'A capital performance.'

Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 4 in A major, Op. 90 'Italian'

Allegro vivace (A major)
Andante con moto (D minor)
Con moto moderato (A major)
Presto and Finale: Saltarello (A minor)

Aeolian Orchestra cond. by Stanley Chapple

Aeolian Vocalion K-05148, K-05149 & K-05150
(03781xx, 03782X, 03783, 03788X, 03789, 03790)
(recorded January/February 1925)

Link (FLAC files, 70 MB)

Prior to Chapple’s recording with the Aeolian Orchestra only two movements had otherwise been issued of this, or indeed any, Mendelssohn symphony. The Victor Concert Orchestra under Walter Rogers recorded the 2nd & 3rd movements in March 1915 and at about the same time as Chapple's complete recording the New York Philharmonic under Henry Hadley issued a 2nd movement on the Ginn & Co. label in April 1925.

Ink drawing by Mendelssohn of the Amalfi coast

The performance is almost complete, bar repeats, with only a small section in the first movement omitted. Discus in Musical Times for May 1925  had room for only a very brief review in a general ‘catch-up’ article but thought the record ‘a capital performance.’  Seemingly Compton Mackenzie was a bit more hesitant on the qualities of the recording and the music. In his April 1925 review for The Gramophone he begins with an analytical discussion of the work leaving the merits of the recording until the end. 

‘The orchestration, as I have suggested, is full of interest and novelty. The only weakness is the brass. Mendelssohn was writing for the natural instruments that we find in Beethoven's symphonies and earlier. It was not until later that the invention of the valve horn and valve trumpet enabled composers to feel at home with this part of the orchestra. Mendelssohn's treatment of his trumpets in particular is rather clumsy; it seems a pity that he didn't leave them out altogether; they are not really necessary here. The playing, too, has aggravated rather than minimised this defect, and the rest of the orchestra is occasionally swamped by a blatant and pointless blare. In this set of records, too, there is once or twice a miscalculation with the drum, which is sometimes too loud and at others quite inaudible. Apart from these minor drawbacks I have nothing but praise for a notable achievement that will, I fancy, be welcomed with acclamation by many.’ [The full review included with the recording]

Mendelssohn at 24

Mackenzie retracted his statement on the quality of the recording the next month as having tried a new gizmo attached to his soundbox he set about re-evaluating 600 or so records in one fairly extend listening session. He decided that after all the recording was fine.

As with all acoustic recordings a certain amount of substitution and contraction of forces is practised, here the bass line has some excellent tuba playing particularly in the second movement, I don't think there are any cellos or basses present and would guess the 1st and 2nd violins total about eight players. The line up for the recording would be 21 players that included 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani and 8 strings with a tuba. 

Odd as it may seem to us today Mendelssohn started to go out of fashion at the end of the nineteenth century and probably hit his lowest point in popularity in the early 1920s. So unfashionable indeed that no one thought it worthwhile to make another complete recording of the ‘Italian’ symphony until HMV issued a performance of La Scala Orchestra under Panizza in October 1931. Why Chapple and Aeolian Vocalion thought it was worth recording is not known to me  but one wonders if the coincidence of Chapple having recently been made music director of the company together with the further coincidence of Mendelssohn composing the symphony when he was 24 and Chapple recording it when he was 24 had anything to do with it. 

Stanley Chapple is a bit of a forgotten conductor, I have pulled stuff from various reference books and the web to give some sort of idea of his career.

Stanley Chapple was born in 1900. He studied at the London Academy of Music where he was successively student, professor, Vice-principle and until 1936 principle. In 1920, at the age of nineteen, he was hired as director of the City of London School's opera, but more importantly for us he was also hired by the Aeolian Vocalion Company as and piano accompanist. By 1924 he became music director, a position he held about 1929. [A fascinating article by Chapple was published in the Gramophone in 1929 which I have included with the zipped up file of the recording].

By 1922 he had been invited to appear as a guest conductor with the London Symphony Orchestra; and shortly after he was made head director, although I can find no mention of this in the history of the LSO publish a few years back. In 1930 the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra invited Chapple to appear as guest conductor, and by the end of the decade he had become one of the most coveted guest conductors on the European Philharmonic circuit, travelling to Vienna, the Hague, and Warsaw.

