Sound Recording Reviews

The Coronation of Their Majesties George VI and Queen Elizabeth, Westminster Abbey, 12 May 1937

This double compact disc contains the complete recording of the 1937 Coronation ceremony of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, marking the first time that all of the musical and spoken parts of the event have been compiled and made available since the original recordings were issued on fifteen 78 rpm records shortly after the Coronation. The BBC broadcast the event live, and also recorded it remotely by running phone lines from Westminster Abbey to Abbey Road studios. Renowned engineer Ward Marston, a specialist in working with historical recordings, handled the analog-to-digital transfers and restoration for this release, and his work allows listeners to experience what it must have been like to listen live in England on BBC or around the world via shortwave relay. The limitations of the original recordings are apparent, but Marston is to be commended for accentuating the musicality of the performances. The organ tends to come across better than the strings or the brass, and the choral vocals sound fine until the dynamics swell and they approach distortion. The musical selections range from works by Orlando Gibbons and William Byrd to twentieth-century composers William H. Harris and Walford Davies, who held the title Master of the King's Musick at the time of the Coronation. In his liner notes, Roger Evans observes that the selections made "reflected both the reliance on tradition for ballast and the assertion of a sense of contemporary accomplishment." This reissue is perhaps of more interest as a historical document than a musical one, but it is good to have the entire event restored and preserved so the music can be heard in context. It is a recording that should find its way into the holdings of many libraries. The BBC also broadcast the speech to the British Empire King George VI delivered from Buckingham Palace on the evening of 12 May 1937, and it is included as a bonus track on disc 2. Additional information, including a scan of the Form and Order of The Coronation, may be found at http://fdlrecordings.com/ (accessed 24 August 2011).

Don't Touch Me: Ignacio Cervantes: Danzas Cubanas

Donna Coleman is an American pianist who has lived in Australia for many years, where she is currently Coordinator of the Postgraduate Studies program for the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music (South bank), University of Melbourne. Coleman recorded two albums of Charles Ives's piano music for Etcetera Records in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and it was during her quest to discover the sources behind Ives's ragtime-infused works that she discovered the music of "relatively (and unfairly) obscure, nineteenth-century Cuban maestro Ignacio Cervantes (1847-1905)," as she writes in her liner notes for this recording. This compact disc represents the culmination of years Coleman spent researching Cervantes, comparing editions of his Danzas Cubanas, and performing the music. Coleman traces the transmission of musical ideas that occurred when Louis Moreau Gottschalk arrived in Cuba in 1854, adapted the contradanza music he heard, and influenced Cervantes in the process, asserting in her liner notes that Cervantes and Scott Joplin "shared many common musical ancestors going back hundreds of years," and Gottschalk's sojourns in Cuba "effected a profound influence on the course of American (and world) musical history." These Danzas are miniatures—nearly all are thirty-two bar tunes in two parts, the prima (A section) and the segunda (B section), rhythmically anchored by the cinquillo, and only a couple exceed two minutes in length. The effect of listening to the entire disc is akin to dining on tapas. I believe the recording would have benefited from allowing more room sound to blend with the piano, but this is a complaint focused...