLAC

Tuli Kupferberg (1923 – 2010)

György Kurtág: Aus der Ferne III für Streichquartett (1991)

Keller Quartett, ECM 1598 (1996)

By request: Gunther Schuller – Quartet for doublebasses (1947)

This one's for Shurabass. Sometime last year he asked if I'd ever come across a quartet for doublebasses by Gunther Schuller. I hadn't even heard of it, but I made a mental note, and was delighted to find it this afternoon.

I've listened to this 1947 piece three times now, and it's a delight. Not at all a novelty. A brooding atonal work in three movements. (So, OK, a brooding delight ... I know ... outrageous oxymorons and compulsive alliteration ... as the poet Jack Spicer said on his deathbed: 'My vocabulary did this to me.')

Schuller explains that the opening sonority is identical to the final chord of the fourth of Schoenberg's 'Five pieces for orchestra.' Despite all kinds of elaborate divisi writing for the orchestral bass section from Mahler to the present day, I've never heard a piece for four basses alone (although it wouldn't surprise me to find out that Franco Donatoni had written one.)

This is taken from a stereo Vox/Turnabout LP, date unknown (to me). The bassists are Sam Hollingsworth, Clifford Spohr, James Carroll and Arnold Craver. I assume it's not on CD, since somebody on Amazon is trying to sell a copy of this for $199.00. I don't think it's worth that kind of money but it's certainly worth your time. (There is a recent digital recording of the piece, however.) Thanks, Shurabass, for the recommendation!

Schuller: Quartet for doublebasses

Scelsi: The First LP (Ensemble 2e2m, FY 1982)

Giacinto Scelsi is another example of a composer whose death has been followed by many (many!) more recordings than he saw in his lifetime. As with Feldman and Cage, there are so many CDs that collecting them is a full-time job. Scelsi's value is in danger of being obscured by the avalanche of arcana his legend has unleashed.

I've poked around in the stacks, and to my mind the best of Scelsi remains the three compact discs of orchestral music that Jürg Wyttenbach recorded for the French Accord label and the two-disc set by the Arditti Quartet for Éditions Salabert. They offer a generous selection of the composer's most fully-realized works and were recorded while he was still alive.

As most of us know by now, Scelsi's mature representative works were created by the composer at his piano and electronic keyboards. They are the product of improvisations that fill a reputed 800 hours of reel-to-reel tape. During his lifetime, Scelsi had already convened a renaissance-style assembly line of musicians and copyists to transcribe and orchestrate the tapes under his supervision (death hasn't stopped the process: the works are coming faster than ever.)

None of this is to denigrate the important musicians who have spent time in Scelsi's orbit – Alvin Curran, Jöelle Leandre, William O. Smith, Carol Robinson and, above all, the singer Michiko Hirayama and cellist Frances-Marie Uitti. Or to call into question the power and beauty of his best music. Or the sometimes direct, sometimes coincidental anticipations of later developments – certain procedures in Xenakis and Ligeti (both composers praised Scelsi) – Radelescu and Grisey – electro-acoustic composition and improvisation right through to its digital present. But a marked difference in quality becomes evident when comparing the mature works of Scelsi's lifetime (rather modest in size and number) with the flood of Scelsiana now overwhelming an interested listener. Why not do the obvious thing – release the best of Scelsi's improvisations commercially? The respective value of notated and improvised music is no longer an issue, and the end result is the same: a recording.

This LP of chamber music by Ensemble 2e2m and Lucas Pfaff can be added to the list of essential Scelsi. (It also includes Harry Halbreich's often quoted essay on the composer's importance – and the claim that this was the first commercial recording of Scelsi's music, made when he was 76 years old.) 'Four pieces on one note' (1959) is here, as expected. 'Kya' (also 1959) is a short concerto for clarinet and seven instruments. It has the sunny grace of Bruno Maderna's 'Serenade' and a offhandedly formless beauty I envy. 'Pranam II' (1973) for nine instruments including electric organ is darker, but not as dark as the well-known piece for harp, tam-tam and amplified double-bass, 'Okanagon', one of the most disturbing works of that disturbing year, 1968. (Everything from MEV to Grisey to Glenn Branca and early Sonic Youth can be extrapolated from it.) Scelsi has a undervalued virtue shared by several Italian contemporaries (Aldo Clementi, Franco Donatoni, Niccolo Castiglioni) – concision. 

