'Sidebars' begin for last week's post, 'One Sunday afternoon in August 1943 in Carnegie Hall . . . ': (1) Fun with Dmitri Kabalevsky

NOTE: As you'll see when we get to the gap, this is a knowingly "to be filled in" post, which gives us a chance to do, as it were, some on-our-own listening together

Kabalevsky (1904-1987) at work

-- from the Carnegie Hall program for Sunday, August 15, 1943

KABALEVSKY: Colas Breugnon, Opp. 24/90:
Overture


Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Reiner, cond. Columbia, recorded in the Syria Mosque, Pittsburgh, Mar. 26, 1945

Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Reiner, cond. RCA, recorded in Orchestra Hall, Mar. 14, 1959

by Ken

If you were here last week for the post in question, "One Sunday afternoon in August 1943 in Carnegie Hall . . ." [Nov. 28], you know that the date was August 15, the event was a New York Philharmonic "Summer Broadcast Concert," and that Fritz Reiner conducted a program consisting of the Overture to Dmitri Kabalevsky's opera Colas Breugnon, the Mendelssohn E minor Violin Concerto with Nathan Milstein as soloist, and the Shostakovich Sixth Symphony. And you know that we re-created the event after a fashion, though with the actual performance of the Shostakovich symphony that went out over the airwaves that day.

For the Kabalevsky overture we heard the recording we've just reherard above, which Reiner made a year and a half later, once Columbia Records made its peace with the striking musicians' union, with "his" orchestra at that time, the Pittsburgh Symphony. And for the Mendelssohn concerto we heard a 1945 performance when Milstein returned to Carnegie Hall to play and record the piece with Bruno Walter conducting the Philharmonic.

One other thing you may know from last week's post and the "pre-post" that preceded it, "Can we do a better job assembling the three movements of this symphony than, you know, the guy who composed them?" [Nov. 22], my main interest was the Shostakovich Sixth, of which we've also heard, in addition to the 1943 New York performance, a recording of the symphony that made in that flurry of activity when Reiner and the Pittsburgh Symphony were finally able to resume recording. In fact, the Colas Breugnon Overture was recorded as a filler for Side 8 of the four-78 set containing the Shostakovich Sixth.


IF YOU'VE BEEN HERE BEFORE, IT WON'T SHOCK YOU THAT
LAST WEEK'S POST PULLED MY MIND IN OTHER DIRECTIONS

One Sunday afternoon inAugust 1943 in Carnegie Hall . . .Part 1: The concert

The first page of the concert program from August 15, 1943

[New York Philharmonic Digital Archives]

by Ken

I claimed in the Sunday-into-Monday pre-post "Can we do a better job assembling the three movements of this symphony than, you know, the guy who composed them?" that we would be undertaking "a sort of re-creation" of the August 1943 broadcast concert whose concluding work we heard in its entirety in that pre-post, and I mean the actual performance -- sent out into the airwaves from the stage of Carnegie Hall that Sunday afternoon. Believe it or not, that's just what we're going to do: our concert re-creation, followed by an assortment of, let's say, sidebars.

We're going to hear that performance again, this time properly identified, when we get to that place in the concert, following intermission -- if the word "intermission" can reasonably be applied to an interval specified in the program (as we'll see) as "5 MINUTES." The program, by the way, is just one of a trove of treasures now accessible to all in the New York Philharmonic Digital Archives, where we can also digitally thumb through the score marked up by Leonard Bernstein [right] when he performed and recorded the work in October 1963, early in the second season of Philharmonic Hall, the orchestra's acoustically challenged new Lincoln Center home.


WHILE IT'S ONLY FOR THE CONCERT'S FEATURED WORK . . .