What we've wound up with: (1) We inch our way back toward Dvořák's New World Symphony, and (2) We explore the problem of stuff going missing, G&S-style*

*Technically this should be "B&S-style," I know, but there's no such thing, is there? -- Ed.

UPDATE: I GIVE UP! THOSE CDs I NEEDED, WHICH I HAD LYING
ABOUT OR IN MY HAND, ARE MIA -- LET'S JUST GET ON WITH IT
(No "Schubert piano performance that knocked me over," for now)

When, in 1997, this statue of Dvořák by the Croatian-American sculptor Ivan Meštrović found a new home near the northern edge of Manhattan's Stuyvesant Square, it constituted a "homecoming" of sorts. There's a story here, and a personal story, er, inside the story which involves a remarkable walking tour and two remarkable musicians who both have powerful connections -- of very different sorts -- to the great Czech composer.

DVOŘÁK: Violin Concerto in A minor, Op. 53:
iii. Finale: Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo

Josef Suk, violin; Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Karel Ančerl, cond. Supraphon, recorded in the Rudolfinum, Prague, August 1960

DVOŘÁK: Piano Trio No. 4 in E minor, Op. 90 (Dumky):
the first two of the trio's six movements --
i. Lento maestoso -- Allegro quasi doppio movimento -- Lento maestoso (Tempo I) -- Allegro
ii. Poco adagio -- Vivace non troppo -- Poco adagio -- Vivace

[ii. at 4:04] Suk Trio: Josef Suk, violin; Josef Chuchro, cello; Jan Panenka, piano. Supraphon-Denon, recorded in the Domovina Studio, Prague, May 11-13, 1978

DVOŘÁK: Symphony No. 8 in G, Op. 88:
i. Allegro con brio

New York Philharmonic, Kurt Masur, cond. Teldec, recorded live in Avery Fisher Hall, Jan. 1-4, 1993

DVOŘÁK: Slavonic Dance No. 15 in C, Op. 72, No. 7

Gewandhaus Orchestra (Leipzig), Kurt Masur, cond. Philips-Deutsche Schallplatten, recorded 1984-85

by Ken

Nothing continues to come together right, but we forge ahead, with one qualification: Tomorrow I'm going to the Richmond County Fair, come hell or high waters. On second thought, we best not kid around about "high waters, of which we Gothamites had a plentiful share this week. In fact, I'm going to have to check the website to make sure the fair is up and running -- they were supposed to open yesterday, which would have been quite a feat so soon after the deluge.

Anyway, that's my nonnegotiable schedule delimiter, and it remains to be seen how far further I can get tonight, especially with multiple CDs going missing on me. Meanwhile, these audio clips are ready to roll, so why don't we let them? (For the record, as it were, three of the four clips so far in place are Sunday Classics premieres, I think -- I did find an older version of one of the three in the Archive.)


FOR NOW, WE CAN AT LEAST HAVE THE STORY
OF THE STATUE THAT "FOUND ITS WAY HOME"

This isn't how I first encountered the story (that's the story "inside" the story), but it's nicely told, I think, in this "Antonín Dvořák Statue" entry by Paul Curran for The Clio (which also includes a useful brief bio).

"In the early 1960s, the Czechoslovak National Council of America commissioned a bronze statue of Dvořák and gifted it to the New York Philharmonic. Believed to be one of the last works of Croatian-American sculptor Ivan Mestrovic, the piece sat in obscurity for roughly three decades on a rooftop terrace of Avery Fisher Hall at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. In the early 1990s, after Dvořák’s former residence on East 17th Street was demolished, the Dvořák American Heritage Association, in conjunction with the New York Philharmonic and the Stuyvesant Park Neighborhood Association, obtained the badly-neglected statue. The organizations then conserved it and created a fund for future maintenance. They also commissioned Czech-American architect Jan Hird Pokorny to design a new green granite pedestal. On September 13, 1997, the statue was dedicated in Manhattan’s Stuyvesant Square Park during a public ceremony. In attendance at the unveiling that day were hundreds of spectators and many dignitaries, including the mayor of Prague, Jan Koukal."

We still need to talk a little about Dvořák in the New World, and specifically in New York, and Francis Morrone's "Dvořák in Love" walking tour. We're going to hear a little more from Josef Suk and Kurt Masur -- and, oh yes, consider what each of them brings to the subject of "Dvořák in Love."

And somehow we still need to get through the whole of the New World Symphony. Don't ask me how all that's going to happen.


