Recordings

Grooves in the Mist — a Vinyl Memoir: Part I

“Somewhere around 1950,” Leopold Stokowski once quipped, “recorded sound stopped being a novelty and started sounding like music.”

I was reminded of this the other day, when I received from Netflix the DVD of “A Letter To Three Wives”, which was filmed in 1949 and features Kirk Douglas playing the Brahms B-flat Concerto to friends on an enormous console, probably a Capehart or a Zenith “Cobramatic”. At one point in the movie, he becomes miffed at someone for having broken some shellac, and we see him revealed as an early version of the classic suburban audio peacock, petulant and anxious over any flaws in his equipment.

The young French pianist David Fray plays Bach keyboard concerti and Schubert solo works on disc.

David Fray’s recent appearances in San Francisco, performing Beethoven’s Second Concerto, revealed him to be a refined, supple colorist. It was less immediately clear how bold or romantic, or indeed “Gouldian” Mr. Fray would turn out to be in music more fully under his own direction. These two new excellent CDs begin to answer this question, and to suggest, moreover, the birth of a fine conductor.

The One and Only Igor: Gergiev conducts Les Noces and Oedipus Rex

In a recent interview the conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, remarked that Igor Stravinsky pulled off the greatest camouflage in the history of music. He was referring to the composer’s lifelong stand that music expresses no emotions, indeed, expresses nothing except sound. Behind this mask, Salonen said, lies a man of deep feeling whose music is often as moving as any ever written. I began to think about Stravinsky and his camouflage, which has always baffled me. How could such glittering creations, each commanding your attention, whether as a shout across the primordial steppes or a murmur like the tick-tock of a mantel clock in the Princesse de Polignac’s salon, be about nothing?