All posts tagged Henry Wood

An oblique tribute to Sir Henry Wood

To round off Sir Henry Wood’s anniversary year (150 years since his birth and 75 since his death) and anticipating the 125th anniversary of the Proms in 2020, I’ve transferred an early vocal record. The baritone Alan Turner sings A Soldier’s Song by Angelo Mascheroni, a song heard at the very first of Sir Henry’s […]

Happy Birthday Sir Henry

Today marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Sir Henry J Wood, the first conductor of the Promenade Concerts, and a mainstay of British musical life. The Proms were founded in 1895, and Sir Henry was their guiding hand for several decades, and continued to conduct in the concert series until his death in […]

New Year’s Suppé from Basil Cameron, and Sir Henry Wood’s 1924 Enigma

For the traditional Viennese welcome to the New Year, here are three Suppé overtures, all performed by the Hastings Municipal Orchestra conducted by Basil Cameron. These Decca records from 1929 and 1930 are rather worn, and the sound is not therefore all I would hope for. Suppé – Light Cavalry – Overture – Hastings MO, […]

A Night at the Proms with Henry Wood

On Friday 17th July the BBC Proms began. It’s 120 years since the first Proms season, and for the first fifty seasons, Sir Henry Wood did the lion’s share of the conducting. Wood’s discography is large, and includes many works he performed at the proms. In 1934, Columbia made a compilation record of excerpts of […]

Richard Strauss – 150th anniversary

Today marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Richard Strauss. To mark this, I’ve transferred two acoustic recordings of great tone poems by Strauss. The first is Henry Wood’s heavily abridged 1916 account of Till Eulenspiegel, the first ever recording of the work. It’s cut down to just two sides, losing approximately half of […]

Lilian Stiles Allen; Hamilton Harty and Henry Wood – Schubert; winners of Columbia’s Schubert competition; Lilac Time

The first selection of recordings this time is of the soprano Lilian Stiles-Allen. She was widely respected in her day, though her performances were confined to the concert platform and broadcasting as she was “not suited to the operatic stage.” She was one of the original sixteen soloists in Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music, and […]

Fabien Sevitzky – Arensky’s Variations on a Theme of Tchaikovsky; Marie Novello – Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No.2; Thorpe Bates – Captain’s Song from HMS Pinafore; Joseph Batten – “March of Victory” for the National Savings Movement; Henry Wood – Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music (improved transfer); Michael Zacharewitsch – violin solos

The latest selection of recordings is a typically mixed bag. Firstly, Fabien Sevitzky, who has been heard here before with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, recorded slightly earlier with his own Philadelphia String Simfonietta. One product of his studio sessions was Arensky’s Variations on a Theme by Tchaikovsky, an adaptation of the third movement of Arensky’s […]

Franz André – Bizet’s Arlèsienne Suites; Ivanov, Gauk, Golovanov – Balakirev; Henry Wood – Purcell, Mendelssohn; Hamilton Harty – Tchaikovsky; Mengelberg – Johann Strauss II; The Virtuoso String Quartet – Debussy’s Quartet, Mendelssohn; Robert Carr – “The trail of the lonesome pine”, “When love creeps in your heart”

To begin the New Year, I’m looking back as well as forwards. Mendelssohn and Purcell had anniversaries in 2009, so you can hear works by them, conducted by Henry Wood. There’s also a movement from one of Mendelssohn’s String Quartets, as a filler for the Virtuoso Quartet’s recording of the Debussy String Quartet. There will […]

Henry Wood conducts Turina

To maintain my quota of acoustic orchestral recordings, and to mark the 60th anniversary of the death of Joaquin Turina, this weekend I’m making available the earliest recording of any of his orchestral works. The Danzas Fantasticas were completed in 1919, with the score published in Madrid in 1921. Sir Henry Wood recorded them for […]

Rodzinski’s Mussorgsky-Ravel Pictures and Henry Wood’s Handel

Today brings another two brief updates, because I’ve been busy. There’s an early LP of Rodzinski conducting Pictures at an Exhibition. The record I’ve taken this from is in terrible condition, so there is a considerable amount of noise that could not be removed. The other item is Henry Wood conducting an arrangement of a […]

Henry Wood’s Vaughan Williams

To round off this Vaughan Williams anniversary year, here are the remainder of Henry Wood’s recordings of Vaughan Williams’s music: The Serenade to Music, The Wasps Overture and the Fantasia on Greensleeves. Download – Vaughan Williams – The Wasps – Wood Download – Vaughan Williams – Fantasia on Greensleeves – Wood (mp3 files – right […]

Vaughan Williams’s “A London Symphony” – Wood and Goossens

As we approach the end of the year, it’s time to remember a composer who died fifty years ago: Ralph Vaughan Williams. There have been many reissues in connection with this, including, from Symposium, Dan Godfrey’s premiere recording of A London Symphony – both his earlier recording of the first (abridged) and third movements, and […]