(Another excellent O.P. Scelsi recording – a 1995 Attacca CD of pieces for wind instruments and percussion – is available courtesy of Jessica at bruitage et mon cri dans l'escalier. )

Followers of new music are spoiled for worthy specialist groups today. Ensemble 2e2m made its mark in a somewhat less-crowded field; its 70s and 80s recordings (Scelsi, Barraqué, Donatoni and so on) remain competitive and classic. I transferred this from a nicely-preserved LP and used a bit of ClickRepair to remove a few pops. The LP itself was not reissued as a CD – 'Four pieces' is included in Editions RZ's historical Scelsi set – 'Okanagon' was briefly available on CD in an Ensemble 2e2M survey on FY.

SCELSI – FOUR PIECES – FLAC

Morton Feldman: 'For Philip Guston' (1992 Hat Hut CD)

It should be remembered that at the time of Morton Feldman's death in 1987, very little of his music had been recorded and less was in print: the CRI recording of 'The Viola in my life' and the Columbia/Odyssey LP of 'Rothko Chapel' that I recently posted. As a composition student, I had organized a concert of early Webern and Feldman with my fellow composer Sid Dansby. On a trip to Baltimore I saw my first scores from the composer's 'second period' – 'I Met Heine on the Rue Fürstenburg' and 'Madame Peress died last week at 90' – so I was aware that Feldman had returned to conventional notation. But news of the big orchestra works for German radio and, especially, the unprecedentedly long and longer chamber music ('Trio', 'Patterns in a chromatic field', the first 'String Quartet') hadn't reached Tampa, Florida at that time ... not even as a rumor.

'For Philip Guston' was the first of the late Feldman pieces I heard. When I first moved to New York City, I couldn't sleep without the radio on, after drinking the better part of a bottle of red wine. I awoke about 2 AM one autumn morning about a quarter of the way through this recording of the Guston piece. The radio was on very low. I could just make out the outlines of my few possessions in my tiny room. The Columbia University station had a tendency to play American-style minimalism in the wee hours. I heard some repetition, but there was no apparent process at work. Bare minor ninths surrounded by silence, like Webern or Dallapiccola. I certainly wouldn't have guessed Feldman. I waited for the piece to end, for the announcer to put a name to it for me. Three hours later ... I was still waiting as the sun rose ...

One of the less important reasons Morton Feldman gave for turning to one-movement works lasting three, four and five hours was the realization that he (and his contemporaries) were churning out half-hour long pieces to fit on LP sides and slot into conventional concert programs. He died right as the compact disc was rolling out. (Now composers write 70 minute pieces to fill CDs.) The first batch of Hat Hut Feldman boxes hit Tower Records in 1992. Since I was working at minimum wage back then, fifty or sixty dollars was a very large sum – 1/4 of a month's rent! I could barely justify buying even one, but in the end I chose 'For Philip Guston'. It's still my favorite of the long late Feldmans. For one thing, four and a half hours isn't as long as the nearly six-hour second String Quartet. Also, the musical material in this piece is unusual for Feldman. Most of the late works spend several hours filling out the space between three or four adjacent semi-tones. Compared to that, 'Guston' sounds like Copland! The opening 'C – A – G – E' motif, however far from it the music wanders, is singularly luminous and suggestive as scored for flute, piano and tuned percussion. And of all the long pieces, this is the least static – where the second quartet is as drably beautiful and unchanging as a room of Agnes Martins, 'For Philip Guston' is like a very extended rondo: when those four notes return after an hour, after two hours and then, after three, it's breathtaking – the composer's 'heavenly lengths' are, in this case, entirely justified.

