Feature
Maria Callas Special Issue
Welcome to this special Maria Callas issue in honor of the centenary of the legendary soprano’s birth. There are many individuals to thank, without whose contributions and assistance this issue would not have been possible. First, our readers, several of whom took the time to write articles and share their knowledge and enthusiasm of Callas.…
Rachmaninoff: A Survey of His Biographies
For this second installment marking the 150th anniversary of Rachmaninoff’s birth, we will briefly survey the various biographies available to the collector and music lover. Though a number of these are out-of-print, they can be had on the second-hand market fairly easily, if not always in an original first edition. “Desert Island Rachmaninoff”, which was…
Tor Mann: Sweden’s First Important Symphonic Conductor
Tor MannBorn, Stockholm, 25 February 1894 Died, Stockholm, 29 March 1974 Orchestral music had a marginal existence in 19th-century Sweden. Its only permanent orchestra, with roots centuries earlier, was Kungliga Hovkapellet, the “Royal Court Orchestra”, attached to the Royal Opera in Stockholm. Its 50 or 60 musicians gave occasional orchestral concerts, but the orchestra was…
Robert van de Velde – An Inspired Artist & Humorist
Robert van de Veldeborn in Bloomington, Illinois on 4 May 1909 died in Princeton, New Jersey on 7 October 1989 Robert Jacob Velde was born on 4 May 1909 in Bloomington, Illinois, the second of three sons, between older brother Donald and younger brother James. Their Leslie father owned the Midwest’s very first Pierce-Arrow car…
Otto Klemperer – An Indelible Impression
A personal memoir from Jon Tolansky and musicians he has interviewed Franz Kafka declared that “first impressions are always unreliable”. Might he have modified his claim had he encountered Otto Klemperer? Although Kafka may have been correct in a deeper sense, for many people including myself the first impression of the great Dr. Klemperer was…
Sir Edward Elgar in Stereo?
An astonishing historical release, the 4CD set from SOMM Recordings shown at right includes stereo reconstructions and newly unearthed recordings by Elgar of his Cello Concerto and Symphony No. 1. This involved an extraordinary amount of technical reconstruction, and no small bit of detective work. Lani Spahr, the man who made it possible, recounts this…
Clark Hulings – An American Realist Master
Long before his death in New Mexico on 2 February 2011 at age 88, Clark Hulings – without ever seeking fame or the limelight – had long been acclaimed as one of America’s finest artists. Often described as a realist painter, his canvases have a timeless quality like an indelible memory, treasured and fixed in…
H. Ward Marston
For over 40 years H. Ward Marston has been restoring great recordings of the past to the catalog, setting new standards in audio engineering and restoration. In this section Ward shares his thoughts on 10 selected recordings from the hundreds he has transferred. 40 years of audio restoration: A retrospective
The Italian Radio broadcasts to mark the 50th anniversary of Giuseppe Verdi’s death in 1951
The year 1951 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the death of the great Italian opera composer Giuseppe Verdi, in 1901. To commemorate the enormous contribution that Verdi made to Italian cultural life, the Italian radio service, Radio Italiana or Rai for short, took the courageous decision to broadcast virtually all of Verdi’s operas during the…
The 1937 Ysaÿe Competition
There are many interesting aspects to the 1937 International Ysaÿe Competition, really the first of its kind for violinists; its influence has been far-reaching and it remains the forbear of all other such contests. There were 82 contestants representing 21 nations (one entrant was classified as “stateless”). The details provided below are, I believe, more…