I posted a 1950 LP of Edgard Varèse's music about 15 years ago and speculated at the time that it might be the earliest recordings of his works. Not so - since then I've become aware of three 78s of his music dating from the 1930s. This post presents two of them.
The first dates from 1934 and involves an instrumental ensemble conducted by Nicholas Slonimsky, best known these days as a writer on music. The work is "Ionisation" (which also can be heard in the LP I mentioned above). If you are not familiar with Varèse's works, think "The Rite of Spring" combined with the ambient noises of a large city. Add percussion, sirens and other sounds. But don't think there is anything random about the result - Varèse's timbre-centric music has been highly influential. "Ionisation" is for percussion ensemble.
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| Nicholas Slonimsky conducts 'Ionisation' in Havana |
Slonimsky himself conducted a recording of "Octandre" for Musicraft in 1938, but that disc hasn't come to light yet.
Both performances are fairly proficient, in music that is striking today as it was 90 years ago.
More Varèse is coming up on the main blog.
LINK to early Varèse recordings
8 comments:
wonderful music, as always. Thank you very much for the tasteful, informative and interesting presentation. once again!
keep boppin´
marcel
Thanks, marcel - much appreciated!
Always something interesting around here. Thanks Buster!
Are you still having Blogger issues? Mine seem to have gone away, though sometimes I have to wait a bit for the last bit of code to load before I leave a comment. If I start too early, it refreshes and I lose everything I've typed. But at least it knows who I am now. :)
Thanks, Ernie. I am not having problems commenting, but the latest issue is that it won't let me import photos. I have to open them in an image editor, copy them, and paste them. This is only in Chrome; Edge does not have that problem.
It just gets better and better... I haven't posted anything in a while, but last time I tried I didn't have much trouble with images, but that was in Firefox. Sometimes I'm unable to click into the comment or search fields, but if I switch to a different tab then come back, I'm able to click into those boxes. Weird stuff I tell you...
Ernie - That sounds like some of the problems I have with Photoshop Elements, which is full of idiosyncrasies.
Dave from Ardmore here to thank you for your devotion to Varese. When his first great work, “Amériques,” was premiered in the 1920s, it got a standing ovation and had to be repeated. Yet the work only received its first recording in 1965. Varese was a musical hero during the Jazz Age. But when “Deserts” was premiered in the 1950s it caused a riot and was heckled from beginning to end. That performance, conducted by Hermann Scherchin, has been released on CD and it is a shameful experience.
Hello Dave - Thanks for the information as always. Please see the post on my main blog (I'm sure you have; this is just an excuse for a link):
https://big10inchrecord.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-music-of-edgard-varese.html
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