“With a Lot of Help from Friends”
Post-Christmas desk clearing always reminds me not only of how cluttered my working space is, but also how much I owe to the generosity of friends and correspondents as they “keep me in the loop” about matters of mutual interest. So here follows a miscellany of unrelated, but (hopefully) fascinating items, brought to my attention because of a friend’s initiative.
Oscar Peterson
The death on December 23 of jazz great Oscar Peterson brought to a close the far-ranging career of this major keyboard artist. Richard Severo, writing in The New York Times for December 25, 2007, commented “Mr. Peterson was one of the greatest virtuosos in jazz, with a piano technique that was always meticulous and ornate and sometimes overwhelming. . . . One of the most prolific major stars in jazz history, he amassed an enormous discography. From the 1950s until his death, he released sometimes four or five albums a year. . . . Norman Granz, his influential manager and producer, helped Mr. Peterson realize [his] success, setting loose a flow of records on his own Verve and Pablo labels.”
One of the more unusual of these Pablo records was made in Los Angeles on January 26, 1976: with guitarist Joe Pass, Peterson played music from George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess in instrumental arrangements for acoustic guitar and CLAVICHORD. The digital re-release of this rare duo [Original Jazz Classics OJCCD-829-2] was brought to my attention by friend Linda Raney, the director of music at First Presbyterian Church, Santa Fe, NM, who had received it as a gift from a retired Episcopal priest.
Not the least of the joys of this disc comes from reading the original liner notes by Benny Green, who relates “The genesis of this album is wildly improbable, even by jazz standards. In the late summer of 1975 Oscar Peterson talked on BBC-TV with a succession of guests whose only common denominator was their commitment, either as amateurs or professionals, writers or performers, to problems of keyboard technique. One of these guests was Edward Heath, one-time Prime Minister of Great Britain, . . . [who] turned up with an instrument called the clavichord, . . . an instrument that presents intriguing enigmas, the most challenging of all being its dulcet tonal quality which defies the resources of sound recording engineers; there are times when music played on this instrument seems less like an act of premeditated artistic execution than a musical enchantment of silence.”
Peterson was so captivated by the clavichord’s musical capabilities that he determined to acquire one, with a view to making jazz on it. The Gershwin album was the result of this aural infatuation. Peterson’s inspired arrangements of Gershwin’s immortal music survive as a touching, gentle memento from this great keyboard master of jazz.
19th-Century Harpsichord Citings
From John Carroll Collins, Dallas bibliophile and reliable purveyor of esoteric musical knowledge, come these references to harpsichord connections for two outstanding Romantic-era composers: Georges Bizet and Frédéric Chopin.
“Once when we were discussing the use of the harpsichord in Paris toward the middle of the 19th-century, you asked about my sources, which at the time I could not remember. I have tried to check back on them, and following is what I was able to recover.
I found the reference to Bizet’s early keyboard instruction on the harpsichord in Bizet and His World by Mina Curtis (New York, 1958). Curtis apparently was not a musician herself, but taught in the English department at Smith College, where she counted among her devoted students the young Anne Morrow, later the wife of Charles Lindbergh. Curtis had a wide knowledge of the historical and biographical aspects of her subject, and during the preparation of her beautifully written and thoroughly researched study she amassed an impressive collection of autograph letters by Bizet and other members of his circle. On pages 13 and 14 she tells of Bizet’s early keyboard training.
One of his first teachers was his uncle, François Dalsarte (born 1811), who taught voice at the Conservatoire. This was in 1846 and 1847, when Bizet was eight and nine years old and thus too young for admittance there. At their home he shared lessons with Dalsarte’s children, Bizet’s cousins. For their lessons they used Dalsarte’s favorite instrument, a harpsichord that had belonged to Hortense de Beauharnais (1783–1837), wife of King Louis Napoleon of Holland and mother of Napoleon III [of France]. Curtis is sometimes vague about her sources, but I gather she found her information on Dalsarte in a book by his student Angélique Arnaud (François Dalsarte, Paris, 1882).
Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, on page 184 of his Chopin: Pianist and Teacher (translated from the French, Cambridge University Press, 1986), mentions a harpsichord performance at a private concert in Paris on 25 December 1852. A group of Bach fugues was played on an early 18th-century harpsichord by one of Chopin’s students, the Norwegian Thomas Dyke Acland Tellefsen (1823–1874), this being just over three years after Chopin’s death. Eigeldinger gives as his source the Revue et gazette musicale de Paris, 1852–1853, page 447.”
