Enrique Jordá (conductor)
Spanish Music
Barbara Howitt (mezzo-soprano)
Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire
London Symphony Orchestra
rec. February 1950, Paris, France; November 1959, Walthamstow Assembly Hall, London, UK
Pristine Audio PASC757 [71]
As conductor of the San Francisco Symphony, Enrique Jordá was known for colourful, committed performances that could be undisciplined. Unfortunately, when theSan Francisco Chronicle‘s Alfred Frankenstein, a fervent booster, suggested George Szell give Jordá guest-conducting engagements in Cleveland, Szell made a public scene over the business, and Jordá ended up leaving San Francisco. (Harold Schonberg touched on this in passing in The Great Conductors; Donald Rosenberg treated it in more detail, oddly, in The Cleveland Orchestra Story.)
The Three-Cornered Hat, the main event here, is lively and stylish, and overtly pictorial: note the clarinet’s cuckoo-clock figures (track 12), which I’d never noticed as such before. There’s plenty of character all around: “Afternoon” (track 2) is at once sultry and agitated, and the tympani heralding “The Procession” (track 3) are a bit foreboding. Conversely, “The Miller’s Wife” (track 6) is delicate and tender. Part Two – the part everyone knows from the concert suite – unrolls easily; the “Final Dance” has a nice brightness and lilt.
The playing is mostly good. The impulsive maestro causes, or permits, a few bits of scrambled ensemble, and, at the start of Part Two, the woodwinds sound slightly mistuned: did Jordá actually want the organ-like effect? Barbara Howitt, in her brief appearances, sounds, frankly, shrill. More to the point, the stereo sound, while basic and clean, is bland, with wind detail clear, but not front and center. It doesn’t sound like Decca to me – and that’s because it isn’t: as I discovered on a web search, this one originally appeared on Everest.
The short pieces are all Decca productions dating back to 1951, but they sound more vivid than the Falla ballet, and quite “present”. I still don’t entirely understand what goes into Pristine’s “Ambient Stereo” mastering, but it seems to work – only a little midrange discoloration in tutti gives away the recordings’ age. (It certainly isn’t the careless “reprocessing” some of us remember from ’60s budget LPs.)
From the splashy opening of Albéniz’s El Puerto (from Ibéria), which goes through a natural ebb and flow, we know we’re in for strongly profiled readings. The same composer’s crisp, lilting Triana surges nicely into the bigger, contrasting sections. The ambivalent Granados pieces, too, are particularly well done; the Rondalla aragonesa builds to an enthusiastic final windup. The dance from La Vida Breve – yes, returning o Falla – didn’t register strongly, except for being swift. The erratic Paris Conservatoire Orchestra is mostly on its best behavior, though the clarinets in the Turina are noticeably out of tune.
The ballet, save for fulfilling my relentlessly promoted “documentary imperative,” isn’t the best choice: I prefer Ansermet (Decca) – as I frequently do – but other Spanish conductors (e.g., Frühbeck) in more recent sonics will serve equally well. The small pieces, conversely, are hard to collect without duplications, and you might find this cross-section suits your needs. Otherwise, thanks to Pristine – and to Andrew Rose’s usual fine remastering – for resurrecting this.
Stephen Francis Vasta
stevedisque.wordpress.com/blog
Contents
Manuel de Falla (1876-1945)
El sombrero de tres picos (1917)
London Symphony, rec. 1959, Walthamstow
Isaac Albéniz (1860-1909)
Ibéria (orch. Arbos): El Puerto; Triana (1905-9)
Joaquín Turina (1882-1949)
La Procesión del Rocio, Op. 9 (1912)
Enrique Granados (1867-1916)
Danzas españolas (orch. de Grignon): Andala; Oriental; Rondelle aragonesa (1890)
Manuel de Falla
La vida breve: Danza española No. 1 (1905/13)
