One of the most active conductors in America in the 1940s and ’50s was Hungarian-born George Szell, whose early discography includes recordings with the Czech Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic Symphony, NBC Symphony and Boston Symphony orchestras, while some of his first post-war discs were with the orchestra that he would train to unprecedented heights of virtuosity, the Cleveland. An all-Smetana Szell CD includes a work that featured among some of those earliest Cleveland/Szell sessions, Szell’s own very free – but effective – orchestration of Smetana’s First String Quartet, From My Life, music that you could argue leapt beyond the scale of chamber music right from the off. Szell’s mono Cleveland Orchestra recording is famous but his 1941 world-premiere performance and recording with Toscanini’s NBC Symphony Orchestra, which was temporarily on loan to Szell, is scarcely less impressive, what with its burning expressive intensity and taut, dancing rhythms. From the same concert there’s also a sizzling Bartered Bride Overture and an energetically driven ‘Vltava’ (Má vlast). In addition we’re treated to a relatively light-textured account of ‘From Bohemia’s Woods and Fields’ with the Boston Symphony (1945). But the highlight of the disc for me, returning to the NBC SO in 1942, is Wallenstein’s Camp, where the NBC brass choirs are fearsomely confrontational and Szell gives the final march its head. Lani Spahr’s remastering is up to its usual high standard and so is his detailed annotation.

Staying with Czech masterworks, at least for the moment, Václav Neumann, who was Chief Conductor of the Czech Philharmonic from 1968 to 1990, presents an inspired sequence of masterpieces recorded at the Lucerne Festival between 1984 and 1988. Smetana’s opera Libu≈e levels alongside Má vlast for nationalistic fervour, a fact borne out by the majestic Overture, itself a tone poem in all but name, which Neumann conducts with a genuine sense of nobility. This is Smetana at his greatest, manna from heaven for the Czech Phil, whether at home or, as here, abroad. Dvo∑ák’s tone poem The Wild Dove tells the story of a woman who poisoned her husband and married another man shortly afterwards. A dove then sits on the grave of her dead husband and sings a sad song day after day. The wife feels guilty and commits suicide by drowning herself in a river. Janá∂ek (who was surely influenced by Dvo∑ák’s late tone poems, of which this is one) conducted the 1898 premiere and Neumann has the full measure of the music’s doleful drama at his fingertips. It’s an imaginative performance, superbly played. And then there’s the Eighth Symphony, which opens the programme – a feisty performance full of magical moments, not least in the Allegretto grazioso third movement, beyond the Trio, when the outer section returns (3'53"), so gentle and full of imagined birdsong, though with dark undertones, before the movement’s jaunty coda (for once kept in tempo with the preceding music) rounds things off in high spirits. A wonderful disc, presented in excellent sound.

Some little while ago ICA Classics put out an April 1961 BBC Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra radio recording of another, far darker Eighth Symphony, the C minor wartime masterpiece by Shostakovich, written in 1943 and dedicated to the great Soviet conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky, whose lofty interpretation of the work has survived on a number of remarkable recordings. But while Mravinsky and his Leningrad Philharmonic suggest bullet-pitted tower blocks reaching to the sky, Constantin Silvestri in Bournemouth lets in more sunlight, his performance an unusual visitation where the city enjoys a backdrop of nature. True, the third-movement Allegro is hardly non troppo but the symphony as a whole, although still the tough nut we know and admire so well, somehow breathes fresher air than usual. By contrast, Silvestri’s account of Kabalevsky’s dashing Colas Breugnon Overture (from the same concert) is more relaxed than the more familiar historic options, Toscanini and Fritz Reiner (RCA).

ICA’s latest Silvestri/Bournemouth album is high in colour content, the repertoire Franco-Spanish, opening with a rowdy yet deeply sensual account of ‘Ibéria’ from Debussy’s orchestral Images, the opening ‘Along the streets and along the paths’ sporting prominent portamentos, the sultry central ‘The scents of the night’ uncommonly broad yet full of passion and atmosphere. After a gentle account of Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante défunte, Sylvie Mercier is a subtly persuasive pianist in Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain, Silvestri and his players always expert at painting, in orchestral terms, the exact locale. You won’t find many recordings of this enchanting piece that smile more winningly. Nor of Falla’s two suites from his ballet The Three-Cornered Hat, both works played with a loving approach to phrasing and a tangy tactus for the various dances, especially in the Second Suite. The mono sound has been nicely cleaned up by Paul Baily.

Switching from cleaned-up mono to dynamic stereo (Paul Baily is at the maintenance controls again), ICA treats us to a memorable Philharmonia concert conducted by Evgeny Svetlanov just a year before his death in 2002. The main item is Debussy’s La mer, a far more elemental reading than Svetlanov’s 1992 Philharmonia recording for Collins Classics, an impression underlined by the inclusion of the optional trumpet fanfares in the ‘Dialogue between the wind and the sea’ finale (Svetlanov omits them in the Collins version). Also included on both discs, the Prélude à L’après-midi d’un faune, a broader, a more languid reading in 2001 than in ’92, and the Overture to Tchaikovsky’s opera The Queen of Spades. There are two Rachmaninov Études-tableaux orchestrated by Respighi, superbly played by the BBC Symphony Orchestra (the first, ‘La mer et les mouettes’ – ‘The Sea and the Seagulls’ – is a dead ringer for The Isle of the Dead), and to close, the LSO offer a bittersweet rendition of Prokofiev’s otherwise jaunty Overture on Hebrew Themes.

