Sir Arthur SULLIVAN (1842-1900)
H.M.S. Pinafore (1878)
Pirates of Penzance (1879)
Chorus and London Symphony Orchestra (Pinafore), Chorus and Light Opera Orchestra (Pirates)/Malcolm Sargent
rec. Small Queen’s Hall, London; February-May 1929, (Pirates) February-March 1930, (Pinafore)
No texts
PRISTINE AUDIO PACO182 [77:34 + 73:10]
I don’t know why seeing G & S on Pristine Audio surprised me – not least since The Mikado (from 1926) is on PACO 087 - but it doubtless shouldn’t. Malcolm Sargent’s 1929-30 recordings are historic documents that preserve a certain tradition, whether in capturing singers known to Sullivan or in infiltrating artists outside the D’Oyly Carte company to perform on disc alongside them. Such is the case here in a popular coupling of Pinafore-and-Pirates.
If you know Malcolm Sargent’s HMV G & S recordings (review) of around three decades later, you’ll know that he didn’t include dialogue, any more than he did in his 78rpm sets. If he was later criticised for being rather staid in conducting this music it was equally the case that back in the late 20s he was sometimes accused of being too fast. In fact, he remained amazingly consistent over the thirty years that separate shellac from vinyl. He seems to have arrived at a tempo suitable for each song for these works and retained it, unerringly, for the rest of his career.
H.M.S Pinafore is an important recording in its preservation of the voice of Henry A Lytton – knighted shortly before this recording - who had been singing with the D’Oyly Carte company since the 1880s and had sung frequently under Sullivan. He couldn’t read music and is known to have bridled at some of Sargent’s tempi. This hugely gifted stage animal, marvellously attractive across the years, and here at the venerable age of sixty-five, is one of the most personable G & S singers on disc, despite having a non-existent baritone voice. From contemporary accounts it seems he had never had any kind of voice but just knew how to put it all across. He was driving his car in 1931 when it was involved in an accident that killed his passenger, Bertha Lewis, the contralto who sings the role of Little Buttercup. For posterity’s sake it was fortunate that she made this recording; she was only 43 when she died but had already recorded acoustic extracts from Pinafore back in 1922. A kind of pocket Clara Butt, she was a marvellous artist in this music. You can see her in a silent extract from The Mikado made in 1926 (it’s on YouTube).
The baritone George Baker makes a splendid Captain Corcoran and is full of avuncular personality. In Sargent’s LP remake he moved up to take Lytton’s role of The Rt Hon Sir Joseph Porter (K.C.B). The Josephine is Elsie Griffin, a real coloratura soprano whose Mabel in The Pirates is, if anything, even more spectacularly successful than her already memorable singing in Pinafore. Charles Goulding is an easy-going Ralph Rackstraw whilst Darrell Fancourt, a long-time company stalwart, is a decidedly characterful Dick Deadeye. The chorus isn’t always quite together but that’s of little account and the London Symphony forces play with requisite vim.
Because of the timing question the overture to Pirates is the final track of the first disc. This was recorded a year earlier and features the chorus and Light Opera Orchestra - a pick-up band I assume – and not the LSO. Once again, Sargent’s tempi are very similar to his LP remake. This recording features a major non-ensemble star in the shape of Peter Dawson as The Pirate King and all-in-all it is more consistently sung than Pinafore. D’Oyly Carte majored on stentorian contraltos and had one in the figure of Dorothy Gill, whose assumption of the role of Ruth shows an across-the-board strength in casting. George Baker is here too as the Major-General – superbly witty – and he continued to sing the role into the 1960s (he recorded it again for Sargent). That very popular recital and recording tenor Derek Oldham sings Frederic with suave warmth and Elsie Griffin shows here why she was so admired a G & S singer – whether in lyrical or virtuosic writing. Leo Sheffield is a droll Sergeant of Police and the chorus is rather more together here than in the sibling work.
Pinafore and Pirates are not rare on CD and have, often as not, been conjoined in a twofer, as here. Labels such as Arabesque, Pro Arte, Happy Days, Romophone, Castle Pulse, Sounds on CD and 78s 2 CD have issued them both or just the one. I don’t claim to have heard their transfers but I can say that Mark Obert-Thorn – who mastered the Romophone release but for this new production has had access to better copies - has produced really commendably silent surfaces sourced from amazingly quiet American Victor ‘Z’ pressings from the mid-1930s.
Obviously, there are no texts from this source and there is just a brief six-line introduction to the release on the cast list page. Otherwise, with Sargent at the helm, you’ll find that time simply flies by.
Jonathan Woolf
Casts
H.M.S. Pinafore
Sir Joseph Porter- Henry Lytton (baritone)
Captain Corcoran - George Baker (baritone)
Ralph Rackstraw - Charles Goulding (tenor)
Dick Deadeye - Darrell Fancourt (baritone)
Bill Bobstay - Sydney Granville (bass-baritone)
Bob Becket - Stuart Robertson (bass-baritone)
Josephine - Elsie Griffin (soprano)
Little Buttercup - Bertha Lewis (contralto)
Hebe -Nellie Briercliffe (mezzo-soprano)
Pirates of Penzance
Major-General - George Baker (baritone)
Pirate King - Peter Dawson (bass-baritone)
Samuel - Stuart Robertson (bass-baritone)
Frederic - Derek Oldham (tenor)
Sergeant of Police- Leo Sheffield (baritone)
Mabel - Elsie Griffin (soprano)
Edith - Nellie Briercliffe (mezzo-soprano)
Kate -Nellie Walker (mezzo-soprano)
Ruth - Dorothy Gill (contralto)
