If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.
Just found the CFP pressing so will fire up the turntable later and give it a go. I hope Cluytens does the Ride to the Abyss with those sinister almost pitchless brass blasts (instrument?) that make it so frighteningly effective. Anyone know if Berlioz scored the same instruments for the similar effect in the March to the Scaffold, it seems to be trombone blasts these days but they're not quite as effective.
Just found the CFP pressing so will fire up the turntable later and give it a go. I hope Cluytens does the Ride to the Abyss with those sinister almost pitchless brass blasts (instrument?) that make it so frighteningly effective. Anyone know if Berlioz scored the same instruments for the similar effect in the March to the Scaffold, it seems to be trombone blasts these days but they're not quite as effective.
FF was correct in 2012 and nothing has changed - I see these highlights did not even turn up in the 65CD box Warner issued a couple of years back. In Gramophone in 1961 Lionel Salter was also very complimentary and asked the same question - in light of the forces at Cluytens's disposal where was the rest of the piece?
I'd always thought that the Cluytens Damnation was part of the series of 'one LP's worth' of French opera that were churned out by Pathé in the late 50s and 60s - ten of which were reissued on EMI Music France CDs as 'Les années Pathé' in 1998. In his detailed book on Cluytens Erik Baeck does not hint at any more of the score - he actually lists these specific numbers recorded at the Salle Wagram on 5-8 October 1959. Interestingly Cluytens did conduct the work at the Opéra on 23 November 1958, but with Monmart, Finel and Savignol, and with the Berlin Philharmonic in December 1960 with Wogtowicz, Dermota and Neidlinger. But none of that answers your question.
As for Monteux live (BBC Legends), it's great of course full of colour and inner life, and he probably led the violas in it in the Colonne Orchestra in the 1890s; Turp and Crespin have the full measure of it but the main drawback is Michel Roux, very stylish but a size or two too small, almost as if Coquenard had somehow strayed into Wittenberg.
Comment