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Untitled Document
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MCCORMACK, John: Remember (1911-1928) |
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Composer: |
Fritz Kreisler, Lao Silesu, Rida J. Young, Edward Fitzball, James A. Butterfield, Rudolph Friml, Herbert Stothart, Liza Lehmann, William Vincent Wallace, Charles B. Cory, Alice Mattullath, Zo Elliott, Ivor Novello, Sergei Rachmaninov, Gaetano Braga, Michael William Balfe, Stephen C. Foster, Victor Schertzinger, Victor Herbert, Irving Berlin, James Carroll Bartlett, Luigi Denza, Gitz Rice, Marco Marcelliano Marcello |
Artist: |
Fritz Kreisler, John McCormack, Nelson Eddy, Jeanette MacDonald, Edwin Schneider, Vincent O'Brien, Norman Brown |
Conductor: |
Josef A. Pasternack, Nathaniel Shilkret, Walter B. Rogers, Rosario Bourdon |
Choir: |
Studio chorus, Nathaniel Shilkret Chorus, Mills Brothers, The |
Orchestra: |
Victor Orchestra, Rosario Bourdon Orchestra, Josef Pasternack Orchestra, Walter B. Rogers Orchestra, Nathaniel Shilkret Orchestra, Studio orchestra |
Lyricist: |
George Washington Johnson, Lena Guilbert Ford, Otto Harbach, Adrian Ross, Edward Fitzgerald, Alice Mattullath, Stoddard King, Harold Robe, Oscar Hammerstein II, Alfred Bunn |
Label: |
Naxos Nostalgia |
Catalogue No.: |
8.120782 |
Format: |
CD |
Barcode: |
0636943278222 |
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JOHN McCORMACK Vol.3
‘Remember’ Original 1911-1928 Recordings
In the final analysis it might be said that
McCormack, however shining an example of a
lost tradition,was just one among many other
great singers, but in any serious evaluation of
his vocal credentials it is impossible to play
down the superlatives. In his heyday justly
regarded in opera circles as a last outpost of
bel canto, to more specifically trained American
ears he embodied Longfellow’s ‘clear, sweet
singer’,‘patrician’ like no other in technique
and artistry – although even then the more
conservative critics saw in his increasing
commercial populism the debasing of an
uncommon talent. McCormack, however,
pandered to his audiences and, at least while
youth and vigour were his, maintained the
same high standard, whatever the repertoire.
And on the best records (generally those made
pre-1925) the McCormack constants are
everywhere to be heard: articulation, clarity of
diction (a clarity the Irish poet Yeats once
famously denounced as ‘damnable’, as he hastily
withdrew from a McCormack recital),
sweetness of tone, unparalleled breath-control
and mezza-voce matched, particularly in the
context of popular ballads, by a remarkable
power to communicate.
John McCormack was born the fourth of
eleven siblings to working-class immigrant
Scots parents in Athlone, on 14 June 1884.
Respectably God-fearing, his upbringing was
scarcely a privileged one, although music and
particularly singing were actively encouraged,
and after briefly considering the priesthood, at
seventeen he already aspired to a career as a
singer. At his father’s insistence, however, in
1902 he entered the civil service as a clerk in
the post-office, but soon abandoned this to join
the Palestrina Choir in Dublin’s famous
Georgian Pro-Cathedral, under its noted
conductor Vincent O’Brien. Inspired by this
new mentor, in 1903 he won the Gold Medal at
the Feis Ceoil (Irish National Music Festival)
and by 1905, with scholarship funds, had
undergone less than thorough training in Milan
with Vincenzo Sabatini (father of historical
novelist Rafael). Moderate notices gleaned on
the provincial Italian opera circuit in 1906
indicated no quick route to stardom but the
next year, in London, after appearances at
Boosey Ballad and National Sunday League
Concerts and through the good offices of
Covent Garden musical coach Sir John Murray
Scott, his patron, doors were already opening.
In October 1907, at 23, McCormack was
the youngest tenor ever to sing leading roles at
Covent Garden and a cursory glance at that
theatre’s contemporary cast-lists, which include
such names as Melba,Tetrazzini, Destinn, Didur,
Dinh Gilly, Muzio, Sammarco and Vanni-
Marcoux, provides an insight into the calibre of
his operatic partners in London (and
subsequently in the USA). He appeared at
Covent Garden each season until 1914, but was
by 1911 already based in America. In New
York, he sang in Hammerstein’s Manhattan
Opera season (1909) and at the rival
Metropolitan made intermittent appearances
(when not engaged on coast-to-coast recital
tours) between 1910 and 1919. Gradually
shunning opera he made the recital his stockin-
trade, swiftly becoming the concert
‘equivalent’ (at least in terms of receipts) of his
friend Caruso. Firmly clutching his little black
book of words, he delighted his cosmopolitan
audiences of thousands with every sort of
song, from the classical to the commercially
popular, delivering all with ‘democratic
affection’ and without condescension, in a
manner almost inconceivable to our modern
minds, by now attuned to ‘cross-over’.
