Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol. 2, No. 10 (1928-07)

360 The Phonograph Monthly Review July, 1928 signature of the creator of the work. (I use the word intentionally, believing the true conductor’s function—like that of the critic—by no means only interpretative.) It may be thought harsh to judge a musician without previous recording experience for the purely phonographic weaknesses of his first rec- ords, but to do so is not unjust. Before he signs the disk, before he begins to play into the microphone, is it a duty to his artistic conscience to learn the methods of achieving effective recording and to ensure the presence of a thoroughly capable re- cording engineer in charge of the apparatus and processes. No disk by a featured conductor is passed for release and public sale until his un- qualified approval has been added to those of the technical experts who certify to its mechanical acceptability. And it is a tribute to the artistic honor and integrity of the best recording con- ductors that they have exercised an admirable discrimination in passing their disks for release. Instances are not uncommon of works entailing enormous expense and effort never appearing, simply because the conductor, in obstinate defi- ance of the manufacturers and technical engin- eers, refused his approval to a work which could not completely satisfy his conscience. In consideration of these facts we need have no hesitancy of placing full responsibility on the conductor’s shoulders, of blaming him for. its faults and praising him for its merits. Possibly these may be actually the work of another, but that other is a subordinate, an instrument in the conductor’s hands, and the man, not the instru- ment is held amenable. (As in the instance of an oboist breaking badly in his solo, the fault may lie in the reed of the instrument, yet the player takes the blame.) And in practice there is ample justification for this somewhat cruel centration of liability upon one man. Those recording con- ductors who by common consent are recognized as first in their rank have one at least feature in common. Whatever their knowledge of the re- cording processes may be (and obviously those of considerably phonographic experience must have no mean technical knowledge), their works are always well above the average in this respect. They may have made records acoustically and electrically, they may have conducted for two or more companies and with various orchestras and recording directors, but for all these divers chang- ing factors their records reveal a purely technical excellence which nearly as much as the evidence of unmistakable individual musical character- istics enables the experienced student to say with assurance, “That* is Stokowski,” or “This is Harty,” without referring to the label of the record played. I stress these points, because in the analyses and comparisons which are to follow, records and records alone are to serve as the material on which all estimations must be based, and I hope to have the reader’s agreement at the beginning that the disks are not merely representative of their conductors, but fully revelatory. Two pos- sible points of objection should be disposed of. First the occasional instance of a conductor (Beecham is the most conspicuous example) who professes to despise the phonograph and who practically disowns his records. I am confident that I am not alone in refusing so easily to excuse him from the responsibility of the records which bear his name and s which he can no more disown than he could a son, who would still bear in his features and character all the qualities inherited from his father. It is natural that the musical weaknesses rather than virtues of such men should be exposed in their disks, but the weak- nesses are only those that already have existed in the men, hidden perhaps in the concert hall, and mercilessly revealed in the phonographic mirror, as in fact we shall see when we come to the study of their works. Of more importance is the easy accusation, made especially of acoustical records, that certain disks do not succeed in capturing an entire per- formance: the basses are not heard, the wood wind is muffled, or the like, all of which may be quite true. But to reason from these deficiencies that in consequence that disk does not represent the conductor, that we have no right to judge his actual performance from it, is to fall into several errors. Again it should be remembered that the conductor had the opportunity of hearing the disk as we hear it, of realizing its deficiencies, before passing it for release and so voluntarily assuming responsibility. Suppose even that his approval was given for reasons of necessity and against the desire of his artistic conscience, willy nilly, the disk would still return to his doorstep, like a natural child from which he cannot escape, for if only the first violin part alone, or those of the timpani and trombones, had been captured in the recording, we should still have enough mate- rial on which to base our estimation of the con- ductor’s musicianship (his technical incompet- ence passed by for the nonce). And just as a single figure, worn and discolored by age, will reveal the hand of a da Vinci or a Michelangelo no less than the entire fresco in which it occurred, so a characteristic and attributable musical per- formance is present in even the earliest or most badly recorded acoustical work, the outlines blurred perhaps, the texture coarsened, but none the less individual and revelatory of the con- ductor. The Criticism of Records and their Conductors A detailed and comparative study of recording conductors involves the critical estimation of their various works and a specific indication of their talents and defects, particularly as applied to the types of music with which each succeeds or fails. Recordings are too permanent for incompetent or inferior works to be tolerated as kindly as in the concert hall. It is the function of the record critic to discover the true recording talents of the con- ductor (often unrealized by the musician him- self) and from these, the direction which his future efforts should take. The proper carrying out of these purposes cannot fail to uncover data of direct value to both record buyers and record makers; to the former in establishing methods by which existing works may be determined as suc- cessful achievements or not, and to the latter in