Jesús María Sanromá (piano)
The Complete Boston ‘Pops’ Recordings
Boston Pops Orchestra/Arthur Fiedler
rec. 1936-41, Symphony Hall, Boston, 1939-41, unknown location (Campos)
APR 6045 [80 + 75]

The recordings of pianistJesús María Sanromá and conductor Arthur Fiedler, made between 1936 and 1940 with the Boston ‘Pops’ Orchestra, make for a compact and varied twofer. In the what-goes-around-comes-around stakes of reissues I reviewed the Paderewski concerto twenty years ago when it appeared on Symposium but APR’s transfer is effortlessly superior. Symposium’s transfer of the Paderewski was itself better than Pearl’s earlier effort.

The first of their collaborations was in Edward MacDowell’s Concerto in A minor. You’d be hard pressed to advance a case for MacDowell’s concertos over his piano miniatures and even if you tried you wouldn’t select the A minor as a test case. It’s an attractive but largely vacuous piece notable for a snappy, rollicking central fast movement and a dramatic if bombastic, empty finale. What can’t be denied, however, is the quality of the interpretation. Sanromá – whose playing is marked by vivid brilliance – and Fiedler make the best possible case for it and Victor’s recorded sound is striking and very present.

Paderewski’s Concerto is an altogether more engaging one than MacDowell’s. It marries extrovert late-Romanticism with lyrical introspection, its thematic profile is much higher, its romantic reverie is much more convincing, whilst its finale is triumphant and tinged with heroism. This 1939 recording is again excellent and Sanromá proves an irresistible and irrepressible exponent.  The only non-Fiedler item was the Puerto Rican Dances of Juan Morel Campos, an apt choice for the Puerto Rican Sanromá. He selected eight of these nineteenth-century dances and recorded them in two sessions almost two years apart, in 1939 and 1941. These vivacious and entertaining pieces offer healthy quotients of rhythmic zest, wit, and flighty exercises in pathos and charm. Needless to say, such is Sanromá’s idiomatic identification that he makes the listener believe they were written for him.

Mendelssohn’s Concerto No.1 in G minor was recorded in June 1938. If you’re after virtuoso panache and clarity in this work, you’ll enjoy this performance but there is certainly lyric restraint in the Andante. The most powerful of all these recordings is that of Liszt’s Totentanz, a scintillating example of his immaculately prepared, fiery bravura technique and communicative qualities. It’s 14-minutes of incendiary pianism.

Sanromá recorded Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue on 1 July 1935 and the Concerto in F in March 1940. They’re surprisingly good examples of the pianist’s stylish way with this repertoire though in all honesty Oscar Levant’s contemporaneous readings, with Ormandy in the Rhapsody and Kostelanetz in the Concerto, evince a significantly more outsize and idiomatic awareness of the works’ nooks and crannies. In years to come another outsize personality came to colonize much of this repertoire, with Fiedler; Earl Wild, who recorded the Rhapsody and Concerto in F with Fiedler and the Boston ‘Pops’, and the Paderewski with Fiedler and LSO.

There are a very high number of first takes in this selection of recordings, a testament to the high level of digital accuracy of the pianist and the expert preparation of the orchestra. There are very few slips.  The transfers and mastering have been carried out by Andrew Hallifax – all of CD 1 and Rhapsody in CD 2 – and Mark Obert-Thorn (CD 2 other than Rhapsody). They’ve both done splendid jobs, retaining necessary surface noise and allowing the music to speak and to sing. A word, too, about booklet writer Jonathan Summers, whose eight-page notes are outstanding. 

These two discs are at the ‘as for one’ price bracket so this is something of a must-have release.

Jonathan Woolf

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Contents
Edward MacDowell (1860-1908)
Piano Concerto no.2 in D minor, Op.23 (1885)
Ignacy Jan Paderewski (1860-1941)
Piano Concerto in A minor, Op.17 (1888)
Juan Morel Campos (1857-1896)
Puerto Rican Dances
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
Piano Concerto No.1 in G minor, Op.25 (1831)
Franz Liszt (1811-1886)
Totentanz, S126 (1865)
George Gershwin (1898-1937)
Rhapsody in Blue (1924)
Concerto in F (1925)