Post tease: Well, why shouldn't we listen to the (at very rough guess) 8th- or 9th-best Suppé overture?

UPDATED with several additional performances,
including a fourth whole overture!
[Further updated to title the Järvi Fatinitza selection properly]

Don't ask me to dredge up from memory what's going on in Fatinitza as captured in this lithograph; we could all look it up. As to the lithograph itself, the photo viewed at full size tells us that it came from "H. A. Thomas, Lith. Studio, 865 Broadway, N.Y." -- in case you were wondering.

FRANZ VON SUPPÉ: Fatinitza: Overture


Hungarian State Orchestra, János Sándor, cond. Hungaroton

Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, Charles Dutoit, cond. Decca
Boston Pops Orchestra, Arthur Fiedler, cond. RCA

MAX SCHÖNHERR (arr.): "Marziale" on themes from the operetta "Fatinitza"
Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Neeme Järvi, cond. Chandos

MONDAY EVENING UPDATE: There's a "post-tease afterthought" coming up that will ask (and answer) the question: "If you listened to the performances of Suppé's Fatinitza Overture in the official 'post tease,' did any particular word come to mind?" So, thoughts? That post should go up tomorrow (i.e., Tuesday). (Okay, a hint: I'm thinking "rhythm.")

UPDATE: Okay, the "post-tease afterthought" didn't come Tuesday, but it did come: " 'Post tease' afterthought: If you listened to the performances of Suppé's Fatinitza Overture in last week's 'post tease,' did any particular word come to mind?"

by Ken

Just to be clear, I didn't sit down and list Suppé overtures and arrive at a scientifically precise ranking. It's just that awhile ago we had a post that began with Suppé's Poet and Peasant Overture, and I think we can likely agree that it's either the 1st- or 2nd-best Suppé overtures, neck and neck with Light Cavalry (I think that's the correct one-two order, if only because Poet and Peasant just has higher artistic ambitions, but it could depend on which day you ask me, like if maybe I happen recently to have heard an especially upllifting performance of Light Cavalry), and beyond that there are up to a half-dozen that most of us would probably go to before we get to Fatinitza. Nevertheless, the Fatinitza Overture is still a darned nifty piece (how many composers would have loved to compose one such?), and maybe all the more welcome for not being heard as often as the other six or eight Suppé overtures.

So, although as it happens we do have a reason for visiting Fatinitza, we don't need a reason beyond the fact that it is, you know, a really nifty piece, do we? Oh yes, in case you were wondering, there is neither rhyme nor reason to the order of the above performances of Fatinitza. It's just the order in which I drug up the audio files -- with, for once, no particular thinking. We know how thinking tends to lead inexorably to trouble.


AS LONG AS WE'RE HERE, WHY NOT GIVE A FRESH
LISTEN TO POET AND PEASANT AND LIGHT CAVALRY?

SUPPÉ: Poet and Peasant: Overture


Carl Stern, cello; New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded in Philharmonic Hall, Jan. 21, 1963

Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Paul Paray, cond. Mercury, recorded in Cass Technical High School, Nov. 29, 1959

Vienna Philharmonic, Zubin Mehta, cond. CBS-Sony, recorded 1989

Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra, Felix Slatkin, cond. EMI, recorded c1956

SUPPÉ: Light Cavalry: Overture


Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Paul Paray, cond. Mercury, recorded in Cass Technical High School, Nov. 29, 1959

Vienna Philharmonic, Zubin Mehta, cond. CBS-Sony, recorded 1989

Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra, Felix Slatkin, cond. EMI, recorded c1956

New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded in Philharmonic Hall, Oct. 26, 1967

UPDATE: With one exception, these are straight DWT archival pickups, stuff we've heard before. The exception is Lenny B's Light Cavalry, which is almost as good as the glorious earlier-recorded Poet and Peasant, which I'd originally included based on its inclusion on a smashing Bernstein-Columbia overture LP headlined by Rossini's William Tell -- there was a time when I listened to it just about all the time.

Paul Paray's Suppé, however, is something else. I think pretty much every conductor has a good idea what to do with Poet and Peasant and Light Cavalry; it's just not easy to do it with the all-out commitment and enthusiasm Lenny B mustered. I was wrong in saying, in the earlier version of this post, that we'd never heard Paul Paray's Poet and Peasant; I had just somehow missed it in the archive, and I've accordingly added it here. It's when it comes to the "other" Suppé overtures -- i.e., those from the No. 3 slot on -- that the interpretive challenge becomes more rarefied. As I've said before, Zubin Mehta's Sony disc is a special treat, but the Suppé touchstone remains the 1959 Paray-Mercury collection really stands out; for me it's one of a handful of truly indispensable records.

In the earlier version of the post I offered my usual example: Paray's magical Pique Dame. It was unforgivable of me to tantalize you that way, without giving you the opportunity to hear it. This is easily enough rectified, and with it I've also included a recording made two years earlier by Sir John Barbirolli,

SUPPÉ: Pique Dame: Overture


Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Paul Paray, cond. Mercury, recorded in Cass Technical High School, Nov. 29, 1959

Hallé Orchestra, Sir John Barbirolli, cond. Pye-Mercury-Barbirolli Recording Society, recorded in Free Trade Hall, Manchester (England), June 28-29, 1957

Isn't the Barbirolli performance lovely? Still, it can't match the feeling of breathless, hushed anticipation in the Paray. For what it's worth, the Barbirolli was part of an LP of Suppé overtures (which I don't recall ever encountering) recorded for the British Pye company (and also released as a Mercury "Living Presence" LP) by the Mercury team of recording director Wilma Cozart Fine, musical supervisor Harold Lawrence, and chief engineer and technical supervisor Robert Fine. Two years and change later, the Mercury team was in Detroit's Cass Technical High School with Maestro Paray, making their Suppé recording-for-the-ages -- all six overtures (five of the six the same as Barbirolli's), apparently, in one day!

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