Chapple also frequently travelled to the USA making his first voyage I believe in August 1931. Chapple’s dream of going to Russia was ruined when war broke out in 1939. He was in Boston at the time when the tour to Russia had to be cancelled. Philip Kerr, Lord Lothian then British ambassador in Washington D.C. asked him to stay in America to ‘promote good will’. During the war, Chapple conducted the National Symphony in the Watergate concerts.  In 1940, the director of the Boston Symphony opened a school for conductors and orchestra musicians in Massachusetts; and made Chapple its director. Thus was born Tanglewood, a music academy that is still going strong today. Leonard Bernstein was Chapple's first student there. Chapple was invited to teach at the University of Washington and to be its director of the University of Washington School of Music in 1948, when the active dean of the department heard him at Tanglewood. When the Seattle Symphony lost its conductor in 1950, Chapple took over and virtually remodelled Seattle's culture. He used the Symphony as a means of introducing Seattle to the opera, ballet, and the theatre. During his tenure as conductor, he greatly enhanced the professional level of symphony players In 1962, Chapple became director of symphony and opera at the University of Washington, and when he retired in 1971, Mayor Wes Uhlman asked him to direct the Seattle Senior Symphony (Musicians Emeritus) a program providing ‘encouragment and help to former music-makers wishing to resume their participation in music-making’. For the next fourteen years Stanley Chapple was the much beloved conductor of Musicians Enmeritus Symphony Orchestra and Thalia Symphony Orchestra. Chapple died in on 21st  June 1987 at Seattle, King, Washington.

Clipping showing the first performance on 15th May 1833

Lots on the symphony itself on the web however I thought tocould include with the recording a clipping of the first performance review from The Morning Post 15th May, 1833 from which the above pic is taken.

Tangential versus linear speed

Band of H.M Welsh Guards

Under the direction of Lieut. Andrew Harris

Tchaikovsky: Casse Noisette Suite

1. March   2. Overture Miniature  3. Danse Arabe  

4. Dance Russe  (Trepak)  5. Danse des Mirlitons  

6. Danse Chinoise  7. Valse des Fleurs

Vocalion Long Playing Record W-39

(B.C 529 & B.C. 530)

Recorded 1925 

Flac file, Here at Mediafire. [about 46Mb]

One real problem to bedevil 78s before the advent of the LP age was the how much music could be fitted on each side.

Noel Pemberton Billing (1881-1948) had an aswer as he realised that if the needle could be made to travel through the groove of a disc at a constant speed then more could be recorded on each side.

Noel Pemberton Billing

Pemberton Billing was eccentric to say the very least. His biography on Wikipedia reads like some Boy's Own story. Early aviation pioneer and pilot in the WW1, independent Member of Parliament, politically very right of centre, getting carried out of the House of Commons for hurling abuse, publishing periodicals including one called the The Vigilante including such purple stuff by him as 'The Cult of the Clitoris', then defending himself in the ensuing liable case and winning, homophobic, inventor, the list just goes on and on, if not insane he made a very good impression of being barking mad. But this is getting off the point for his claim to fame on this blog is through the invention and marketing of World Records.

Some technical stuff. At 78rpm a standard 12 inch or 30cm record gets through some 275 metres of groove – at a constant 78rpm the outer edge of one turn of the disc traverses about 0.95 metres groove with the needle travelling at some 1.25 metres per second. By the time the record enters its last turn needle only has to get through 0.38 metres at about 0.50 metres per second.

Pemberton Billing noted that this 275 metres of groove was being traversed faster than was really necessary at the outset of a disc and it would be better if the speed could be made constant through the groove. At about 0.50 metres per second a record side could accommodate 9 minutes of recording time without any loss of recording quality.

