The “First
Generation” referred to in the disc’s title runs from Belle
Cole who was born in 1845 to Minnie Saltzmann-Stevens, born
thirty years later. Each track traces singers chronologically,
beginning logically with Cole, and this only fails when such
as Saltzmann-Stevens recorded with partners and are tracked
with them. So you will find Saltzmann-Stevens under Clarence
Whitehill’s name. Similarly though Emilio de Gogorza (b.1872)
is listed in the running order, between Whitehill (b.1871)
and Esther Palliser (b.1872), one’s referred back to track
nine, where he sings Messager with his wife Emma Eames.
The
theory behind the music is to capture the earliest born American
singers and invariably the recordings are early too. The
very earliest dates from 1901 and the latest from 1913. Within
this space of a dozen years or so we run the gamut from the
legendary – Eames, Walker, Homer, Nordica, Bispham - to the
forgotten; Zelie de Lussan, Robert Blass, Rosa Linde Wright.
At the time all had claims of one kind or another on the
attention of record companies on both sides of the Atlantic
and one of the very real pleasures of a collection such as
this – apart from whetting one’s appetite for more of the
same by particular singers – is to encounter the less well
remembered and the unjustly overlooked.
The
music is similarly varied as well, ranging across parlour,
oratorio, concert hall and operatic stages. A few thoughts
on the singers and one or two strange coincidences. Of the
five singers here who ended up in England two of them – Susan
Strong and Suzanne Adams – forsook singing to run high-class
laundries. Musical and social histories gently interweave
in that image. Belle Cole was another of the singers to spend
much of her life in England becoming an oratorio stalwart.
Her 1902 Cowen recording was made in London and it discloses
her powerful if somewhat lugubrious rather English voice.
Bispham didn’t have much of a voice but what an artist he
was. Few can ever have rivalled his sense of narrative histrionics
in Danny Deever – an ultimate in communicative projection.
Nordica
is metrically wayward in Strauss but it’s good to hear non-operatic
repertoire from her. Emma Juch had been retired a decade
when she was invited to the New York studios in 1904 to record
Handel, which she does with tremendous style. Rosa Linde
Wright’s powerful chest register is barely contained by her
1906 recording of Meyerbeer. Arthur van Eweyk has an otherwise
undistinguished voice per se, but his eloquence in Beethoven
is undeniable. Stalwart Evan Williams is here – his complete
recordings are on Cheyne – singing Handel with power. A year
younger than Williams was Dennis O’Sullivan who sings a song
we’d now associate with John McCormack. But O’Sullivan sounds
rather older than thirty-three and is a lachrymose embarrassment.
Sarah
Jane Walker is rather better known as Sarah Jane Charles-Cahier.
She premiered Das Lied von der Erde with Bruno Walter
in Munich in 1911. The list of her pupils was august – Anday,
Marian Anderson, Ljunberg, Melchior - and she lived to the
grand age of one hundred and one. A most important presence
here. I suspect the Tannhäuser extract with Léon Rains
is derived from an amazingly complete recording of Act II
made in 1913 – though other sources have it as 1909. Whether
it is or not Rains proves a singer of nobility if not intrinsic
beauty. And with so many of his confreres he had a notable
European career.
The
great Louise Homer is, as ever, powerful and impressive and,
as nearly always, under-characterized. Whitehill proves a
forceful and credible Wagnerian. Esther Palliser dispenses
pure charm. And Suzanne Adams, soon to run that laundry,
sings a song by her husband the English cellist Leo Stern – the
man who premiered the Dvořák Cello Concerto.
Given
the age and condition of the originals Symposium have handled
them with discretion and care. Their by now famous Authentic
Transfer Process means a minimum of filtering, with concomitant
surface noise, but no frequency loss. Also - importantly – in
this instance no blasting or extraneous noises. Excellent
and succinct biographical notes complete an evocative package.
Jonathan
Woolf
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