Remarkably, there are four recordings of 'For Philip Guston' (the others are by the California Ear Unit, the SEM Ensemble and a group I haven't heard onWergo.) The Hat Hut performers, seen in the photo above, are Nils Vigeland (piano and celesta), Eberhard Blum (piccolo, flute and alto flute) and Jan Williams (glockenspiel, vibraphone, marimba and chimes). This trio toured extensively with Mr. Feldman at the piano - 'Why Patterns?', 'Crippled Symmetry', 'For Christian Wolff' and 'For Philip Guston' were written with these specific players in mind.

Hat Hut CDs are released in limited editions – this 4-CD set has been out of print for 20 years now. I've posted it in FLAC with a scan of the booklet. (If anyone can share a lossless transfer of the Hat Hut 'Patterns in a chromatic field' with Rohan de Saram and Marianne Schroeder, I'd be very grateful!)

NEW LINK 30 August 2010: I am very grateful to GraspRelease for reupping this very large post as two (large) RAR archives. GR has graciously allowed me to post his links until I've got them uploaded myself.

Jon Vickers sings 'Die Winterreise' (1984 EMI LP)

Here's Jon Vickers' 1984 recording of Schubert's 'Winterreise', with Geoffrey Parsons on the piano. Not to be confused with the singer's somewhat later recording on VAI. (I haven't heard that one, but it has a reputation as a 'party' record. Not a KC and the Sunshine Band or James Brown kind of party – the phrase apparently refers to recordings by classical musicians that are so awful that they are played at parties given by classical music-lovers and laughed at.)

Vickers has an famously odd voice and is said to be a somewhat unpleasant man. His reputation in his great operatic roles is fairly secure but he is nobody's idea of a lieder singer. Crooning to himself with gum in his mouth and a gun in his pocket, at tempos ratcheted down to a steady, then not-so-steady crawl. In short, he's a right nutter and perfectly cast as Schubert's winter traveller. 

My favorite recordings of this song cycle tend to have an edge to them (Hotter/Raucheisen – Pears/Britten – Schreier/Richter). Vickers/Parsons is even better, although I only listen to it once or twice a year. Four of the songs are available on EMI's 'The Very Best of Jon Vickers" but as far as I know the cycle is not available on CD. I've taken this from a typically tetchy French 'Voix de son Maître' pressing; after numerous cleanings, new needles and careful declickings, I seem to have more or less tamed it. My copy of this record came without the song texts, but they should be easy enough to find.

The picture above is taken from Joao César Monteiro's 2001 film 'Blanche-Neige', adapted from a play by the Swiss writer Robert Walser. That's Walser in the snow – he died on 25 December 1956 while on his daily walk at the sanatorium. 

Le Voyage d'Hiver (Vickers, French EMI LP) FLAC

After an earlier incident ....

... service is back to normal.

If you tried to download a file in the last 36 hours and couldn't, please try again!

Thanks to David P. and David G. for alerting me to the problem.

Ornette Coleman: Chamber music (RCA Red Seal LP 1968)

"The 10:00 – 3:00 and 9:00 – 5:00 system of music affects our memory more than any other pleasure. This is why melodies we like that we have heard before – especially those which have been put to a language – are mostly preferred to melodies we hear for the first time. Instrumental music has suffered and is suffering from these two statements. (Where is the melody? I can't hear the melody?) Composers and performers are faced with creating a music which will live in its own time with its value not forgotten in the future ... 

Music doesn't have to do anything for you or to you to become music. It exists without these restrictions, and when we reach a comparable stage with life we shall live without restriction and better the meaning of living." – Ornette Coleman, from the liner notes of this record.

