How charming that an Italian record company should pay such a prompt tribute to one of Uls ter's greatest performing musicians! This CD arrived a day or two before the fiftieth anniversary of Harty's death. Indeed, it was fascinating listening to it after the eloquent tribute to Harty's work as a conductor and composer by Michael Ken nedy which BBC Radio 3 broadcast on the after noon of the anniversary.
The sleeve design rather disguises the disc's intent in as much as it features Solomon and the Tchaikovsky concerto with what is perhaps understandably commercial prominence. In fact, it is a charming and memorable account of that work When it first appeared, the performance was welcomed in these columns for the ''nattiness and poise'' of Solomon's playing. It is certainly very dashing and though there is a small cut near the start of the finale, I don't think the dash is any thing to do with the limitations of the 78rpm format. It is a performance that seems typical of the two artists: typical of Solomon's urbanity and Harty's heady musical enthusiasm. In Harty's day the Halle strings were famous. ''No English orchestra of the present epoch,'' Sir Neville Cardus wrote in 1969, ''can produce string players commanding the tone and flexibility of phrase of Harty's Halle Orchestra.'' Adolf Brodsky's influ ence at the Royal Manchester College of Music no doubt had a lot to do with this. The sweetness and virtuosity of the Halle strings is a feature of this entire collection, with portamento frequently, attractively, and only occasionally (to modern ears) oddly used. The wind playing is drier and less imaginative; in parts of the first movement of the Tchaikovsky Solomon's lambent and express ive playing is set into the highest possible relief. The recording is quite clear and well balanced. It was made in the Central Hall, Westminster in 1929. (Two years earlier than Nuova Era claim in their annotation.)
In Beethoven's Fourth Symphony we hear Harty on his own, and what a joyous performance it is, fiery in the way that Toscanini's BBC SO recording (EMI, 2/87) was later to be. The first movement lacks its repeat but it is a real tour de force. The scherzo and finale are also very quick—in the finale's case quicker than Beethoven's Alle gro ma non troppo would appear to sanction. Yet the players (even the notoriously exposed solo bassoon) cope with relish and for all the sense of musical excess, there is a red-blooded, lovable quality about the virtuosity that distinguishes it utterly from the more machine-like virtuosity of many latter-day recordings. Even at this speed, Harty's finale is more than a touch impish, and the playing of the third movement Trio is good enough to make one laugh out loud. In the slow movement, both the slightly over-accented playing and the surfaces of the 1927 recording detract from one's pleasure, but, again, there is no mistaking Harty's love for the piece. The orchestra sing the main theme as though it was the Londonderry Air.
For the most part, Nuova Era seem to have left the sound very much as it is on the original 78s.1t is fresh, unencumbered and reasonably clear. As a result, we get a very fair idea of music-making from an age when the standard repertory seems to have been played with more freshness and fervour than is perhaps nowadays the case. Listening to this disc, it is easy to understand what Cardus meant when he observed how in the years of the Great Depression the Halle under Harty ''watered every week the musical wasteland and desert''. And yet it was never for them music ''on tap''; nothing was mass-produced. Nowadays, perhaps, we make music in some peripheral respects more stylishly, but Harty's heady mixture of floodtide and fantasy is all too rare a commodity.'