Walter Damrosch

This week Mark Obert-Thorn
brings us a collection of all but one of Walter Damrosch's electrical recordings (we omit his 1928 Brahms Symphony No. 2).

Walter Damrosch followed in his father's musical footsteps to become one of the keystones of American musical life for many decades. In addition to the notes Mark wrote for our website and CD booklet, he noted in an e-mail to me:

"I had to leave out [due to space restrictions] mentions of Damrosch having invited Tchaikovsky to conduct at the opening of Carnegie Hall in 1891; his commissioning Sibelius to write Tapiola and then conducting the world premiere with the NYSO in 1926; his conducting the premieres of Gershwin's Concerto in F (with the composer at the piano) in 1925 and An American in Paris in 1928; his appearance in the 1946 film, Carnegie Hall; as well as the fact that among those schoolchildren who were introduced to Classical music through his radio lectures was my mother, who passed her interest on to me -- a ripple effect which comes full-circle in my presenting a Damrosch retrospective!"

The Damrosch recordings feature three main suites from Gluck, Saint-Sa�ns and Ravel, as well as a number of shorter works. And it finishes with a fascinating recording of Damrosch at the piano, giving an example of his communicative side as he brings Beethoven's Eroica to life in an illustrated talk.



At around this time back in 2005 I was invited to London to attend the annual Gramophone Awards ceremony at the Dorchester Hotel on Park Lane. It was a grand affair, and coming just a few months after I'd launched Pristine Classical, I felt just a little out of my depth!

Back then there were three awards categories which seem to have disappeared from this year's list. Early Music has vanished; although there are two Baroque categories, it seems anything prior to this era (which I would take to be pre-17th Century) will now have to compete in the main categories. Perhaps they felt it a little too specialist?

The other two categories are perhaps of greater interest here. I never quite took the time to figure out the differences between Historic Archive and Historic Reissue as award categories, but if I had to hazard a guess I'd reckon the first would go to something old being issued for the first time, the second, clearly, something (anything?) being reissued.

The historic awards themselves got to be a little repetitive, seemingly awarded to the same record companies every year. A number of major players in the historic recordings sector seemed to be repeatedly overlooked, appearing neither in the awards nor the short-lists. Yet a select few appeared copiously in both. Turns out these were the very few historic labels (or divisions of the majors) with the financial clout to license otherwise out-of-copyright material for direct sales in the US market (where very lengthy copyright laws have proved so troublesome in the historic recordings sector). If an award-winning CD couldn't be sold in the US on a promotional display rack alongside the magazine, the powers-that-be didn't want them getting any awards, whatever their merits.

That ruled us out. It ruled Naxos out. It ruled a lot of other small European labels out. It saw a lot of awards going to EMI and Testament, to the point at which it began to look just a tad embarrassing to anyone who was interested. Maybe that's why Gramophone, which retains an excellent monthly reissue column from Rob Cowan, no longer feels it worthwhile recognising excellence in the category at all? It's a real shame, at a time when technological advances are allowing all sorts of recordings to be heard in a new light, and the Internet and music downloads (of which Gramophone was such an early and enthusiastic champion) have rewritten the rules on how music can be distributed globally.

The Gramophone Awards retain their prestige and their ability to be widely reported, certainly in the mainstream British media. I do hope my guesswork as to their reasons for dropping the historic categories is unfounded. I'd rather see someone winning something - even if it's from a tiny field of possible entries - than have the entire sector cast aside. Gramophone magazine has been a constant since the days of acoustic recordings, and with its fabulous online archive is a superb resource when researching older recordings. It's a shame to see them abandon their historical perspective - one that was acknowledged for many years - when they presented their influential annual awards in 2013.



Next week we're issuing something which might have been a contender for the former Historic Archive category of Gramophone award. In 1960 BBC Television broadcast an opera written for the medium by Sir Arthur Bliss, then the Master of the Queen's Music and a much respected (though considered a little old-fashioned) English composer. (This was at a time when British TV viewers had a choice of just two channels - so viewing figures for a prime-time broadcast such at this must have been considerable by any modern-day standards!)

Tobias and the Angel was Bliss's second of two original operas, with a libretto by Christopher Hassel based on the Apocryphal Book of Tobias. It was, incredibly, transmitted live, with a cast of ten soloists, the London Symphony Orchestra playing under the baton of Norman Del Mar, and additional music and effects from the renowned BBC Radiophonic Workshop (later criminally disbanded as a result of internal BBC cost-cutting in the 1990s).

In those days before video recorders, surprisingly little survives from the BBC's TV archive - indeed, it was for many years common practise to wipe tapes for re-use, resulting in the loss of a huge amount of the UK's broadcast heritage.

Whether or not Tobias and the Angel survives in any video or film format I do not know. What I do know is that it was broadcast on 19th May, 1960, and it seems just about nobody has seen or heard it since. What has survived are dubs of the live TV sound, a copy of which was passed to me for remastering by Lewis Foreman, a man whose books on music have long graced my shelves, and who has written excellent notes for the coming release.

Next week therefore sees the first opportunity for anyone since that day in 1960 to hear and to become properly acquainted with the work. Taken out of its immediate contemporary musical world, and issued now at a time when English composers of Bliss's generation are being rehabilitated into the musical world, it'll be fascinating to see what people make of it.

And isn't it time the BBC started commissioning more operas for TV? In 1960 they only had the one channel to fill - but I'm sure they could find a space for it somewhere today!