The Francophile muse hovers benignly over this selection, the
third such from Pristine Audio to celebrate the hitherto shrouded
discographic career of the ‘Parsifal ban’-busting
Alfred Hertz (Vol.
1; Vol.
2). The combustible, ample girthed and heavily bearded Teuton
forged a successful career on the West Coast of America and
as this surprisingly effective series of discs has shown us,
we underestimate men like Hertz, like Landon Ronald, like Piero
Coppola, and others of their ilk at our peril, and to our loss.
So a brief bravo to the team responsible for resurrecting recordings
that might not have seemed to be especially viable commercially
- and who have, in addition, constructed intelligent, non-chronological
retrospectives.
The Fra Diavolo overture was recorded in January 1925
in Oakland. It’s a decent sounding late acoustic. The
percussion is audible, so too, necessarily, the brass reinforcements.
Reduced through the orchestra’s complement was, they still
put on a good show and the pert and insinuating music comes
across well, the characteristic quality of the SF’s winds
clearly heard, and so too the trumpet principal. One week later
they were back in the studio recording the overture to Massenet’s
Phèdre,a quite dramatic and nuanced reading
with the wind/pizzicato episode attended to as well as one could
wish under the acoustic process. Unusually for Hertz these two
sides were both first takes. Three years later these forces
recorded the overture again but this time electrically. Pristine
has juxtaposed the performances so one can slip from the acoustic,
to which one’s ears soon attune, to the electric where
they’re forced to re-evaluate everything they’ve
heard in the light of the immense technical advances wrought
by the microphone. What was black and white becomes, in comparative
terms, colour. The immediacy and trenchancy of the sound offers
a fine perspective for those unfamiliar with the changes in
the mid-1920s.
Lighter music follows. It’s not altogether surprising
that they needed four takes to deal with the tricky rhythms
of Delibes’s Dance of the Automatons and Waltz
from Coppélia. Players need to be good counters
for this. Equally winsome is the Sylvia pairing, frothy
stuff, but engaging. Well characterised, the Gounod Funeral
March of a Marionette has admirable frequency response,
a situation clearly helped by the recording location - the Columbia
Theatre in San Francisco. Picture postcard depictions of Spain
follow via Massenet’s charming ballet music to Le Cid.
This was recorded in February 1928 and issued in a three disc
Victor album. One can flit about these geographic sketches,
none too serious, and enjoy the vibrant drive of Castillane,
the lilt and insinuating charm of Andalouse, or the
swaying, festive blandishments of Aragonaise. Should
these tire you, there’s always pert little Aubade,
grandiloquent and sultry Catalane, the curvaceous allure
and feminine charms of Madrilène and the bold,
masculine Navarraise. In spite of myself I was rather
surprised by Hertz’s idiomatic handling of these brief
and colourful studies.
This is an excellently realised disc; well prepared and transferred,
and securely programmed. It’s also good fun, and musically
satisfying.
Jonathan Woolf
San Francisco Symphony Orchestra/Alfred Hertz 
