Pettine recording, inscribed

[Bob A]

I thought this was too interesting to languish in the bowlback thread. Surely someone here might be interested.

[Jim Garber]

As a historic connection it is interesting. As for the actual recording, Pettine only recorded a few LPs -- maybe 2? -- and neither were in his prime of playing. I have to locate my copy. It is worth having but not at that price.

I believe that his sonsells cassettes of his father's recordings.

Jim

[Neil Gladd]

Pretty pricey, but I may have to bid. I've heard the Pettine recordings, but never seen one for sale.

[Jim Garber]

Pretty pricey, but I may have to bid. #I've heard the Pettine recordings, but never seen one for sale.

There have been a couple of the LPs on eBay over the years. I got one and paid considerably less. I would bet that some of the folks in the PMO know where to get them. I would contact them first before blowing a wad on this one. I don't even see the jacket sleeve pictured.

Jim

[Bob A]

Yeah, but it's the mojo, man. Inscribed by Pettine his ownself. ANd Howard Frye was no slouch either.

[Eugene]

I've never heard the Howard Frye recordings. I have to get around to that some day.

[margora]

The Howard Frye classical recording is excellent. Outstanding technique, a very different sound (not surprising, since it was a Gibson A junior, I think).

[John Craton]

Just FYI, here are some good places to go to try finding long out-of-print recordings:

A Classical Record
Ars Nova
Harold Moores
Mikrokosmos
Polyphony

[Jim Garber]

The Howard Frye classical recording is excellent. #Outstanding technique, a very different sound (not surprising, since it was a Gibson A junior, I think).

The only Howard Frye recording I am aware of is one called Gypsy Mandolin! These were pop, klezmer, Greek, Hungarian and Russian tunes. More folksy than classical, I would say.

I am listening to it right now and his playing is pretty nice tho you have to get past the 1950s/60s muzacky aesthetic.

He did play a Gibson A snakehead.

Are there more recordings of Frye? BTW his widow plays in the New York Mandolin Orchestra and I saw her at CMSA a few weeks ago.

Jim

[margora]

Jim: There are two Howard Frye recordings. One is the gypsy recording you are/were listening to. The second is a compilation of classical performances that Norman Levine put together. It is listed in the Plucked String catalog.

[Neil Gladd]

I couldn't stop myself. I bid and won it (no other bids). Will report when it arrives...

[Eugene]

I have the other Pettine disc at the comfortably cheaper unautographed price. A poignantly heartfelt effort and important historical document by one of our instrument's greats, but, as Jim says, Pettine was a reluctant recorder and did come to it a bit past his prime.

[Neil Gladd]

I met Walter Kaye Bauer (Siegel student, friend of Place and Pettine)shortly after hearing the Pettine recording. Bauer asked me what I thought of it, and I diplomatically said I wished I could have heard Pettine when he was younger. Bauer replied "Oh, he always sounded like that!" Since that's all there is, I geuss we'll never know. I read a column by Pettine from the 1930s and someone asked why he hadn't made any recordings. He said that he had had offers to record, but couldn't record the repertoire that he wanted so he had turned them down. I always thought it was interesting that Samuel Siegel, who was born in 1875, first recorded on Berliner discs and wax cylinders, and Pettine, who was born a year earlier, first recorded on an LP! (Record history note: Emile Berliner, a German immigrant who lived in Washington, DC, invented the record disc, so anything on his own label, is very rare and valuable.)

[Jim Garber]

I met Walter Kaye Bauer (Siegel student, friend of Place and Pettine)shortly after hearing the Pettine recording.

Congratulations, Neil. It is always good to keep those rare items in our mandolin "family".

Speaking of Bauer, did he ever record?

Jim

[RSW]

Conjecture but I would take Walter K's words with caution. Reading numerous reviews from the past and get an entirely different take on what he must have sounded like. Of the hundreds of clippings that I had examined from the late 19th century through the early 20s, there were only a couple of reviews that had reservations about his form (performance), and then it was in respects to a given whether it a given piece was appropriate to the mandolin (Beethoven's Kreutzer sonata!). When he made these LPs (probably runoff one takes down informally in the local studio for hire), #Pettine was way past his technical prime. Despite the faults, there is a special song like quality in his phrasing that I have heard in few other mandolinists of that era. From what I have heard in recordings of his contemporaries, though brilliant on a technical basis, few actually go beyond very superficial expressivity. Bauer had nothing to gain from promoting Pettine's legacy, and we all know how obsessed old artist's become with laying their scent down for history (like do we need anymore presidential libraries?). #Pettine's temperment was not suited for 'recording' and he probably subscribed to the philosophy of JP Sousa who thought that the advent of recordings will be the demise of live music (how true). This was related to me by Pettine's son and also by my teacher, Albert Bellson, who had been Pettine's assistant for a few years just after the war (WWI). I think we should all assess our own performance at the age of 86 or so and see how much smooth tremolo, clear trills, clean scales and punch we have left. I am not writing this to excuse his faults and decline, #evident in his recordings, rather to try and encourage listening to what is still left. My favorite example of this is his recording of the Bach 'Ciaccona' #(not available on LP), which has many wrong notes played with such expression that finally it isn't an issue if you listen to the music rather than to simply the notes. What we have today in the art of music is the equivalent of 'Scandinavian Furniture' syndrome, where the slightest blemish becomes a total disfigurement (no offense to my fellow norsemen, I am the better part norwegian of ancestry). #The only other contemporaries of his that really impressed me to such an extent with such communicative skills were Dounis, Bellson and, much later, Howard Frye, helas based only on what recordings I have had priviledge to hear.

