Alfred Hertz - Complete Recordings - Volume 3
Daniel-François AUBER (1782-1871)
Fra Diavolo - overture (1830) [7:45]
Jules MASSENET (1842-1912)
Le Cid - ballet music (1885) [16:54]
Phèdre - overture (acoustic recording) (1873) [9:17]
Phèdre - overture (electric recording) (1873) [9:09]
Léo DELIBES (1836-1891)
Coppélia - Dance of the Automatons and Waltz (1870) [4:08]
Sylvia - Intermezzo and Valse Lente [3:16] and Pizzicati [2:11]
Charles GOUNOD (1818-1893)
Funeral March of a Marionette (1872/73) [4:43]
San Francisco Symphony Orchestra/Alfred Hertz
rec. 1925-28, San Francisco
PRISTINE AUDIO PASC216 [57:27]
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
Excellently realised, good fun and musically satisfying.