(++++) REDISCOVERIES

Offenbach: Overtures—Les Bavards; Les Bergers; Le Roi Carotte; Monsieur Choufleuri restera chez lui le…; Les Brigands; Ba-ta-clan; Geneviève de Brabant; Monsieur et Madame Denis; La Créole; La Princesse de Trébizonde; Madame Favart; L’Île de Tulipatan. Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester Frankfurt conducted by Howard Griffiths. CPO. $16.99.

Elgar: Enigma Variations; Cello Concerto; Falstaff. NBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Arturo Toscanini (Enigma); Gregor Piatigorsky, cello, and New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra conducted by John Barbirolli (Concerto); New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra conducted by Artur Rodzinski (Falstaff). SOMM. $18.99.

     Given the fact that Offenbach wrote some 100 stage works and that only a few continue to be performed with any regularity, it is not especially difficult to rediscover his less-known overtures. What is surprising is that so few conductors bother. Howard Griffiths is a happy exception: a big part of his career involves bringing obscure composers and/or forgotten music out of limbo. Sometimes what he offers turns out pretty much to have deserved its disappearance from concerts, but more often, he comes up with at least a few real gems – the kind that will likely lead listeners to wonder why they are not heard more frequently. And that is the situation with a new CPO disc on which Griffiths conducts the Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester Frankfurt in a dozen Offenbach works that are almost totally unfamiliar. What is interesting, and what may be a clue to their being infrequently heard, is that all of them are delightful in similar ways: tuneful (Offenbach was a master of catchy melodies), elegantly orchestrated, and wonderfully contrasted in sections ranging from the lyrical to the dancelike to the super-speedy. That is to say that they are, in the main, indistinguishable from each other. Some better-known Offenbach overtures are genuine standouts – those to La belle Hélène, La fille du tambour-major and Orphée aux enfers come immediately to mind, although the best-known version of the overture to the last of those was not written by Offenbach but assembled by Carl Binder. The overtures that Griffiths leads on this CD, though, have little to set them apart from each other, which makes the disc great fun to hear without making the specific music on it especially memorable. Or, to put it more accurately, the music is memorable in its entirety, but most of the individual pieces are less so. There are exceptions, however: the opening of Les Bergers, a very unusual work that deserves to be better-known, has real strength and drama despite the innocent-sounding title of “The Shepherds,” and the very short overtures to Ba-ta-clan and La Créole are nearly overstuffed with charm. All the music here is played with great élan and apparent enjoyment, and Griffiths paces the pieces well, so the contrasts between sections of the overtures are clearly accentuated. What is rather peculiar about the CD is the order in which the pieces are offered: no discernible order at all. Les Bavards (1862-63) is followed by Les Bergers (1865), then by Le Roi Carotte (1872), then the very oddly titled Monsieur Choufleuri restera chez lui le… (1861), then Les Brigands (1869), and so on. In other words, the works are certainly not in chronological order, which is too bad, because that arrangement would have given listeners insight into ways in which Offenbach’s style changed (or didn’t) over time. Nor are the pieces grouped by the type of work for which they were written, such as opéra bouffe, opéra comique, or opérette. True, the distinctions among those forms are largely obscure today, but they could have provided an organizational structure for the disc. Perhaps the sequence is simply one that Griffiths or the producer of the CD liked. In any case, what this disc presents is a dozen examples of Offenbach’s tremendous skill at melodic invention in the service of stage productions that were always intended, above all, to entertain – even when Offenbach engaged in his frequent poking of fun at the conventions and societal expectations of his day.

     The rediscoveries are not of music but of performances on a new SOMM recording that is offered as the first volume of a series called “Elgar in America.” The series’ intent is to look back at the way various Elgar works were performed in the United States, a country with which Elgar had an uneasy relationship during and after his four visits (1905, 1906, 1907, 1911). This is strictly a disc for enthusiasts with a special focus on specific performers, and as such is a (+++) recording. For those enamored of remastered classic recordings, though, it is something of a treasure trove. Toscanini’s performance of the Enigma Variations has all the characteristics for which this conductor’s recordings with the NBC Symphony are known: astonishing precision of playing, a tendency toward fast tempos, and truly execrable sound from Studio 8H at Radio City. This is a 1949 live performance, and as good as the remastering by Lani Spahr is, there is no way to improve the acoustical quality of that much-used and much-abhorred venue, in which instrumental detail was inevitably lost and overall sound squashed into a limited volume band. Despite the deficiencies, though, enough of Toscanini’s interpretation shines through to show that the conductor, not usually thought of as particularly involved with Elgar even though he had an affinity for this specific work, had a fine sense of balance and pacing that serves the music well. The two other pieces here are also offered in live recordings. Piatigorsky’s performance of the Cello Concerto from 1940 is particularly notable because it is the only known recording of him playing this music: he never recorded the work commercially. Unfortunately, the sonic restoration here has even more difficulties than does that of the Enigma Variations: there is abundant tape hiss (a constant issue in the days before digital recording) that even the most-skilled audio work simply cannot eliminate. Piatigorsky’s playing, heard through that audio interference, is assured and mellow, and the pacing of the music by him and John (not yet Sir John) Barbirolli is well-planned and quite effective at communicating the concerto’s moods. The final work here is a badly truncated version of Falstaff, with about one-third of the score cut, led by a conductor even less associated with Elgar than Toscanini was. It is a 1943 performance in which Rodzinski shows himself to be a more-than-creditable leader of the score, and in which the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra has a significantly fuller sound than in the Cello Concerto (as likely as not because of wartime improvements in recording capability). The drama and emotional intensity of Falstaff come through quite well here despite the age of the recording and the decision (for unknown reasons) to cut so much of the score. This is decidedly not a first-choice version of Falstaff – nothing on this disc should be any listener’s top pick for any of the music – but from the perspective of historical preservation and a chance to hear how top-quality performers handled Elgar during and after World War II, the CD is a notable one that will be of considerable interest to listeners looking for additional perspective on how Elgar’s music was handled in the U.S. in this specific time period.