This is almost an exact
reprise of Biddulph’s LAB 142 with transfers
again by Ward Marston. To those who
possess that issue one can note that
a second take of the weird Mozart Clarinet
Quintet arrangement has been added,
that the Chopin/Popper Nocturne in the
Biddulph is the only track to be missing
in this Naxos but more importantly
that Marston has remastered the sides.
More of that later.
It’s pretty much "as
before" in this series of morceaux,
arrangements and bon bons recorded in
1916 and 1920. Casals was past forty
when he first recorded and by some way
the most famous cellist in the world
but the evidence for his earlier years
has always been frustratingly bitty,
given that he wasn’t entrusted with
a full length concerto performance on
disc until much later. In the Haydn
Minuet we find that the piano is under
recorded to the point of near inaudibility
but that Casals exploits some cellistic
lurches with guttural good humour. His
Granados (a personal friend) is idiomatic
and rhythmically acute, with those warmly
woolly lower strings resonating across
the grooves.
He was given a brass
bandy accompaniment for the Haydn Concerto
movement; quite a familiar tactic of
the time but of much more interest is
his only recording of Goltermann, a
cello standby for his generation though
no one now seems to play it. The slow
movement is ripe and richly romantic
and just up Casals’s tonal and expressive
street. There’s a tiny drop out in the
Mendelssohn but I always admire the
hoarse tone he extracts here to heighten
the sentiment, just right. His Boccherini
is vibrant and we find that the 1920
Wagner O Star Of Eve remake is slightly
more languorous than the earlier 1916
disc.
The Mozart is harried
to death to fit under four and a half
minutes and is complete with brass and
a weedy toned violinist; this is the
type of thing that went on in 1916,
but at least it made it to disc in some
form or other. There’s more surface
noise on the second take – the American
issued one and it’s slightly slower
as well. One admires the elfin lyricism
of his Swan and the dignity –
not too many portamenti – of his Handel.
The 1920 discs are more forwardly recorded
and we can hear how well he negotiates
the tricky high writing in the Liszt
arrangement; shame about the oompah
backing for the Bach.
Ward Marston contributes
a long note on his remastering priorities;
these principally concern noise reduction
and speed and the results, he notes,
might be controversial. Listening between
his work for Biddulph and Naxos one
can hear that he retains a relatively
high degree of surface noise in the
main. In the case of the 1916 Schumann
Abendlied for instance there’s greater
surface noise in this Naxos transfer
but the solo instrument is projected
with greater clarity; it’s not as recessive
in the balance as the Biddulph was and
this is a great advantage, notwithstanding
the shellac cackle to which the ear
in any case adjusts. So there are cases
when the Biddulph retains more surface
noise and conversely when the Naxos
does but in most instances the inner
detail favours Marston’s newer work
and his pitching sounds convincing to
my ears. At the Naxos price bracket
as well one needn’t spend too much time
agonising.
Jonathan Woolf
Pablo Casals (cello) 