NOW, AS TO ALL THESE CDs 'N' THINGS THAT HAVE GONE
INTO HIDING AND WON'T TURN UP TILL IT'S TOO LATE

Like there's at least one New World Symphony recording (and some Slavonic Dances), and there's that Schubert piano performance I was saying in earlier versions of this post had blown me away, and who knows what else? It's hard to keep track. For days or weeks they were practically at my fingertips, and now, poof! Usually these things turn up as soon as it's too late, and with any luck I've devised some sorts of workarounds for them.

Well, now we're gonna give 'em a little extra time to materialize -- and when the time's up, then we'll make alternative plans and devise some sorts of workarounds.


ALL THESE MISSING CDs PUT ME IN MIND OF
THE CURIOUS CASE OF COLONEL COX'S COALS

That is to say, a mystery plaguing the mental well-being of one of the dual protagonists of Cox and Box, a frothy entertainment with music by a 20-something composer who some decades later would be adopted as the Great Gray Hope of Oh-So-Serious British Music but would instead -- almost against his own wishes -- achieve immortality as one of the giants of a very different sort of musical theater.

Young Arthur Sullivan's dabblings in comic musical entertainments led him into collaboration in 1866, some five years before he attempted a collaboration with a fellow named W. S. Gilbert, he teamed up with F. C. Burnand to produce the one-act farce Cox and Box, which would eventually, in drastically shortened form (about half the original, sacrificing nothing of notable quality) be taken into the repertory of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, the company formed by Gilbert and Sullivan's producing partner, Richard D'Oyly Carte, to provide an ongoing home for their creations, which in time included their own theater, the Savoy.

For Savoy purposes, for use as a curtain-raiser with the shorter G&S operas, Cox and Box was slashed to something like half its original length (sacrificing nothing of significant value that I've noticed). The :Savoy edition" of Cox and Box isn't just the earliest music of Sullivan's that's still regularly performed, it's loved in a way that none of his "serious" music is -- "serious" in quotes because, as longtime readers are aware, I consider the G&S operas some of the most serious theater works we have, provided that they're performed with the respect they deserve.

I think Cox and Box generously rewards our habit of wanting to hear how works we're pondering begin. Happily, we have recordings by the D'Oyly Carte company's three most eminent musical directors, though of course by 1961 Sir Malcolm Sargent was decades past active involvement with it. (His continued G&S recording activity, for both EMI and Decca, testified to his continuing affection for this repertory.)

BURNAND and SULLIVAN: Cox and Box: Overture


New Symphony Orchestra of London, Isidore Godfrey, cond. Decca, recorded 1961

Pro Arte Orchestra, Sir Malcolm Sargent, cond. EMI, recorded 1961

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Royston Nash, cond. Decca, recorded February 1978

[AFTERTHOUGHT: I really wanted to say something about these performances, which are so gloriously different, but it's just so tricky, talking about something that however is so joyfully obvious if one just listens to the performances. I do, however, reserve the right to recall the witnesses -- I mean, to return to the subject at a future time. -- Ed.]


NOW TO THE PROBLEM WITH COLONEL COX'S COALS

We're returning to the 1961 D'Oyly Carte recording of the Savoy edition of Cox and Box from which we heard the Overture above, with Isidore Godfrey conducting in his most ebullient and empathetic form and a cast that consists of a competent enough tenor, for Box, and two G&S superstars: "singing" baritone Alan Styler, who made such memorable recordings of roles like Dr. Daly in The Sorcerer, Grosvenor in Patience, Strephon in Iolanthe, Pish-Tush in The Mikado [pictured here], and Giuseppe in The Gondoliers; and Donald Adams, whose awesomeness as the Pirate King and the Mikado, not to mention Dick Deadeye in Pinafore, may have overshadowed his terrific work in a host of other roles, like the Usher in Trial by Jury (has there ever been another half as good?), Mountararat in Iolanthe, Arac in Princess Ida, Sir Roderic in Ruddigore -- and, well, Bouncer!

