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"

Ghost of Sunday Classics: Let's meet "a genuine philanthropist" ("All other kinds are sham")

Martyn Green (b); Lehman Engel, cond. Columbia, recorded 1953

John Reed (b); Sir Malcolm Sargent, cond. Decca, recorded May 1965

by Ken

Yes, we're still in Gilbert and Sullivan's treasurable if troubled musico-dramatic trove Princess Ida, which we dipped into last week to continue spotlighting the great Gilbert and Sullivan bass, specifically the role Arac, the most talkative of Princess Ida's "three hulking brothers." In a moment I'll share with you the logic whereby we've arrived at this week's ghost post, but first --


LET'S GO BACK TO THE PRELUDE

Yes, I know we already listened to what we decided we were going to call the Prelude (rather than Overture), including the two stereo versions below conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent. This week, however, we're going to add the performance from his 1932 complete recording of Princess Ida, one of the recordings he made in his days as music director of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. If you listen to the three performances in sequence, I think you'll hear why I've presented them here not quite chronologically. (Note that the 1965 version was made as part of Sir Malcolm's guest-conducting of the D'Oyly Carte's stereo Princess Ida. The 1961 EMI version was a stand-alone recording for a Sullivan overtures LP.)

GILBERT and SULLIVAN: Princess Ida: Prelude


D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, Malcolm Sargent, cond. EMI, recorded Sept. 26, 1932 (digital transfer by F. Reeder)

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Malcolm Sargent, cond. Decca, recorded May 1965

Pro Arte Orchestra, Sir Malcolm Sargent, cond. EMI, recorded c1961


NOW, THE LOGIC, OR AT ANY RATE THE
HISTORY, OF THIS POST GOES LIKE THIS

Ghost of Sunday Classics: Yes, it's more Donald Adams!

Princess Ida's three "hulking brothers" are bested by Prince Hilarion and his friends Cyril and Florian in Act III of the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players' Princess Ida.

Politics we bar,
they are not our bent!
On the whole we are
not intelligent!

-- Ida's brother Arac, in Act I of Princess Ida

by Ken

So far in this series we've heard our Donald as the army-besotted landlord Sergeant Bouncer in Burnand and Sullivan's Cox and Box and as the Usher in Trial by Jury, and most recently as the specter of the late Sir Roderic Murgatroyd in Ruddigore. And I thought we should start by finishing up with Sir Roderic, since we gave rather short shrift to the great scene in which the ancestral Murgatroyds step out of their picture frames in the great hall of the Bad Baronets of Ruddigore to torment the recently entitled Sir Ruthven over his failure to live up to the fabled Witch's Curse -- to "do one crime or more, once every day forever." After all, it was supposed to be our goal in last week's post, "When the night wind howls in the chimney cowls."

So we're going to return to the Picture Galley, then push farther into Ruddigore, and then we're going to hear Donald in another role, one he didn't have occasion to sing often, but sang wonderfully on two recordings of Princess Ida.

Ghost of Sunday Classics: When the night wind howls in the chimney cowls

With update, in which I actually include the texts
and music for the meeting of the two Bad Barts

Carole Round in the 1999 SavoyNet Performing Group Ruddigore

DAME HANNAH [quoting the burning witch]:
"Each lord of Ruddigore,
despite his best endeavour,
shall do one crime, or more,
once every day forever.
This doom he can't defy,
however he may try.
For should he stay
his hand, that day
in torture he shall die!"

[We heard the story in full in this week's preview, "The Witch's Curse."]

Gillian Knight (ms), Dame Hannah; Orchestra or the Royal Opera House, Covent Gardn, Isidore Godfrey, cond. Decca, recorded July 1962

Monica Sinclair (c), Dame Hannah; Pro Arte Orchestra, Sir Malcolm Sargent, cond. EMI, recorded Dec. 11-14, 1962

SIR DESPARD SOLILOQUIZES ABOUT HIS PICTURE GALLERY

Ruddigore, Act I: All the village girls express their horror of SIR DESPARD MURGATROYD, Bad Baronet of Ruddigore. As he approaches them they fly from him, terror-stricken, leaving him alone on the stage.