This 1968 RCA Red Seal LP contains Mr. Coleman's 'Forms and Sounds' for woodwind quintet and two pieces for string quartet – 'Saints and Soldiers' and 'Space Flight'. The performers are members of the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra – among them the clarinet player Anthony Gigliotti and Mason Jones on French horn (complete personnel is included in the scans.) These are probably the best performances I've heard of Ornette Coleman's notated works – certainly better than the orchestral work 'Skies of America' (in either the commercial CBS release or the travesty of a live performance I once witnessed in New York with an uncooperative New York Philharmonic led by a scowling Kurt Masur.) 

The fact remains that for Coleman, traditional notation alone is inadequate for the non-improvising musician. Coleman's music, while basically tonal, incorporates intonational and rhythmic subtleties as difficult as those found in the scores of a Ferneyhough or Lachenmann. The improvising saxophonist Evan Parker has made some interesting observations about the so-called 'new complexity' in notated music – much of the resulting music sounds uncannily like the non-notated African-American and European creative music of the 60s onwards. Only in a utopia would one expect virtuosos of notated music – with full-time jobs as orchestral and chamber musicians – to be able to absorb Coleman's empirically-acquired harmolodic principles in the space of a one-day recording session. However, Ornette Coleman remains a great believer in utopias. And as he says here: ' [these musicians] are the best to have ever played my work."

The genesis of 'Forms and Sounds' is fairly well known. Coleman was fed up with the lack of work in New York for his current trio (with David Izenson on bass and Charles Moffet on drums) and, in 1965, took the group to London. He did this without arranging any dates beforehand and ran afoul of England's strict union rules regarding foreign 'popular' musicans. In order to qualify as a 'concert artist', Coleman and his promoter arranged to present his 'concert music' alongside the improvising trio – and 'Sounds and Forms' was premiered at Fairfield Hall in Croydon, London in 1965. 

I have also included this version of the wind quintet, which was recorded for an Arista-Freedom LP that did not appear in the United States until years later. A major difference between the premiere and the RCA version is that Coleman adds improvised trumpet in the later performance (some of his best recorded work on that instrument, in my opinion.) 'Reservatory' has posted a transfer of the complete double-LP set 'The Great London Concert' at Lucky's Psychic Hut. My own transfer is from a different single-disc issue (the wind quintet only.) I've enclosed complete scans of both records that I've transfered.

ORNETTE COLEMAN CHAMBER MUSIC FLACS

Records from my 18th Year Part Two

'The New Stravinsky'! If you have the gigantic box of the Stravinsky-conducted CBS recordings, then you already have this one. When I was 18 years old, this record was about ten years old. Within another four years, it had been deleted and subsumed into that original, vinyl Stravinsky Edition 'silver box'. I saw it once, when I first moved to New York, behind the counter at the Sam Goody's record store in the World Trade Center concourse, where my friend Sid had gotten a clerking job. But it was far beyond my financial means at the time.

Even if you have the CD collection, I hope you will give this a listen. I swear it sounds much better taken straight from the vinyl. (This sealed copy had somehow survived without warping until 2009.)

Here are the Gregg Smith Singers again, and the Columbia Symphony Orchestra, conducted mostly by Robert Craft (complete scans are included.) The pieces are the 'Variations', 'Abraham and Isaac', 'Introitus' and the 'Requiem Canticles'.

THE NEW STRAVINSKY – FLAC AND COVER SCANS

*******

For fanatics of the late Stravinsky, I have also pulled together a few stray performances – 'Abraham and Isaac', sung by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, with Gary Bertini and the Stuttgart Radio Orchestra, from a 1982 Orfeo LP

along with

'Abraham and Isaac' (again) and 'A Sermon, A Narrative and A Prayer', Paul Sacher conducting the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus; the vocal soloists are Derrik Olsen, Jeanne Deroubaix and Hugues Cuénod. These performances are from November 19, 1965 and are taken from a 4-CD box on the Musiques Suisses label, 'Resonanzen: Paul Sacher, Dirigent und Anreger.'

BERTINI and SACHER FLACS and INFO

Records from my 18th Year Part One

Here is the first of two records that I played repeatedly in my 18th year – my first year of university. I only found them again recently (my first record collection was lost in a Baltimore apartment fire in 1982.) I spent much of the 1980s and 90s traveling to Europe and Canada, always searching for books and LPs, these amongst them. Only a dozen years ago, one had to actually travel to track down cultural treasures.