The highest-paid recitalist of his generation,
through the many hundreds of records he
made from 1910 onwards for the American
Victor company (and its European affiliate ‘His
Master’s Voice’) McCormack was to reach out
to an even wider audience. Having acquired
household name status he endeared himself,
largely through nostalgic ballads of émigré-
Celtic orientation (first published in Chicago, in
1866, When You And I Were Young, Maggie
is a prime, if stage-Irish example) to the
concert-going and record-buying masses on
both sides of the Atlantic. Moreover, he fulfilled
to perfection their nostalgic insistence for
‘songs their fathers and grandfathers used to
sing’ and the Victorian and Edwardian gems
illustrate all that is best in early McCormack on
disc: the forthright delivery, the ring and
elevation in the high register. All outstanding in
this context are Ah, Moon Of My Delight
from In A Persian Garden (the 1896 setting by
Liza Lehmann (1862-1918) of selected verses
from the Fitzgerald translation of Omar
Khayyám’s Rubáiyát) and tenor perennials
from two operas of the so-called ‘English Ring’:
Then You’ll Remember Me, from The
Bohemian Girl (1843) by Dublin-born violinist,
singer and theatre-manager Michael William
Balfe (1808-1870) and There Is A Flower
That Bloometh, from Maritana (1845) by
Waterford-born violinist William Vincent
Wallace (1812-1865).
The Great War inspired such rallying songs
as the smash hit by Ivor Novello (1893-1951)
Keep The Home Fires Burning (of which
McCormack’s was the first American recording)
and Cradle Song 1915, a vocal conversion of a
noted violin encore by his friend Fritz Kreisler
(1875-1962) from whose seamless bowing
McCormack was wont proudly to relate that he
learnt more about ‘spinning a legato’ than he
was ever taught by any voice teacher, and
while this is of course metaphorical, the
implication of technical efficiency is clear
enough – for it is this which underpins the art
of both the Viennese fiddler and the great Irish
tenor. In the studio they would record more
than twenty sides together (some ‘unpublished’)
and several of these have stayed
bestsellers with an almost immortal appeal. In
every case, however trite the tunes or lyrics,
the duo’s captivating musicality cannot be
denied and The Angel’s Serenade, a oncepopular
salon item of 1867, surely ranks
among the most successful. Sung here in its
English translation, by one Harrison Millard, the
piece was originally conceived by the Abruzziborn
international ’cello virtuoso Gaetano
Braga (1829-1907) as an instrumental encore.
The song’s original edition was titled ‘Leggenda
valacca’. The McCormack–Kreisler collaborations
include the Bach–Gounod and Schubert
“Ave, Marias”, while a tantalisingly short list of
songs by Rachmaninov, comprising “To The
Children” and “Before My Window”(Op. 26,
Nos. 7 & 10) and the two gems from Op. 4, are
graced by Kreisler’s ethereal obbligati.
Ensconced in the USA, McCormack the
avowed populist addressed the masses,
regularly featuring in almost the same breath
as the Handel and Schubert Funiculì,
Funiculà (by Neapolitan Luigi Denza (1846-
1922) this still-popular tenor encore dates
from 1880 and the opening of the funicular to
Vesuvius) next to old American numbers
(notably various songs by Stephen Collins
Foster (1826-1864) and the latest in pop
songs). Several of these last he also assigned to
disc, along with some more transient hits from
long-forgotten Broadway musicals, several of
which he recorded, among the earliest (in
1911) I’m Falling In Love With Someone,
from Naughty Marietta, a contemporary
Broadway musical (136 performances, 1910)
from the pen of his Dublin-born friend Victor
Herbert (1859-1924), the then undisputed New
York operetta king. Herbert openly praised the
tenor’s ‘never ending enthusiasm’ and when
his ‘grand opera’ Natoma (in reality another
Herbert operetta, but with more lavish sets)
was premiered a month later, who else but
McCormack for the tenor lead? Some may still
not have realised that the McCormack
discography contains other items from shows;
Rose Marie, title-song of the 1924 show by
Rudolf Friml (1879-1972) as well as various
numbers by Irving Berlin (You Forgot To
Remember was a dance-hit before this
McCormack ballad-version) attest
retrospectively to the range of this tenor who
may still, in future decades, continue to be
‘remembered’, even by those who never heard
him in the flesh.
Peter Dempsey, 2005
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