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Broadcasts of December 21, 1997 and January 4,
1998
Greetings!
Laughing substituted for Chris on December 21, 1997, and again on January 4, 1998. On those broadcasts, Laughing provided what he hopes will be a respite from the pervasive and unavoidable barrage of Christmas music and the attendant guilt-ridden "good cheer" and false bonhomie. (Laughing is a founding member of The Bah-Humbug Society.) He got through both broadcasts without any mention of Chanukah, Christmas, or new year's, to his astonishment and to the relief of many.
Laughing played portions of ten compact discs (the Méhul Symphonies and Overtures are a 2 CD set!) that he has recently acquired, all but three of them second hand, either at Academy Records on West 18th Street in Manhattan, or at The Princeton Record Exchange on Tulane Street in Princeton, N.J.
Right after "Through the Opera Glass" on Sunday December 21, Laughing play The Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde by Richard Wagner from a fabulous "pirate" release of concert performances of the great Italian Wagnerian, Victor de Sabata, a younger contemporary of Toscanini and mentor to Maria Callas, whose genius vastly under appreciated (Nuova Era 013.6337). The singing of Eileen Farrell on this CD is also stellar.
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Laughing's choice of this recording turned out, fortuitously, to be a source of great pleasure to his dear friend Laura Maioglio, the owner of the fabulous Barbetta Restaurant, who, he learned several days after the broadcast, had been present at the concert, of which she had treasured the memory for over 45 years!
Laughing was astonished by how fine the group of three string quartets by three famous late 19th century French grand opera composers recorded by the Daniel String Quartet turned out to be. He played the Gounod Quartet in A Minor, in a fine performance by the Daniel String Quartet (EMS Discover International DICD 920159):
Thanks to economically priced second-hand CDs and the great Stewart Warkow's gift of Michel Swierczewski's traversal of the Symphonies, Laughing has discovered the music of the vastly undervalued French contemporary of Mozart and Beethoven, Nicholas Étienne Méhul. On the December 21 broadcast, Laughing played his remarkable Piano Sonata Op 1, No. 2, in C Minor, published in 1783, when Méhul was 20 (It can hold its own with the contemporaneous Sonatas of Haydn and Mozart.), in a superb performance by the first-rate French fortepianist Brigitte Haudebourg, at a replica of a 1794 Dulcken instrument (EMS Discover International DICD 920152):
Laughing also played the Overture to La Chasse du Jeune Henri (a favorite overture of Meyerbeer's, by the way), one of the "filer" compositions in Swierczewski's two disc set with the Gulbenkian Orchestra of Lisbon (Nimbus NI 5184/5):
Laughing finished out the broadcast with an excerpt from a recent disc of Bach-Busoni compositions, recorded by the fine American pianist, David Buechner for the Connoisseur Society label (CD4212); this was the only disc used on the two programs that was not either second-hand or a gift.
The disc captured Laughing's attention because he had been waiting nearly 30 years to hear a performance of Ferruccio Busoni's 1914 performing edition of Bach's Goldberg Variations. There was not enough time on the December 21st broadcast to play the 'Goldbergs", so Laughing settled for the Prelude, Fuga e Fuga figurata, an astonishing tour de force that Busoni built on the D Major Prelude and Fugue from Part One of The Well-Tempered Clavier. The Prelude and Fugue are just that, but the Fuga figurata is the Prelude and Fugue played together, essentially simultaneously, a feat made possible by the thematic similarities between the two pieces. Wonderful!
Laughing returned to 'BAI on Sunday, January 4, sounding like Tallulah Bankhead. He had recently returned to warmer climes from a short vacation in Key West, complete with a nasty head cold, undoubtedly contracted aboard one of the airborne germ factories that he was compelled to use for transportation.
Laughing opened with more Méhul, beginning with a repeat of the Overture to La Chasse du Jeune Henri (a favorite overture of Meyerbeer's), because he had learned that the members of www.meyerbeer.com had not been notified of the December 21 broadcast in time to hear this unfortunately all too rarely broadcast composition.
Laughing followed with Méhul's Piano Sonata in D Major, Op. 2, No. 1, once again played by the redoubtable Brigitte Haudebourg.
Next Laughing played another of the previously unfamiliar gems found serendipitously and fortuitously on one of his second-hand CD buying sorties: the Te Deum Laudamus by the Brazilian composer Luís Alvares Pinto, which was composed in 1760 (the year after Handel died), performed by the Ensemble Turicum under the direction of Luiz Alves da Silva (Claves CD 50-9521):
Next came David Buechner's splendid account of Busoni's eccentric but powerful "performing version" of the Goldberg Variations in which 10 variations are omitted and the rest freely arranged to make them more pianistic, with octave displacements that show you where Edwin Fischer learned the stratagem. The return of the "Aria" is especially interesting, stripped as the theme is of all embellishment; now we know where Wilhelm Kempff got the idea!.
Laughing also played the Sonata a Cimbalo solo by Sybrandt van Noordt, the Younger from Bob van Asperen's marvelous anthology of Netherlandish harpsichord music (Sony Vivarte SK 46349):
Although he thinks that there are too many singers in the chorus and although he doubts that these wonderful works ever sounded this way under the composer's direction, Laughing very much enjoys Jos van Immerseel's recent CD of Buxtehude Cantatas (Channel Classic CCS 7895-1), and he finished the show with one of them, Der Herr ist mit mir, BuxWV 15:
Confusion to our enemies!
Laughing
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