Morton Feldman: 'Rothko Chapel' and 'For Frank O'Hara' Odyssey Y 34138 LP 1976 – The Gregg Smith Singers, Karen Philips (viola), Jan Williams (percussion) (Rothko Chapel) – Members of the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts, SUNY Buffalo; Jan Williams, conductor (For Frank O'Hara)

Also included is a performance of what has become my favorite orchestral work of Feldman's – Violin and Orchestra, with Isabelle Faust, violin; Peter Rundel, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (from a Col Legno CD which also includes 'Coptic Light' and is worth checking out.)

FELDMAN – FLAC and SCANS

NOTE 2 JULY 2010 – I have re-upped 'Rothko Chapel' – the transfer I had included was the raw FLAC file ... nothing wrong with that ... but I intended to share a modestly-declicked version, which makes a difference with a piece as quiet as this. (I had already done that with 'For Frank O'Hara'. )

Hans Rosbaud conducts 'Moses und Aron' (Columbia Masterworks LP 1957)

Hans Rosbaud's recording of Arnold Schoenberg's 'Moses und Aron' is another of those classics that hasn't been reissued in the CD era. The LP itself is hardly a rarity – I have several copies that I picked up for two dollars or less. Finding a copy in decent shape has been a little harder, but I finally managed (only $1.50!)

This is the first commercial recording of the opera, from a 1954 radio broadcast with the Symphony Orchestra of the Norddeutscher Rundfunk. Hans Herbert Fiedler is Moses and Helmut Krebs is Aron. Ilona Steingruber is also on hand. Yes, it is in mono, but it is a impeccably recorded document of an incredibly well-played and sung performance. This might be Hans Rosbaud's finest recorded moment. I don't know if I have heard any of Schoenberg's orchestral works so convincingly and accurately performed. (It would be interesting to know how many rehearsals were dedicated to this project.) As was the practice in those days, the singers (and chorus) are placed somewhat to the front of the orchestra, but it works very well. Michael Gielen on Philips/Brilliant and Herbert Kegel on Berlin Classics are very good stereo recordings, but if you are at all interested in Schoenberg, you need to hear this.

I have applied a modest amount of autodeclicking and posted this in FLAC, with complete scans. The booklet includes substantial pieces by Allen Forte and Milton Babbitt, as well as a complete libretto.

MOSES und ARON

The Kasenetz and Katz Super Circus (Buddha LP)

In articles and reviews of the recent remaster of the Rolling Stones' 'Exile on Main Street', a particular phrase kept popping up, leading me to believe it was fed by P.R. types to hungry reviewers starved for an angle. 'Exile on Main Street' "may not be the greatest rock and roll album of all time" they say, but "it is certainly the most rock and roll rock and roll album of all time!"

Similarly, "Kasenetz and Katz Super Circus" may not be the greatest bubblegum album of all time, but it is certainly the most bubblegum bubblegum album of all time.

Since I feel that those Buddha Records bubblegum materminds, Messieurs Kasenetz and Katz (and Joey Levine), have not received sufficient recognition for that achievement, here is the LP in its entirety. With the exception of the miserable title track (a play on the 'Sgt Pepper'/'Magical Mystery Tour'-style carnival concept) this is a solid album packed with hits – 'Quick Joey Small', 'Easy to Love', 'I Got it Bad for You' – and some surprisingly evocative balladry – 'Log on Fire' and 'N.Y. Woman'.

This post is for Tim Prudhomme and Lori Aime.

FLAC with SCANS.

Noël Lee plays Schubert – The first 13 piano sonatas (1970 Valois LP)

As the 1960s came to an end, the pianist and composer Noël Lee asked Michel Bernstein, the proprietor of the Valois label, if he was interested in issuing an intégrale of the Schubert piano sonatas. Mr. Bernstein was interested, and in 1969, the first box – 'The Last Ten Sonatas' – was recorded. With the completion of the second box in 1970 – 'The Impromptus and 13 Early Sonatas' – Valois had the distinction of being the first label to disseminate the complete Schubert sonatas.

