Archive recording on the Player
Mon, Dec 6 2010, 2:22PM
This month's newly transferred Archive Recording on the Gramophone Player is tenor René Soames singing music by John Dowland, John Danyel and Thomas Campian, with Walter Gerwig on lute and Johannes Koch on viola da gamba, from the 1950s. Do have a listen if you haven't already, I enjoyed it very much. And if you have heard it, what did you think of it?
Having not even heard of Rene Soames (being from Sweden) my first reaction, when often hearing a ´historical´ recording is: Thanks be to God that the music evolution is moving forward. Actually I was keen on commenting on the January Archive recordings of two Bach cantatas (39 and 105) with Fritz Lehmann and BPO which made me laugh: Slow, plodding tempos, no phrasing or nuances, pompous recitatives, pedantic trills, ugly choral (operatic) sound etc, unmusical like a German sewing machine. Was it really that bad in 1958. Karl Richter was not much better, which has been been documented on surprisingly many re-issues (do they sell?) , but then came Harnoncourt, Gardiner, Koopman, Susuki and the Beauty of Bach was at length revealed. Those Archive recording can indeed be amusing and call forth a pitying smile, but the really belong to the music rubbishheap.