The recordings

Smetana From My Life. Má vlast (excs), etc

Szell (Somm ARIADNE5032)

Dvořák Sym No 8, etc

Czech PO / Neumann (Audite AUDITE97 832)

Shostakovich Sym No 8, etc

Bournemouth SO / Silvestri (ICA Classics ICAC5176)

Debussy. Falla. Ravel Orch Wks

Mercier; Bournemouth SO / Silvestri (ICA Classics ICAC5182)

Debussy La mer, etc

Svetlanov (ICA Classics ICAC5181)

Mother and daughter, teacher and pupil

You could say that the French mezzo-soprano Blanche Marchesi (1863-1940) is ‘blanche’ by name as well as by nature, and the possessor of a voice that through a majority of acoustic recordings, although sweetly vibrant, had a whiteness about its tone that is fairly unusual. Try by way of an example ‘Vissi d’arte’ from Puccini’s Tosca, which in its boldness is quite unlike anything you’re likely to hear today. But perhaps most remarkable of all is a 1936 recording that Marchesi made when she was in her early 70s, a ‘Sicilian Muleteer’s Song’ complete with a spoken exhortation to the donkey in Sicilian dialect. These and a dozen or so other electric recordings, with music by Purcell, Alessandro Scarlatti and so forth, are for me what make the set such an interesting listen. The remaining recordings date from the turn of the last century. Blanche was the daughter of the legendary vocal instructor Mathilde Marchesi, whose pupils included the likes of Nellie Melba, Emma Calvé, Frances Alda and Selma Kurz. Marston’s two-CD Marchesi set also features rare recordings by various of Mathilde’s pupils: you can hear performances by, for example, the American sopranos Elizabeth Parkina, Esther Palliser and Frances Saville. The set’s value is significantly enhanced by excellent annotations.

The recording

The Complete Blanche Marchesi

(Marston 52079-2) marstonrecords.com

The magic of Chaminade

Another valuable acoustic anthology features performances and music by a once-fashionable French composer, whose numerous colourful morceaux recall works on a similar scale by Emmanuel Chabrier. Cécile Chaminade’s most popular solo piano composition – she also wrote orchestral music, ballets and songs – was Automne, the sheet music for which must once have graced just about every piano stool in the country. Often recorded, the freewheeling version included here was set down in 1930 by the highly gifted Theodor Leschetizky pupil Mark Hambourg, one of seven electrical recordings included on the programme. The others are by pianists Maurice Cole, Una Bourne, Hans Barth and a fairly young Shura Cherkassky. Some of the pieces are gently mesmerising, Pas des écharpes being a case in point (we’re treated to recordings by Chaminade herself and Rudolf Ganz), and for an example of the composer as nimble virtuoso, try her Courante (track 3). Una Bourne performs a trippingly exuberant Valse-arabesque, while the gently lilting Danse créole is offered in balletic recordings by both Chaminade and William Murdoch. Transfers are as clean as you could expect (APR has evidently gone to great lengths to obtain unblemished copies, though inevitably some surface noise remains). As to booklet notes, our own Jeremy Nicholas obliges with an extremely informative essay. If you’ve an ear for aching nostalgia, then this is for you – and the ‘hiss’, or what there is of it, is all part of the charm.

The recording

Cécile Chaminade and her contemporaries play Chaminade

(APR APR5647)

Sammons in Elgar

Mentioning William Murdoch brings me to a benchmark recording of Elgar’s Brahmsian Violin Sonata with Murdoch and Albert Sammons, an ardent account of a work that often tugs at the heart‑strings. The Romance second movement wears an air of wistfulness expressed alongside deep emotional engagement. The third movement recalls the balmy mood of the string Serenade, though its mode of address is less straightforward. If you don’t know it, I can promise a real gem waiting in the wings.

The rest of this competitively transferred album (thank you Raymond Glaspole) is devoted to Sammons’s two recordings of Elgar’s Violin Concerto under Henry Wood. The first (from 1916), acoustically recorded and significantly truncated, rushes its fences and no mistaking, but the solo playing is unmistakable in its warmth, sweetness and virtuosity. True, it’s little more than an interesting whistle-stop tour through the work, whereas Sammons’s 1929 electrical recording with the New Queen’s Hall Orchestra (also under Wood) is one of the classics of the period, often set up by commentators – unfairly, I feel – to rival the teenage Yehudi Menuhin’s very different account under the composer’s own baton. Both are wonderful in their very different ways. Again, as in 1916, tempos are swift, but not impractically so, and there are no cuts. Being a dedicated lover of the Menuhin version, where Elgar’s conducting draws a breadth from the LSO that is quite different to the newsreel-type bustle of his other records (or many of them), it took me time to adjust to Wood, but I got there in the end and now value it as much as the Menuhin/Elgar. This release is significantly enhanced by Jonathan Woolf’s excellent notes.

The recording

Elgar Violin Sonata. Violin Concerto (two recordings)

Sammons, Murdoch, Wood (Biddulph 85054-2)