World Record Controller

His invention, a fearsome looking lump of wheels and governor had to be screwed to the side of the turntable to manage the speed of the turntable. The patent explains the concept in the usual patent language but in simple terms a large rubber wheel ran on the record surface this was connected by a worm drive to a governor, this governor restricting the wheels rotation to a constant speed. The large wheel is also connected through a thread drive which allows it traverse across the record to the centre, something like a liner pick-up arm traverses the record towards the centre. By this arrangement the turntable speed could be slowly increased in speed from 30 to 80 rpm however the speed at which the groove travelled under the needle woodlouse be constant - maybe read the original patent as it is easier to show than explain [Patent]

Anyway this can be done by using software as long as we can know the initial and end pitch of the record and calculating the rate of acceleration over a side – I have pitch the record at A at 452Hz the standard Military Band pitch in the UK at this time. Each side actually has a timing printed on label; the first side comes to exactly 8m 50s the second side is printed at 8m 10s although I make it 8m 12s at A 452Hz– quite probably the pitch could have gone to A453.8 as the room temperature increased but this is so slight I have left both sides at A452. These timings printed on the labels must mean a stopwatch was probably used during the recording session – maybe printing on the labels was part of the advertising. An oddity in the recording is the slight hum on side one reducing from 216-210-204Hz and on side 2 moving through 222-211-213Hz – this must be to do with the recording mechanism but can't fathom what would cause such inconstancy – anyway it is not annoying

Enough of this waffle. World Records never had any star names – The performers included military bands, dance bands, quite a number transferred of which came from Emerson masters, vocal records that included Carrie Herwin, Robert Carr and John Thorne, a few educational records, Scottish Pipers and then good bit of Chamber music by Leo Abkov String Quartette – records I have never seen nor heard of anyone having; anyone out in the æther have any of these?

Vocalion Records manufactured the records with only 163 examples known to have been issued between 1922 and 1924.

Pemberton Billings left for Australia in 1923 endeavouring to further the export of the records and did not return to Britain until 1926. In the meantime Vocalion purchased all the rights to the records in January 1925 and began to issue there own Vocalion Long Playing Records Only 19 of these are known but the venture proved hopeless and by middle of 1926 the venture had stopped. These records are very uncommon, they must have been sold in very small quantities and of those sold very few seem to survive.

Of the artist on this particular example a short history can be found [here]  from which I quote:-

'The Welsh Guards are the youngest of the foot guards, being raised in 1915. On 8 September of that year, Mr Andrew Harris, of the Royal Artillery (Gibraltar) was appointed to be the first bandmaster, and in November the band itself was formed. The regimental history tells us that the funds to buy the instruments were provided by the City of Cardiff.

Band of H.M. Welsh Guards in London 1929

'With the prospect of having to live up to the high standards set by the existing guards bands, the Welsh Guards faced a tough challenge. Their first appearances on 1 March 1916, St David's Day, however, dispelled any doubts that may have been harboured; a guard mounting at Buckingham Palace followed by a performance at a Welsh Patriotic Meeting at the London Opera House with Lord Harlech and Major-General Sir Francis Lloyd in attendance, demonstrated clearly the musical quality of the new band.

'Coming together in the midst of The Great War, it was not long before the bandsmen were sent overseas. On 28 October 1916 they proceeded to France for duty with the Guards Division, meeting the 1st Battalion, then returning from the front line, a few weeks later and playing the guardsmen back to their billets.

'In May 1917 the Band, resplendent in full dress, formed part of the massed bands of the Brigade of Guards which gave concerts at the Trocadero and the Tuileries Gardens, Paris. Later the massed bands visited Italy performing in Rome and Milan; during the tour, each musician was presented with a silver cigarette case by Queen Elenor. In May 1918, at the request of the American Embassy, the Band played at the Memorial Service in Paris, and in July 1919 it took part in the great Victory March in Paris, where it had the honour of playing the Colours of the British Army through the Arc de Triomphe.

'Bandmaster Harris was commissioned as Lieutenant on 1 March 1919, and went on to become senior Director of Music, Brigade of Guards, finally retiring in the rank of major at the end of 1937. At his final appearance at the Albert Hall for the Festival of Remembrance, he was able to tell the audience that he would be sitting with them the following year as an old comrade having completed fifty years service.'

Pearl issued a CD of the band under Harris but mainly of short pieces – The performance oin this World record is good efficient stuff.

Two films on the Pathe site show the band in 1926 and 1929 Two short films of Pemberton Billing can also be found on Pathe too.

Much, if not all, of my information comes from World Records Vocalion "W", Fetherflex and Penny Phono recordings: a listing by Frank Andrews; Arthur Badrock; Edward Samuel Walker, 1992