For Godfrey’s 150th anniversary, Mark Obert-Thorn supplies us a generous bounty of classic recordings, immaculate in their restored sound.
Sir Dan Godfrey: A Sesquicentennial Salute = MOZART: Syphony No. 41 in C Major, K. 555 “Jupiter”; HANDEL: Largo from Xerxes; MEYERBEER: Coronation March from Le Prophete; WAGNER: Homage March; GERMAN: Three Dances from Henry VIII: SUPPE: Pique Dame – Overture; AUBER: The Bronze Horse – Overture; OFFENBACH: Orpheus in the Underworld – Overture; ALFORD The Two Imps – W.Byrne and W.W. Bennett, xylophone/ Symphony Orchestra/ Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra/ Sir Dan Godfrey – Pristine Classical PASC 534, 74:38[www.pristineclassical.com ****:
Restoration Engineer and Producer Mark Obert-Thorn turns his gifted spotlight upon Sir Dan Godfrey (1868-1939), who ordinarily does not occupy a prominent place in my personal pantheon of “the greats,” but whose 150th anniversary of his birth warrants artistic reconsideration. Obert-Thorn selects a number of significant works recorded 1927-1934 that reveal Godfrey—whom I had long associated with light music and a number of Gilbert & Sullivan moments—as a sensitive and authoritative musician quite capable of the virile showmanship we attribute at once to Arthur Fiedler and Malcolm Sargent.
Obert-Thorn speculates that the “Symphony Orchestra” employed in the 4 February 1927 rendition of Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony is the London Symphony Orchestra, the same ensemble who had rendered with furious mania the same work for Albert Coates some months prior, a reading that first took me by storm when it appeared on LPs issued by Thomas Clear. In Godfrey’s case, however, the reading proves sober but deeply etched and wonderfully articulate in the winds and strings. True, there occur moments of “Romantic” music practice, the slides and portamento; but the dramatic and lyric elements proceed with a loving gravitas. The opening of the fugal Finale: Molto allegro evolves with a slow but determined sense of formal direction, the interior voices wonderfully resonant. I judge this Jupiter as competitive with the best of the readings by Bruno Walter and Sir Thomas Beecham. Were I to guess the performance without notification, I should hazard the reading to have come from Hamilton Harty, which says a great deal. The restoration by Obert-Thron belies the age of the recording, given the bold, dynamic color that emerge, sometimes with explosive force: listen to the last-movement rocket-figures in the strings, horns, and tympani and try not to feel the blood rush to your extremities.
With an organ obbligato, Godfrey intones (22 July 1934) the Largo from Handel’s Xerxes, played by a wiry violin and luminous harp, here accompanied by Godfrey’s own, sumptuous Bournemouth Municipal Symphony Orchestra. The ensuing Meyerbeer Coronation March, from the identical session with Handel, constitutes Godfrey’s last recordings, and this Meyerbeer enjoys the scope and heroic resonance to rival the document left by Mengelberg. The more directly Teutonic piece, Wagner’s Homage March (for Columbia, rec. 23 March 1927) seems to combine elements from Tannhauser with more than a passing hint of counterpoint form Meistersinger. The LSO brass and battery emerge with force and resonance, with none of that tinny reverberation that acoustic recordings too often produce.
The music of Welsh composer Edward German (1862-1936) quite fits the spectrum mentioned earlier with regard to light music and Gilbert&Sullivan. The Three Dances (rec. 17 March 1928) from the 1892 Henry VIII proceed with buoyant, light heart, crisply rendered. The Morris Dance has all the energy and lithe ensemble we might ascribe to Constant Lambert. The Shepherd’s Dance enjoys an eminently persuasive lilt, comely and charming. The string line, singing and piquant, makes the dance irresistible. The Torch Dance concludes the group with dervish fervor.
The music of Franz von Suppe eternally commands an admiration for deft scoring, soaring melody, and infectious rhythmic vitality. The masters of his idiom, in my book, have been Constant Lambert, Albert Wolff, and Jean Fournet. Godfrey joins these exemplars with a virile rendering of the Pique Dame Overture (29 April 1928), articulate, witty, and occasionally volcanic on a true virtuoso level. If you still wear socks after the coda from Pique Dame, then sit back to savor the 29 April 1930 version of Auber’s The Bronze Horse Overture, another work in the slick, graciously scored Viennese-French tradition. Here, Godfrey equals the deft, light touch we might associate with Piero Coppola. Like the music of Rossini, that of Auber loves his wry, crafty crescendos. The set of three overtures in hearty performance concludes with Offenbach’s rousing Orpheus in the Underworld (18 March 1934), which calls upon the best from Godfrey’s winds, harp, cello principal and violin concertmaster. By the time we cavort and frolic to the Can-Can, we wonder if, had Godfrey the benefit of modern acoustics, he would not have surpassed anything in Karajan’s versions of light music.
Obert-Thorn select some “in-house” music to conclude, a “novelty” number, The Two Imps, by K.J. Alford (rec. 29 April 1928), featuring a pair of irreverent, bouncing xylophones. The music reminds me of the scene in the 1945 The Picture of Dorian Gray, when Dorian first visits the light vaudeville where he encounters Sybil Vane. This music, happily, spares us any sense of impending doom. This entire disc has been one of those “sleeper” offerings on historic labels that connoisseurs should not deny themselves.
–Gary Lemco