Historic Harpsichordists in Hungary, Italy, and the Czech Republic
Robert Tifft (Dallas), long fascinated by the recordings of Hungarian revival harpsichordist János Sebestyén, provides comprehensive information about this highly-regarded artist in a remarkable website: <http://www.jsebestyen.org>. Sites devoted to other lesser-known figures of European revival history may be accessed from the same address: Italian Luciano Sgrizzi (1910–1994); Landowska disciple Ruggero Gerlin (1899–1983); the “dean of Italian harpsichordists” Egida Giordani Sartori (1910–1999)—also interesting as the close friend and biographer of legendary soprano Toti Dal Monte; younger Hungarian artist Agnes Varallyay; and, added most recently, an accurate, complete discography and biography of leading Czech harpsichordist Zuzana Ruzickova.
Robert also sent a notice of the passing, on June 5, 2007, at age 64, of Hungarian harpsichordist Zsuzsa Pertis, a student of Isolde Ahlgrimm.
Fernando Valenti’s Scarlatti
Harpsichord aficionado and record collector David Kelzenberg ([email protected]) has completed his exhaustive project of locating all the Scarlatti recordings committed to long-playing discs by Fernando Valenti for Westminster Records beginning in 1951. Although the project was not ever to be comprehensive, Kelzenberg recently wrote, “To this day musicians wonder if Valenti actually managed to record all of the 545 sonatas in the Longo Edition [plus the Menuet in F]. After years of collecting scrounging, horse trading, and begging, I believe I have assembled all of [Valenti’s] Domenico Scarlatti that was ever commercially released by [the company]: 359 sonatas in all.”
David recently sent me eleven copied compact discs of these exciting, intensely musical performances. It has been a tremendous “labor of love” on Dave’s part to assemble and digitize such an extensive collection, and his gracious gift of these discs has brought much delight to this listener. Kelzenberg requests that any collector who knows of additional releases in the series contact him at the address printed above.
Trombones in Dido and Aeneas? Remembering Albert Fuller
The September 22, 2007 death of Albert Fuller brought back warm memories of several visits the fine American harpsichordist and educator made to Dallas. Perhaps the most memorable, amusing, and culinarily satisfying one occurred during the rehearsal period for the Dallas Opera’s production of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas in 1972. Although I had recently played harpsichord continuo for a Dido performance in Norfolk, the Opera in those days disdained local artists if they could import someone at great expense from Milan or New York. The management did, however, deign to rent my Dowd harpsichord since neither Opera nor Symphony owned such an “off-beat” instrument.
Albert had called me from New York to ask “why [the hell] they would bother to fly him such a distance when I was already there?” but I assured him that the discrimination was general, not personal, and that he should just enjoy the production (which turned out to be costumed in futuristic, space-age costumes), and charge them a high fee.
One evening Albert arrived at the Fair Park opera theatre to tune the harpsichord, but became alarmed when two trombonists entered the pit and began warming up. Perhaps, he thought, the scoring has been altered to match the costumes? But when a tuba player joined in he decided it was time to ask the musicians what was going on.
The brass players informed him that it was not Dido that was to be rehearsed that evening, but its companion work, Leoncavallo’s I Pagliacci (nearly as strange a coupling as the costumes and staging). Albert was quite incensed that the management had changed the rehearsal schedule without informing him, thus resulting in his flying (first class) from New York when he would not be needed.
I received a telephone call relating this sequence of events, concluding with “Well, I’m here, so before I fly back home let’s have dinner at the best restaurant in Dallas—and charge it to the Opera!”
I had dined only once previously at The Old Warsaw, then considered one of the finest culinary experiences available in the city, so that’s where we had our leisurely and memorable meal. I don’t know if this was a prime example of “turning annoyance into pleasure” or simply the best way to ignore a scheduling snafu, but it was certainly a civilized way to deal with the matter, and remembering it reminds of a happy conversation with a distinguished fellow musician. Ave Albert, et vale.■
Comments or news items for these pages are always welcome. Please address them to Dr. Larry Palmer, Division of Music, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275; <[email protected]>.