Of course, there is some disagreement about the number of piano sonatas Schubert composed. He left many unfinished, and only one (or two?) were published in his lifetime. Noël Lee opted to 'finish' the incomplete movements and also recorded two fragments. (Paul Badura-Skoda was the next to do a complete set. His four boxes for RCA – also never on CD – were released several years after Lee's set, and feature Badura-Skoda's own completions.)

These are terrific performances, the recorded sound is spendid and the records are in excellent condition. This is a five-LP set. Sides 1-3 include the two sets of Impromptus and the late 'Drei Klavierstücke'. I have transferred Sides 4-10 only: i.e the thirteen 'early sonatas'. I hope to get around to Sides 1-3 in the near future – as well as the five LPs of 'The Last Ten Sonatas'!

Schubert's early sonatas are still too-little known. Unlike Mozart's very early music, Schubert's is distinctive – 'Schubertian' – from the very beginning. These works are the equal of his later sonatas in every way but length. Included is the booklet, a detailed essay by Harry Halbreich (in French only). I've also included scans of the LP labels to help you navigate the folders.

In lightly declicked FLAC.

*******
Note 6 JULY 2010 – I have re-upped Sides 9 and 10 (Valois 865). Thanks to Hugo for letting me know that this file wouldn't open. If you had the same problem, please take a look in the folder (link above) and download 'REUP Lee Valois 865'. I assume that a bunch of you had the same problem. Please let me know when you do find a bad file so I can straighten things out as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience and comments.

Bill Dixon: 'November 1981' (Soul Note LP 1982)

"The music of Bill Dixon maintains such a powerful flavor, it is one of those things where you inevitably remember the first time you taste it. For me, it was his mid-career landmark recording 'November 1981'. Within the one minute and twenty-six seconds of 'Webern', the opening track, I realized I had to completely rethink the possibilities of the trumpet as an improvising instrument. By the end of the album, I realized I had to examine my assumptions about the nature of creative music in general. For Dixon's music does not adhere to the common practice of any established musical genre, be it 'jazz', 'contemporary classical', 'avant-garde' or what-have-you. While drawing on all these rich traditions and more, he has established his own set of rules and principles ... " – Taylor Ho Bynum

'November 1981', one of the late Bill Dixon's most inventive recordings, is out of print. Given its importance, I feel it should be made available, especially for those – like myself – who feel that the examination of my assumptions about music is a never-ending process. My most productive, and pleasurable, periods of 'music appreciation' have been times of unsettled wrestling with stuff I just can't hear – from the Flemish contrapuntal masters to Italian opera to the music on this record. The lineup on 'November 1981' is somewhat unusual – trumpet, two bass players (Alan Silva and Mario Pavone) and percussion (Laurence Cook.) The interlocking pizzicato and arco buzzing and sawing of the bassists creates a low-lying skein of harmonic implication that is unlike anything I have encountered before. Dixon's trumpet is the 'only' solo melodic instrument. From this recording onwards, Dixon would continue to favor a dark and bass-heavy sound, adding cello, tuba and contrabass clarinet in his late orchestral works.

Bill Dixon also established clear 'rules and principles' regarding the documentation and dissemination of his music. One of the people he spoke most highly of was Giovanni Bonandrini, whose Soul Note label issued many of Dixon's records, without restrictions as to content and packaging. Dixon was famously outspoken about proper compensation – and not just financial compensation, but that was part of it. In particular, he insisted that the musicians on his recordings be paid for their work. That would seem to go without saying, but jazz and rock musicians generally record as independent contractors. While Bill Dixon is the composer of the pieces on 'November 1981', group improvised music is, by definition, spontaneous composition involving all of the participants.

