This is the second
in Naxos’s Romberg series collating
the composer-conducted recordings of
1944-51. They caught him just in time
because he died aged sixty-four shortly
after committing these tracks to posterity.
The cast list is pretty much common
to both volumes but this second one
catches Romberg just after the early
flourishing of The Student Prince (1924)
and The Desert Song (1926) to the later
works in which he more completely assimilated
American models and idioms.
That said we do begin
with some lusty and spicy Americana
in the rousing Your Land And My Land
from My Maryland in which
Glory Glory Halleluiah features,
shall we say, prominently. Lillian Cornell
is probably the pick of the singers
in the selections from this 1928 work
with its book by Dorothy Donnelly –
she floats her tone delightfully in
Mother. In the same year that
Romberg wrote My Maryland he
collaborated with Oscar Hammerstein
II on The New Moon from which
we have five songs. One of them, Softly,
As In A Morning Sunrise has entered
the bloodstream of American popular
music, not least in its transformation
as a jazz standard. Eric Mattson sings
it plangently – but the process by which
it was transformed will be somewhat
obscure to both Romberg and jazz lovers
alike.
Viennese Nights
brings a whiff of the old Austro-Hungarian
Monarchy, into which Romberg had been
born and in which he had made so successful
a start as a student of Richard Heuberger.
The swirl of the Waltz animates You
Will Remember Vienna as does, rather
more improbably, what sounds like a
Hawaiian guitar. Shirlee Emmons has
a big voice with an operatic top, which
she deploys to fend off the sugar coating
of Romberg’s saucy melodies. By the
time we reach the 1941 Lordy
from Sunny River, once
more with lyrics by Hammerstein, we
encounter a more demotic and transatlantic
idiom. Muted trumpet opens it and the
musical has rather supplanted the more
old-fashioned operetta trappings. Up
In Central Park has the advantage
of a book by the witty Dorothy Fields
and Romberg gives us lush strings and
felicitous lilt.
Peter Dempsey fills
in the musical background nicely; the
copies used are clean and have been
well transferred. It’s good that this
important figure’s recordings have been
so authoritatively presented in this
winning disc.
Jonathan Woolf
see also review
by Patrick Gary
Sigmund
ROMBERG (1887-1951)
Romberg conducts
Romberg Vol.1 - The Blue Paradise
(1915) Auf Wiedersehen
- Maytime (1917) Will
You remember? - Blossom Time
(1921) Blossom Time Waltzes;
Tell me Daisy; Song of Love
- The Student Prince (1924)
Drinking Song; Deep in my
Heart, Dear; Ballet; Golden
Days; Serenade; Student
Prince Waltzes - The Desert
Song (1926) Riff Song;
One Alone; Romance; Girls!
Girls! Girls! (French March); Desert
Song Waltzes; One Flower grows
alone; Desert Song; Medley
(Romance, Desert Song Waltz) - Lawrence
Brooks (ten), Stuart Churchill (ten),
Lillian Cornell (sop), Shirlee Emmons
(mezzo sop), William Diehl (bar), Warren
Galjour (ten), Lois Hunt (sop), Eric
Mattson (ten), Genevieve Rowe (sop),
Richard Wright (bar) 
RCA Victor Chorus, Robert Shaw Chorale,
Orch. Conducted by Sigmund Romberg -
Rec. 1944-51, RCA Victor Studios, ADD
NAXOS Historical 8.110866 [74.35]
[RW]
These
score over the early Pearl transcriptions
by giving us the chance to hear the
orchestration with improved clarity.
The singing is strong throughout. …
see Full
Review
