'Music hath charms to sooth the savage breast', according to the playwright Congreve - and our generation is uniquely fortunate in having easy access to recordings of virtually all the music in the world - a fact which I think ought to be celebrated.
In conversation recently (I forget with whom, but that happens increasingly – it’s an age thing, you know), I remarked that people alive today were uniquely fortunate, primarily because of their access to recorded music, but also to the arts generally (by which I mean theatre, cinema, television painting, sculpture).
If I had been born 100 years earlier, the chances are that I would never have had the opportunity to listen to a Beethoven symphony or a Mozart piano concerto (unless I was very privileged and lived in one of Europe’s major cities). To me, the invention of recorded music, whether via the record, tape, CD or MP3 file was one of the most transformative developments of the twentieth century and has enriched millions and millions of people’s lives – and inevitably the internet has taken the availability of recorded music to new levels.
This was brought home to me one night last autumn. Feeling nostalgic, I was recalling the excitement of having a record player in the house, and of starting to own records. I was 11 or 12, I think, and my parents bought a Dansette Tempo auto changing record player on the never never. It cost 19/11d and was paid for in 12 monthly instalments (the machine was covered in leatherette in grey and a particularly vivid shade of green as I remember). It was very precious to me – and was only eclipsed by the reel to reel tape recorder I was given for Christmas three years later (such was the progress of the affluent society).
So began my record collection (all of which I have kept. no matter how battered or scratched – neither Michael nor I can bring ourselves to part with them, even though it is probably over ten years since we last played a vinyl record and probably thirty since most of them saw a turntable). In the 1960s, though, the important thing about the Dansette was that it gave me access to music – and to a wide range of it, too – as my father’s interest in jazz and popular song complemented my own taste for the classical repertoire.
Thus, Dad introduced me to the wonders of George Gershwin (Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris) along with artists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Billy May and George Shearing. Mum and I drew the line at Art Tatum, whose piano playing style seemed to us being far too far removed from the melody.
As the 1970s dawned, the Dansette was replaced by a brand new stereo system – exciting times indeed. We added Simon and Garfunkel, George Harrison, Neil Diamond and a young Elton John to our collection. Of course, nowadays one can access all these artists and their hits with a few clicks of the mouse – and it is often fun to wander through the ether exercising one’s inner nostalgia.
My own memories of those heady days of the bright green Dansette are primarily of classical LPs, starting with my first ever record – Dvorak’s New World Symphony. I had chosen that because it was the centrepiece of the first ever classical concert I attended, as part of the inaugural season at the Crystal Palace Concert Bowl in 1960. I have loved the work deeply ever since. I've listed the first five LPs in my collection at the bottom of the article.
The fascinating thing is that all these recordings are still about in one form or another – within ten minutes of starting to think about them, I had a Spotify playlist of all five, verified by cover pictures from the album. I also spent another happy hour researching the artists whose names had been familiar for so many years, but about whom I had known very little. Oh, and the good news was that – considering the limitations of recording technology in the 1950s – all these versions stood up remarkably well, and had been reviewed very positively by modern critics.
In my view at least, it is our ability to own or at least access all this wealth of material that makes our generation uniquely fortunate. It's just a pity that there still seem to be so many savage breasts around to sooth.
I shall come back to this subject and its application to other arts in future posts.
My First Five LPs
The New World recording was on the Fontana label, played by the Vienna State Opera Orchestra, conducted by Vladimir Golschmann.
My second acquisition was an HMV Concert Classics recording of the Greig Piano Concerto played by Gina Bachauer accompanied by Royal Philharmonic conducted by George Weldon with the Lyric Suite and Norwegian Dances on side 2.
My third was Jakob Gimpel’s recording of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto, with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Rudolf Kempe; this was another HMV Concert Classics issue.
Number four was Mendelssohn – the LP was bought for the Violin Concerto, but the record came with the Italian Symphony on the second side: this was a Decca Ace of Clubs recording, which featured violinist Alfredo Campoli as soloist accompanied by the London Philharmonic with the Turin Symphony Orchestra playing the symphony.
The fifth record came as a present from my aunt, and was a record of Sibelius. It included the Karelia Suite (those of you of a certain age may remember this as the signature tune of the ITV current affairs programme This Week) and the fifth symphony. I really wanted the Karelia Suite so the symphony came as a bonus, and I have loved it ever since. This was another Decca Ace of Clubs disc, with the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Eric Tuxen. Thomas Jansen wielded the baton for the Karelia Suite.