For these reasons, I am posting this album in MP3 320 only, assuming that it will return to the catalog when Soul Note is able to reissue it. I have included the complete booklet, which includes a very informative essay with many musical examples by Jimmy Stewart (the composer and saxophone player, not the actor!)

My earlier post includes links to further information about Bill Dixon (including the essay by Taylor Ho Bynum I've quoted from) and his recordings.

*****

UPDATED NOTE 5 NOVEMBER 2010: Black Saint has issued a remastered 9-CD box of all of Bill Dixon's Soul Note and Black Saint records for a very low price --- less than the cost of two CDs (and a fraction of the prices that resellers have been asking for a single copy of 'November 1981'.) The box is strictly no-frills, simply the nine records in facsimiles of the original sleeves. The set includes 'In Italy' Volumes 1 and 2, November 1981, Thoughts, Son of Sisyphus, Vade Mecum I and II and Papyrus I and II. If you've enjoyed 'November 1981', you will certainly want to hear the Vade Mecum quartet – if you are less interested in 'jazz' per se but are a follower of contemporary classical music, electronic music and/or free improv, you shouldn't miss the Papyrus records (improvised duos for electronically-treated trumpet and percussion, with Tony Oxley.) You can order it from the Jazz Loft.

(There are four other boxes in the series – the Complete Soul Note and/or Black Saint recordings of Paul Motian – Lester Bowie – Cecil Taylor – and George Russell.)

Monsieur Inghelbrecht conducts Rossini (and Debussy)

The conductor and composer Désiré-Émile Inghelbrecht (1880-1965) was apparently a difficult man, but in post-WW II France he was second only to Roger Desormière as an orchestra leader. He founded the Orchestra National de la Radiodiffusion Française (ONF, later ORNF) in 1934 and his many broadcast recordings are preserved in the INA radio archives.

Gioachino Rossini's 'Comte Ory' is a stupendous work. His penultimate opera is largely a re-purposing of material from his final Italian-language opera, 'Il Viaggio a Reims' (1825), written for the coronation of Charles X. 'Le Comte Ory' does to the French language what 'La Cenerentola' and 'The Barber of Seville' did to Italian with hilarious and profound results. Eugène Scribe's serviceable comic libretto (it's the Middle Ages – the eponymous Count courts love and danger in disguise, first as a hermit and later a nun) is reduced to a carnivalesque babelogue of atomized phonetic waste amid endless musical invention. I've never followed the libretto and there isn't one included in this INA LP release of Monsieur Inghelbrecht's 1959 radio performance. (My heterodox view is that opera is best enjoyed without librettos – with exceptions made for the Mozart-da Ponte trilogy and Berg).

'Le Comte Ory' has been recorded surprisingly often and well. In my collection are versions by Vittorio Gui, John Eliot Gardiner and the very recent Jesús Lopez Cobos CD (with Juan Diego Flórez.) The Inghelbrecht recording, with the unmatchable Michel Sénéchal in the lead role, is in a class of its own. Unfortunately, the condition of my LP is in another class altogether – I've thought long and hard about whether this transfer is good enough to share. (There was a CD release in 1988; I'd love to get hold of it.) I've run this through ClickRepair several times and hope the musical virtues of the record outweigh its somewhat ragged condition. In FLAC with cover scans.

******

Inghelbrecht was closely associated with his friend Debussy's 'Pelléas et Melisande'. His radio broadcasts of the opera were a yearly tradition in the 1950s. The 1962 broadcast marking the 100th anniversary of Debussy's birth was issued by the INA on a Montaigne CD in the early 90s. Aside from Desormière's classic mono EMI recording, this ravishingly-recorded stereo set is my all-time favorite. The cast is made up of Inghelbrecht's ONF regulars – Jacques Jansen, Micheline Grancher, Solange Michel, Michel Roux and André Vessières. The orchestra is magnificent. And the conductor's 1933 essay 'How not to interpret Pelléas' is essential reading.