Alan Styler as Pish-Tush (The Mikado):
"Our great Mikado, virtuous man"

Alan Styler (b), Pish-Tush; D'Oyly Carte Opera Chorus, New Symphony Orchestra of London, Isidore Godfrey, cond. Decca, recorded in Kingsway Hall, October 1957

Donald Adams as the Pirate King (The Pirates of Penzance):
"Oh, better far to live and die"

Donald Adams (bs-b), Pirate King; D'Oyly Carte Opera Chorus, New Symphony Orchestra of London, Isidore Godfrey, cond. Decca, recorded in Kingsway Hall, Nov.-Dec. 1957


BURNAND and SULLIVAN: Cox and Box: "Rataplan" . . .
"Rataplan, rataplan, I'm a military man"

A room -- a bed with curtains closed, three doors, a window, a fireplace, table and chairs. It's morning, and at curtain rise we met Colonel Cox, a gentleman engaged in the hatting industry, preparing to leave for his place of employment, when he was interrupted by his landlord, the wily and avaricious onetime-Sergeant Bouncer, who noted that Cox had had his hair cut. "Cut!" Colonel Cox expostulated. "It strikes me I've had it mowed! I look as if I'd been cropped for the Army --"

Which was enough to send Bouncer off into one of his military recollections, and to send Colonel Cox fleeing from the room.

SONG (Bouncer): "Rataplan"
We sounded the trumpet, we beat the drum.
Somehow the enemy, somehow the enemy,
somehow the enemy didn't come.
So I gave up my horse
in Her Majesty's force,
as there wasn't a foeman
to meet with the yeoman,
and so no invasion
threatened the nation.
There wasn't a man
in the rear or the van
who found an occasion to sing, "Rataplan!
Rataplan! Rataplan! Rataplan!
Rataplan, plan, plan, plan!"

[Enter COX.]
COX: This comes of having one's hair cut. None of my hats will fit me. By the bye, Bouncer, I wish to know how it is that I frequently find my apartment full of smoke?
BOUNCER: Why -- I suppose -- the chimney --
COX: The chimney doesn't smoke tobacco. I'm speaking of tobacco smoke.
BOUNCER: Why, the gentleman who has the attics is hardly ever without a pipe in his mouth.
COX: Ah! Then you mean to say that this gentleman's smoke, instead of emulating the example of all other sorts of smoke and going up the chimney, thinks proper to affect a singularity by taking the contrary direction?
BOUNCER: Why --
COX: Then I suppose the gentleman you speak of is the individual that I invariably meet comming up stairs when I'm going down, and going down when I'm coming up?
BOUNCER: Why -- yes -- I --
COX: I should set him down as a gentleman connected with the printing interest.
BOUNCER: Yes, sir. Good morning! [Going.]

DUET (Cox and Bouncer), "Stay, Bouncer, stay!"
COX [recit.]: Stay, Bouncer, stay!
To me it has occurred
that now's the time
with you to have a word.
BOUNCER [aside]: What can he mean?
I tremble -- ah, I tremble!
COX: Listen!
BOUNCER: With pleasure!
COX: Now coals is coals, as sure is eggs is eggs.
Coals haven't souls, no more than they have legs.
But as you will admit, the case is so,
that legs or no legs, my coals contrive to go!
Contrive to go!
But as you will admit, the case is so,
that legs or no legs, my coals contrive to go,
contrive to go.
BOUNCER: Well, I should say -- or as it seems to me --
COX: Exactly!
BOUNCER: Quite so.
COX: Then we both agree.
BOUNCER: As we agree, good day.
COX: I've something more to say.
BOUNCER: Mister Cox, Mister Cox,
my feelings overpower me,
that his lodger, his friendly lodger,
should once suspect that Bouncer is --
COX: -- a dodger!
BOUNCER: As to who takes your coals,
your fuel and all of that,
it must have been --
COX: No, no! 'Twas not the cat!
BOUNCER: Rataplan, rataplan, I'm a military man,
rough, honest, I hope, though unpolished,
and as to the cat, the treacherous cat,
the cat in the Army's abolished!
COX: Rataplan, rataplan, you're a military man,
honest, I hope, though it doesn't appear,
and as to the cat, the treacherous cat,
if it isn't in the Army, don't have it here!
BOTH: Rataplan, rataplan, &c.

Donald Adams (bs-b), Bouncer; Alan Styler (b), Cox; New Symphony Orchestra of London, Isidore Godfrey, cond. Decca, recorded 1961


AS TO THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING COALS,
BOUNCER WOULD BE HAPPY TO EXPLAIN IT ALL

It turns out that, like so many of the universe's seeming "mysteries," this one has a simple explanation, if we just take the trouble to look for it.

Don't you just hate it when you're reading along and suddenly in order to get the next piece of information you've gotta click something -- for a video or goodness-only-knows-what. No, you like that? It's just me who hates it? Ah! Well, okay, click on this.

Bouncer explains, and we witness a violent encounter

We pick up just about where we left off above, or maybe back a wee bit -- you know you can never get enough rataplanning.


Donald Adams (bs-b), Bouncer; Alan Styler (b), Cox; Joseph Riordan (t), Box

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