[margora]

Re: Mr. Pettine and his concerto: the Providence Mandolin Orchestra is currently rehearsing this piece, to be performed with Mr. Walz as soloist in early February of next year, I believe, at the Providence Public Library (I am not sure of the exact date, I am away from Boston). Incidentally, at the last rehearsal a member of the orchestra who, as a young woman studied with Pettine (I believe in the late 1930s), brought in a copy of the solo part complete with his pencil markings. I have a copy of the score w/piano which, I assume, is what is recorded (I have not heard the recording).

[Eugene]

...Incidentally, at the last rehearsal a member of the orchestra who, as a young woman studied with Pettine (I believe in the late 1930s), brought in a copy of the solo part complete with his pencil markings. #I have a copy of the score w/piano which, I assume, is what is recorded (I have not heard the recording).

It is: Salvatore Fransosi at piano...and what a treasure that score must be! You are fortunate to have seen it, Robert...and fortunate to be entertaining Mr. Walz in its performance.

Hirokazu Nanya recorded the Pettine concerto with mandolin orchestra. His orchestral arrangement omits the banjos and winds, but I do not know its source. The orchestral sound is very nice. In spite of the fact that I believe Mr. Nanya to be in his prime, his is much more error-laden than Pettine's and certainly more strugglingly ponderous. His mandolin also features a horrifically irritating fret buzz.

[margora]

The PMO, no question, is omitting the banjo and the winds.

[RSW]

Nice to know that (omitting the banjo and winds), now I can re-arrange the arrangement I was just finishing the scoring of the wind parts in the last movement (I have only had reference to Pettine's own manuscript of the 1st and 2nd movements, the third was missing). Yet another bit of news to me is the existence of a recording by Nanya playing this concerto (perhaps he had a copy of the last movement score). Pettine never published this orchestration. Eugene, where can I find a copy of this recording? What scoring (instrumentation) did Nanya employ? Robert, aside from mandolins and guitars, are there any of the other instruments available for the Feb. 12th performance? I believe we need to sort this out pronto... truely looking forward to working with PMO.

[margora]

Richard: you have the full complement of the PMO: mando #1, mando #2, mandola, mandocello, mandobass (I am fairly sure, check with Mark or Josh), and classical guitar.

[Eugene]

A friend of mine living in Japan brought me a couple Nanya CDs from his Mandolin Melodies Museum in Nagoya, Richard. #I do not believe they are to be had outside of Japan. #I'd written to Mr. Nanya a couple times and never received reply. #This CD is entitled (as a few of his seem to be) Horokazu Nanya Mandolin Recital (2001. Nagoya Disk Co., Ltd., VXD-2A1438). #It's a live recording and as riddled with error as live performance often is. #The CD includes Calace's concerto, op. 144 and Ranieri's concerto accompanied by piano as well as Pettine's concerto accompanied by mandolin orchestra.

His Mandolin Orchestra Delfini d'oro is the typical assemblage of mandolin-family instruments, bass, and classical guitars (no banjo or winds) and sounds just fine. #As a solist (as I'd alluded), the persistent fret buzz of Mr. Nanya's favored mandolin is hard to stomach for long. #...Seems a little out of line for a mandolin that asked ca. US$10,000 in the 1990s, Kodama Kanoh's "Nanya Delica" model.

[Jim Garber]

Just a stupid question on my part... why perform the Pettine piece without the banjo and the winds? (Aside, of course for the usual banjo jokes).

I think it would be interesting to hear it as the composer intended.

Jim

[Alex Timmerman]

Hi Richard and Eugene,

Going through my music I found the parts of the 1st and 2nd mandolin-, the mandola-, mandoloncello-, guitar- and bass part of all the movements of the Pettine Concerto. This as well as the solo mandolin- and the piano part.

Clearly a setting intended to be performed as a Concerto for mandolin accompanied by a Mandolin (Chamber) Orchestra.

I think this version of the Pettine Concerto comes from the Jiri Nakano collection, but there is no indication that it is an arrangement made by him (Nakano). The parts only give ´Pettine´.


I´ll have a better look at it tomorrow morning.


Greetings,

Alex

[Jim Garber]

Is this Pettine Concerto #1, op. 46? I have two versions from the Nakano site. One is the printed version, what looks like a piano reduction or version. The "mandolino" part styats after 39 measures of rest.

The other is a handwritten one which may be Nakano's arrangement )or could possibly be Pettine's. Looking at the 1st mandolin part, it looks like it was the solo part (from the aforementioned version) transposed down an octave in the beginning).

I could send the files to anyone who wants it.

Jim

[margora]

Re: banjo/winds and the PMO. We're not doing winds because we don't have any. We could do banjos but I don't think we will.