I have included that essay in the package. The text of 'Pelléas' is one of many exceptions to the flippant remark I made above about opera librettos. It's not included here, but an outstanding virtue of both Debussy's opera and the French art of declamation is that you can understand every word of the text without one. If you can understand French. In FLAC with scans HERE.

The Koeckert Quartet on Bavarian Radio

I previously posted the Koeckert Quartet's Deutsche Grammophon recording of the Haydn Op 20 Quartets and look forward to transferring some late Beethoven. I fell for this quartet when I first heard them and it's a frustration that so little is currently available. Here are two out-of-print Orfeo compact discs of recordings the quartet made for the Bayerischen Rundfunks.

The original Koeckert Quartet comprised the first desk players of the post-war Bamberg Symphony Orchestra under Joseph Keilberth; in 1949 they moved to Eugen Jochum's Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. (Meaning that they played on many of my favorite Bruckner recordings.) The first CD is of this lineup: Rudolf Koeckert and Willi Buchner (violins), Oskar Riedl (viola) and Josef Merz (cello). The program is Mendelssohn's Quartet Op 12, the second of Schumann's Op 41 Quartets and Smetana's 'From my life.' The recordings are from 1959 and 1960.

After the death of Willi Buchner, the young Rudolf Joachim Koeckert took over as second fiddle to his father. The second CD contains early-70s broadcasts of Haydn's C-major Quartet Op 74 No 1, Schubert's c minor 'Quartettsatz' and a very welcome (and very fine) performance of Max Reger's huge Quartet in f-sharp minor Op 121. (If all goes according to plan, I'll be serving up further healthy helpings of Reger's chamber music this summer.)

Both discs are stereo recordings in studio-quality sound. Scans of the track listings are included along with the FLACS.

Azio Corghi and Gioachino Rossini: 'Un petit train de plaisir' (1992)

Continuing in the piano duo vein (and throwing in a bunch of percussion), here is Azio Corghi's inventive reworking of Gioachino Rossini's 'Péchés de vieillesse'. Corghi's 1992 ballet score transcribes and scrambles the composer's late piano music in a archly fantastic, anti-romantic manner, coaxing out the Satiesque – Queneauian – and Raymond Rousselian elements which Rossini's pataphysically-derisive brand of comedy clearly anticipates.

Azio Corghi (b. 1937) is an Italian composer with a special interest in Rossini, which goes as far as musicological work for the critical editions of Casa Ricordi and the Rossini Foundation of Pesaro. Among his operas is 'Blimunda', from the novel by the late Nobel-prize winning novelist José Saramago. 'Un Petit train de plaisir' was written for the choreographer Amedeo Amodio and the recording is from an O.P. CD on Ricordi.

Bruno Canino and Antonio Ballista are the pianists; they are joined by Les Percussions de Strasbourg. Mauro Bonifacio is the conductor. This is a (literally) fantastic piece of 'light' music. I hope it helps you keep your cool in the summer heat – in FLAC with scans.

Jacqueline Bonneau and Genevieve Joy play works for two pianos

This recital of works for two pianos is a delight from beginning to end. In fact it seems to get more delightful as it goes along – after a stately Couperin 'Allemande', each piece is a small 18th-century miracle and the pianists pounce on the counterpoint and purr like cats. The Mozart sonata is a favorite of mine but I had no idea that Muzio Clementi, J.C. Bach and – especially –Wilhelm Friedrich Bach had written such gorgeous music for dueling keyboards (the trills!) Clementi and the Bachs grab the two piano format like Imax moviemakers – on headphones, gracefully dovetailed imitation and flocks of 3D trills bounce giddily from left to right and back again, making for slapstick verging on whiplash. (Headphones also reveal some unfortunate print-through 'ghosts', although mostly between tracks.)

In stereo, from a French Musicdisc LP, probably from the mid to late 1960s. The sound is on the boxy size, but the record is in good shape. Ms. Bonneau and Ms. Joy play modern pianos – transferred in a burst of enthusiasm this evening – in FLAC – with a quick declicking – HERE.