THE GRAMOPHONE

lAn.dan OJliu: lO~, Sobo Squ.~

London, W.L

Edited by COMPTON MACKENZIE

TELEPHONE: Regent 7977, 7978.

TELEORAMS:

Parmaxto. Westcent. London.

Vol. VIII.

. OCTOBER( 1930

No. 89

EDITORIAL

THE Piano Concerto in G minor of Saint-Saens published by the Vocalion Company on three Broadcast Twelves at a florin a piece is definitely the most successful enterprise which lies to the credit of this courageous and determined effort to put within reach of the public popular classics at a really popular price. I have played this Concerto through on the Balmain with a Virtz mica sound-box. I have played i t through on the splendid large Chromogram instrument which the Micro-Perophone Company has sent me. I have played i t through on the electric machine with a moving-coil loud speaker, and on each of these three instruments I find i t good. The recording of the piano, and the relation of the piano to the orchestra is not inferior . to any that I have heard and Mr. Reginald Paul's performance as soloist and Mr. Stanley Chapple's handling of the orchestra are both admirable. Finally, the surface is now as good as any other surface. Many of my readers (I hope I am not being too confident in assuming that we still have so many readers from six years ago) will remember the t ime when the only piano concertos of which we possessed records were this Saint-Saens Concerto in G, Grieg's Conce1°to in A, and Liszt's HungaTian Fantasia. Of those three works the Saint-Saens and Grieg were both boiled down to fit into two double-sided black label H.M.V. discs, the price for which at the date when they were published was 7s. 6d. a piece. In those days the public was apparently prepared to pay 15s. for a mutilated concerto. Indeed, as a member of the public I paid that price myself. The recording was as good as recording could be at that date, but to put on those old discs nowadays is to make one ask oneself how i t was ever possible to deceive oneself into enjoying such productions. But we did succeed in deceiving ourselves, or at any rate I did, for all those discs have the grey lines which, like the grey hairs of the human head, betray the wear and tear of life. The first complete piano concerto to be published was Beethoven's Fifth, The Emperor, with Frederick Lamond as soloist, and I well remember one of the people at H.M.V. telling me that i t was hopeless to expect that they would ever get their money back from the publication of such

B

a work in full. From the advent of electrical recording the piano concertos gained more than almost any form of musical composition, and we have had plenty of them since.

The l ist of these Broadcast Twelve classics which have been issued up to date by the Vocalion Company is a significant index of what really are the most popular musical classics. They began with Grieg's

° Piano ConceTto in A which, as I said at the t ime,

looked like becoming the National Anthem of the B.B.C. I do not feel at l iberty to quote the number of records that were sold of this piece, but the figures were impressive, so impressive that I have never felt the least hesitation in arguing for the production of more and more musical classics at a really popular price. The Grieg Piano Concerto was followed up by Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, Schumann's Piano Quintet, Liszt's Hungarian Fantasia, and now by • this Concerto of Saint-Saens which has provided the text for these remarks. I t is, perhaps, surprising to find the Schumann Piano Quintet included, but i t may be remembered that a shortened version of that Quintet was one of the most successful publications of the Vocalion Company, and in those days i t was published on four single-sided pink label records at a cost of 7s. 6d. a piece. I f i t sold at that price, as I assume i t did, the Company would be justified in thinking that i t would sell in complete form at 6s. for three discs. When I first praised the spirit of enterprise which inspired this experiment of cheap popular classics I received a certain number of letters to tell me that they did not wear well. I should have been more discouraged by this information if I had not .been receiving at the same t ime letters complaining about the wearing quality of nearly every make of record. Of late these complaints have been much fewer, and I think we may assume that for various reasons wear on records is at present definitely less than i t was. Perhaps more people are learning to use fibre needles. Undoubtedly, many people found salvation in the Burmese Colour needle, which reminds me that the inventor of the Burmese Colour needle has put out a needle made of some kind of hard wood called the Electrocolor which seems to stand up to heavy recording better than the Burmese