1929 GILBERT & SULLIVAN PIRATES of PENZANCE Z SHELLAC Peter Dawson Sargent 78

$

41

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A series of great  classical orchestral and instrumental performances by major conductors, composers and instrumentalists.

Here is the great, first electric HMV recording of Gilbert and Sullivan's PIRATES OF PENZANCE

With the original D'Oyle Carte Company

The 1929 D'Oyly Carte Pirates

Cast Major-General George Baker
Pirate King Peter Dawson
Samuel Stuart Robertson
Frederic Derek Oldham
Sergeant of Police Leo Sheffield
Mabel Elsie Griffin
Edith Nellie Briercliffe
Kate Nellie Walker
Ruth Dorothy Gill

Chorus and Light Opera Orchestra
Conductor: Malcolm Sargent

Recorded in London,
February 19 - May 15, 1929

GREAT ORIGINAL Z SHELLAC with the tyny "z" mark

11x12" original Victor Z SHELLAC 78 rpm.  in original orthophonic style album C-6 (manaul sequence)with booklet and libretto

Condition:

EXCELLENT  Minus, basically unworn, but some rubbed spots from an old changer. Rare light short scratch. Side 3 has a 2 mm needle dig at the end. Album solid however, spine has fallen off (included)

 In 1928-9, the D'Oyly Carte Company made an extended American tour. Two recordings were made during this period, the 1928 Yeomen and this Pirates. Both featured a mixture of non-D'Oyly Carte singers and former Company members. Leo Sheffield, Derek Oldham, Elsie Griffin and Nellie Briercliffe are all among the most important D'Oyly Carte singers of the early years of this century, and it is a fortunate coincidence indeed that they were not with the Company in America at the time this recording was made. Dorothy Gill had just ended a stint as principal contralto with D'Oyly Carte's "New" Company, and she would take over the same parts with the main Company after Bertha Lewis's death. George Baker and Peter Dawson were important recording artists of the era, although they had no G&S background.

I haven't heard most of the ancient Peter Dawson recordings made for HMV, but those I have heard are excellent, viz. The Pirate King. Although he was a contract singer, his interpretations had a lot of personality (unlike some of the gramophone specialists) and his vocal technique was something astounding. (Listen to his recording of "O Ruddier Than the Cherry" from Handel's Acis and Galatea, if you can find it, and you will hear a bass-baritone who can trill better than most sopranos.)

Dawson has the additional distinction of being the only singer in all of G&S whose vocal pedigree is even more distinguished than that of Martyn Green. Green was a Garcia pupil, surely the last active one. But Dawson was a pupil of Sir Charles Santley!

This recording has been one of the more popular historical re-issues, as shown in the issue history below.

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[THE GRAMOPHONE, September 1929, (Vol. VII); pg.169]

The Gilbert & Sullivan News ù September, 1929 

It is open to question who is best fitted to judge of the merits of a Gilbert and Sullivan recording ù the old-timer with his cherished memories or the strictly modern man, devoted to Strauss and Stravinsky.

Both have their disabilities and their prejudices. The older critic will naturally be jealous for the fame of his old favourite Savoyards and will be keen to detect anything which, in his opinion, is false to the honoured traditions. But, equally, he will be emotionally inundated by those floods of reminiscence which are inevitably loosed upon surviving Victorians the moment the old melodies are heard. He will be carried back, unresisting, to the dear but dingy London of the 'eighties, with its hansom cabs and gas-lit streets, its frock-coats and its waterfall bustles, its exhibitions and its Fenian outrages, its talk of "Dizzy" and the G.O.M., and the dear old Savoy in the heyday of their fame. Keen, competent criticism can hardly expect to emerge from this swirling mist of fond memories.

And yet the strictly modern man is in no better position; he is saturated with the highest and best in music, or blas? with a surfeit of jazz and revue.

However, I tried the new H.M.V. recording of the Pirates on both dogs ù the young and the old; and the Pirates captured them both. It could hardly have been otherwise, for this new recording represents the high-water mark so far as Gilbert and Sullivan is concerned.

In each of the previous Savoy albums there have been occasional lapses which prevented one from awarding them unqualified praise; but with the Pirates it is happily otherwise; from first to last, and in every bar, a simply delightful production.

The cast is a strong one ù Elsie Griffin, Derek Oldham, Leo Sheffield, Peter Dawson, George Baker, Stuart Robertson, Dorothy Gill, Nellie Briercliffe and Nellie Walker, with as competent chorus as one could wish.

Elsie Griffin and George Baker carry off the chief honours, but that does not mean that Peter Dawson and Derek Oldham and the others do not equally demand unstinted praise. The former's rendering of I am a Pirate King will leave the most ardent Savoyard nothing to sigh for, and, as for Derek Oldham ù well, he is quite himself, which is all one need say.

It is Elsie Griffin, however, with her deliciously fresh and effortless singing, who demands ù and receives ù the big bouquet. Her Poor Wandering One is a sheer joy ù brilliant but never shrill, and with trills that would not discredit the great Galli-Curci herself. It may be my imagination, but Miss Griffin seems to me to be in better voice in the Pirates than in any of the previous operas in which she has been recorded.

The Major-General's song, that breathless non-stop affair of difficult words and tricky rhymes, is about as severe a test of articulation as any song I know; but George Baker comes through it magnificently. Not a syllable is lost ù nor any of humour.

It would be unjust to pass over the chorus without high praise for their perfect discipline (although that is what one expects of a Savoy chorus). The ladies' chorus is particularly charming, with none of that "breathiness" which mars so many choral pieces.

Yes, the Pirates will certainly be warmly welcomed by all Savoy enthusiasts, and by the newer generation of music-lovers too. Recordings of this quality will make many converts among those who have hitherto regarded Gilbert and Sullivan as merely a Victorian relic.

A libretto (price 1s.) is published by Messrs. Chappell & Co., but one feels that it might have been included with the set of records.
 

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