SIR DESPARD MURGATROYD: Poor children, how they loathe me -- me whose hands are certainly steeped in infamy, but whose heart is as the heart of a little child! But what is a poor baronet to do, when a whole picture gallery of ancestors step down from their frames and threaten him with an excruciating death if he hesitate to commit his daily crime? But ha! ha! I am even with them! [Mysteriously] I get my crime over the first thing in the morning, and then, ha! ha! for the rest of the day I do good -- I do good -- I do good! [Melodramatically] Two days since, I stole a child and built an orphan asylum. Yesterday I robbed a bank and endowed a bishopric. Today I carry off Rose Maybud and atone with a cathedral! This is what it is to be the sport and toy of a Picture Gallery! But I will be bitterly revenged upon them! I will give them all to the Nation, and nobody shall ever look upon their faces again!

by Ken

Before we continue with Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore, we're going to observe our frequent custom of starting at the beginning, with the Overture. For our purposes, as I hope you'll hear, it's especially important here. (Note that this is the "later" overture, in which Sullivan had no hand. But something had to be done when for the 1920-21 revival of the show -- after the deaths of both Gilbert and Sullivan -- the tune that had served as the big "developoment" tune of the original Overture, Robin's "When a man has been a wicked baronet" from the Act II finale, was cut. I happen to think that the replacement Overture, generally credited to Geoffrey Toye, a longtime assistant of Sullivan's, is quite dandy.)

GILBERT and SULLIVAN: Ruddigore: Overture (1920)


Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Isidore Godfrey, cond. Decca, recorded July 1962

Pro Arte Orchestra, Sir Malcolm Sargent, cond. EMI, recorded Nov. 3, 1960


ON TO BUSINESS -- ABOUT THAT PICTURE GALLERY
[Sorry, I was so pressed for time that I completely screwed this up this morning. The texts and the audio files were all ready to go, and I didn't get around to inserting them!]

This is officially, or at least this post began life as, a continuation of last week's idea of a tribute to the great G-and-S bass Donald Adams. Well, things happen. Much of the text was written on paper napkins in the shadow of the Harkness Tower at Yale, with a carillon ringing that included "Send in the clowns." (I was hoping for "Send in the clowns," but that wasn't bad.) We actually will get to Adams. But first . . . .

Ghost of Sunday Classics: Rataplan!

How many "Rataplan"s can you count in these 33 seconds?

rataplan  n.  A tattoo, as of a drum, the hoofs of a galloping horse, or machine-gun fire. [French, of imitative origin.]

-- The American Heritage Dictionary

by Ken

So this is what I suddenly found going through my head this week. And once it was lodged in there, it was mighty hard to get out. Then it occurred to me that we've never listened to this wonderfully goofy moment from the little one-act farce Cox and Box, with a libretto by F. C. Burnand, here in Sunday Classics. (Regular readers will know that my admiration for Sullivan as musical dramatist in his partnership with W. S. Gilbert is something like reverence. However, Cox and Box is the only music he wrote without Gilbert which I return to with real pleasure.) I figured that while the lights are still on here at Sunday Classics, however dimly, we ought to rectify this omission.

In a moment we'll hear a little more music to place the above in context. Then I thought, since the delicious Bouncer of these excerpts is the beloved (by me, anyway) Donald Adams, we should do some sort of Donald Adams retrospective, but that project quickly got out of hand, so maybe we'll do it some other time. For the record, though, as I recall we've already heard him in his most famous role, the Mikado (and he's still the best I've ever heard, without even a close second), and also as Colonel Calverley in Patience, as Sir Marmaduke Pointdextre in The Sorcerer, and even in a snippet from a role that as far as I know he never sang, the Sergeant of Police in The Pirates of Penzance. (The Pirate King was another of his most famous roles, and we have heard him in a snippet from that, the incandescent Paradox Trio.)

I love the idea of a Donald Adams retrospective, but for now, in order to make this a proper post, even a proper "ghost" post, after we've dealt with the rataplanning Sergeant Bouncer, we'll hear quite a different "Rataplan."


OF COURSE WE WANT TO START FROM THE BEGINNING

This is an old Sunday Classics habit, and in this case it's pays quick dividends, as I think you'll hear pretty quickly. You'll also note very different approaches to our material from our first two conductors, our old G-and-S friends Isidore Godfrey and Sir Malcolm Sargent. For the heck of it, I've thrown in the perfectly solid Overture from the generally lackluster later D'Oyly Carte recording of Cox and Box, also of basically the "Savoy edition," which chops the show down to a half-hour -- a loss that's almost pure gain.

F. C. BURNAND and ARTHUR 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


NOW LET'S MEET SERGEANT BOUNCER