THE VOCAL RECORD COLLECTORS¹ SOCIETY
PRESENTS
THE BACH ARIA GROUP -
A SIXTIETH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION
PART TWO
By
TERI NOEL TOWE AND SETH B. WINNER
In September, 2006, the VRCS presented one of the most memorable programs in its entire history, this devoted to the story and private recordings of the now-legendary Bach Aria Group. At the time, we dared hope for a sequel (or perhaps several sequels) and we are happy to announce that the first of these has come to pass, and that our November program will be devoted to a second exhibition of this wonderful and pioneering undertaking, which commenced in 1946 and maintained unparalleled excellence in its field for the next thirty-four years under the aegis of its founder, William H. Scheide.
As in our previous program, the evening will be hosted by Teri Noel Towe and Seth B. Winner, who are now in the fourteenth year of working on the conservation and preservation of the extraordinary run of private recordings of The Bach Aria Group's concerts that Mr. Scheide commissioned, and they will present another series of highlights from this remarkable archive of concert recordings of the vocal music of Johann Sebastian Bach. These recordings, which have been transferred from pressed records, lacquers, and audiotapes, document the artistry of an astonishing number of great singers, including a number of guest artists who never sang Bach except on those occasions. Artists to be heard in this outing will include Marian Anderson, Mack Harrell, Blanche Thebom, William Warfield, Erna Berger, Norman Farrow, Jan Peerce, Carol Smith, Jennie Tourel, Elena Nikolaidi, George London, Cesare Siepi and Eileen Farrell. (Although several of these artists were heard in the 2006 program, there will be no duplication of material heard then.)
Our previous Bach Aria Group program ended, quite memorably, with reminiscences by William H. Scheide, and it is hoped that Mr. Scheide, who is now 93, and his lovely wife Judy will again be able to attend and provide yet more reminiscences of the many distinguished singers and instrumentalists with whom he worked.
Teri Noel Towe has distinguished himself in Law, Art History, Radio Broadcasting (some twenty-five years of it, twelve of them spent as WBAI-FM's pseudonymous ÒLaughing CavalierÓ), Horticulture, Record Production, Music Criticism, Annotation, etc., but for our purposes, perhaps most of all in the field of Baroque Music, with special emphasis on J.S. Bach. He has twice won the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for distinguished writing on music, and he has lectured at Leipzig's Hochschule fur Musik Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, annually from 1983 through 1998 at Nassau County's Bach Aria Festival, and also at California's Carmel Bach Festival, the Association for Recorded Sound Collections, Wayne State University, Harvard University, Princeton University, etc., etc. Please feel free to visit the following sites:
1) http://www.npj.com/homepage/teritowe/jsbpdm00.html.
2) http://www.npj.com/homepage/teritowe/hrp.html.
3) http://www.npj.com/thefaceofbach, and 4) http://www.npj.com/homepage/teritowe/jsbbwv7.html. to learn more about this True Renaissance Man. There is probably no one alive more qualified to speak on performance practices of the Baroque period than Teri Noel Towe!
We all know Seth B. Winner best as sound engineer for all VRCS monthly programs, creator of our monthly auction lists, engineer and coordinator for our annual CD, and as a longstanding member of our Board of Directors. Outside the VRCS, however, Seth is one of the world's most eminent sound restoration experts, founder of Seth B. Winner Sound Studios, engineer for a huge number of commercial CD reissues, more than once a Grammy Awards nominee (remember the ten-CD New York Philharmonic set?), and longtime sound engineer overseeing the preservation of The Toscanini Legacy at the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives, while doing similar work on The Jan Peerce Archives. Also, he has been engineer for the Metropolitan Opera Historic Broadcast segments heard during the Met broadcast season and continues to engineer the Metropolitan Opera Historic Broadcast reissues, and is, along with Dan Hladik, co-engineer of the Metropolitan Opera Guild's commercial CD issues. And, of course, as stated above, he is working with Teri Noel Towe on the conservation and preservation of the Bach Aria Group archives of private recordings and concerts. As with Mr. Towe's expertise in Baroque performance practice, there is probably no sound engineer on the planet more capable of bringing out the best in these Bach treasures than Seth B. Winner!
DATE: FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2007
TIME: 7:30PM SHARP
PLACE: CHRIST CHURCH BASEMENT AUDITORIUM, PARK AVE. & 60TH STREET, N. Y. C.
GRISETTES AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL OF ACCOMPLISHMENT
Well, Geoffrey Riggs probably didn't think of them in those terms when he presented an evening devoted basically to several legendarily hard-trained and hard-working ladies, mostly French, but all emanating from the Viardot-Garcia School of vocal accomplishment. Yes, a few males were in there, but they hardly counted next to the likes of Litvinne, Lubin, Brandt, Siems, Koshetz and Crespin. We heard a great deal of the latter (see the enclosed program for confirmation), and this was only right given her recent much-lamented passing, and Geoffrey managed to make a solid case for the continuance of the Viardot-Garcia School, as passed down through teachers like Orgeni and Schoen-Rene (the latter taught Stevens, Kullman and -surprise! - Robeson), and through a couple of very great sopranos, Litvinne and Lubin, who also taught in the Viardot-Garcia tradition. The selections could hardly have been better or more appropriately chosen (we were all properly floored by Litvinne's ÒSur mes genouxÓ, which is surely the only reaction possible in the face of such truly superlative vocalism), and Geoffrey hosted in his usual erudite and informative manner. We certainly knew a lot more at the end of the program than we did when we went in, which is another hallmark of a Geoffrey Riggs program. Thank you, Geoffrey, for a wonderful evening of singing!