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BadiMhe Four Suites

wilh I lainc SIkiIIlm’ (lliilc)

SIB-6085

SERAPHIM

"Angets of the highest order'

Expert performances In which one,
finds the best of ali possible worldf
: ... with scholarship scrupulous

enough to satisfy the most exacting
modern standards. And they
are rattling good entertainment, too,
T::. just as they were intended to be.

: C,J,Luten

in The American Record Guide

TWO DISCS

Bach

The Four Suites for Orchestra

Yehudi

Menuhin

conducting the

Bath Festival Chamber

Orchestra

Yehudi Menuhin’s
Original Recipe
for Recording Bach

I have been asked to write a few
words on the four orchestral Suites
of Bach.

For my own part, I would rather
the proof remained in the eating, as
in any case cooks are expected to
produce food, and not words, and
then the only words acceptable in a
cook’s mouth are the words of the
recipe. In my experience these are
the very words a cook will never
pronounce, which reduces me again
to preferring the diner’s comment to
my own. As for my recipe, the near¬
est analogy in cooking runs thus:

“Take a large turkey, stuff it with
a goose. Stuff the goose with a duck,
stuff the duck with a guinea-hen,
stuff the guinea-hen with a par¬
tridge, the partridge with a pigeon,
the pigeon with a woodcock, the
woodcock with a sparrow; fill the
sparrow with an olive. Cook the
whole for X number hours; then
throw away the turkey, and the goose
and the duck and the guinea-hen,
and the partridge and the pigeon
and the woodcock and the sparrow.
Serve the olivel’

And so it really is.

I hope the public will realize how
very precious is the olive. This olive
which, like the fish of the parable,
must feed a countless multitude.

Lest you have any worries about the
many excellent birds, they were

devoured in the kitchen. We gorged
ourselves to our heart’s content.

Those recording sessions, again
speaking for myself, were feasts.
Generations of cooks have left such
a vast choice of recipes.

Sometimes we tried plain, boiled
Bach with Aioli sauce— but there was
too great a discrepancy between the
bare meat and the rich sauce. Then
there was Bach a I’orange, served in
flaming Cointreau— somehow it
seemed overdramatic. (It is left to
the reader to guess whose recipes
those are.)

So we settled for good old English
roast Bach, with two veg. and three
oboes, and finally for pungency
added some ninth overtone— unfor¬
tunately we only had old spice; fresh
herbs were out of season.

The real test of the party was
ultimately whether or not we felt
like dancing. Sometimes we were
transported (E.M.I. will spare no
expense to achieve authenticity) to
masked balls in Venice, where of
course Nannie Jamieson and Muriel
Taylor came into their own in the
Forlane*— that was^ I am sorry to
say, as far east as we managed to get.
Sometimes, as at Versailles, where
we did a good deal of dancing-
minuets, gavottes, etc.— we invited
a group of peasants to do an old-
fashioned bourree. On the whole we
spent little time in Germany— and
the majestic pomp and circumstance
of the introductory movements were
all recorded in the studios of Ye Olde
Abbey Road, St. John’s Wood.

I would like to single out each one
of our players for particular praise,
as I would each one of the excellent
critics and technicians behind
the glass panel.

Suffice it, however, to express my
grateful thanks for suggestions and
inspiration, to Robert Masters, as to
Sidney Wilson, Patrick Ireland,
Derek Simpson, Archie Camden,
Eugene Cruft, and to those ever-
helpful and patient E.M.I. collabo¬
rators, Peter Andry, Ronald Kinloch
Anderson (both sides of the glass
panel), and Neville Boyling, etc.

—Yehudi Menuhin

*Viola player and ’cellist, respectively, in the
Forlane from Suite No. 1.

MANUFACTURED BY CAPITOL RECORDS, INC., A SUBSIDIARY OF CAPITOL INDUSTRIES, INC., HOLLYWOOD AND VINE STREEtS, HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA. FACTORIES: LOS ANGELES. CALIFORNIA, JACKSONVILLE, ILLINOIS. WINCHESTER. VIRGINIA

THIS RECORD IS ENGINEERED A MANUFACTURED

IN ACCORDANCE

STANDARDS DEVELOPED BY THE RECORDING INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA. INC

SlB-6085

Yehudi Menuhin made his first
appearance as conductor in 1945 in
Dallas. There, at the insistence of
his friend Antal Dorati, he con¬
ducted Wagner’s “Meistersinger”
Overture, the Schubert Eighth Sym¬
phony, and the Slavonic Dances of
Dvorak. The evening was a success,
but Menuhin’s career as violin vir¬
tuoso and his many other interests
precluded any further conducting
until 1959. In that year, he became
artistic director of the Bath Test ival
and began to conduct performances
of Mozart and Bach.

In 1 96 1 , Menuhin made a guest
appearance at London’s Roygil
Festival Hall, leading the Ltodon
Symphony Orchestra in works of
Bartok and Schubert. To his Bath
schedule, he added summer festival
performances in Gstaad, Switzer¬
land. When his association with
Bath concluded, he formed the
Menuhin Festival Orchestra to com¬
mence the distinguished series of
concerts, tours and recordings which
soon won Menuhin the conductor
worldwide renown to equal that of
Menuhin the violinist.

Menuhin’s conducted works of
Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Handel,
Vivaldi, Beethoven, Boyce and other
composers have been acclaimed on
both sides of the Atlantic. T he
Gramophone stated that Menuhin’s
performances of the Bach Branden¬
burg Concertos would represent for
other conductors “a challenge for
years to come!’ His complete record¬
ing of Handel’s Concert! gross! Op. 6
was named by T he New York T imes
as the best of all available versions.

This album makes newly available
on Seraphim recordings Menuhin’s
superb performances with the Bath
Festival Chamber Orchestra of
Bach’s Suites for Orchestra,

BWV 1 066 / 9. Of them, Denis
Stevens wrote in The Gramophone:
“This interpretation so easily sur¬
passes its competitors that a compar¬
ative review in the usual sense is
superfluous. The spiritual insight
and musical mastery that Menuhin
and his colleagues brought to the
Brandenburgs last year is now
applied to the four orchestral suites,
and the result is equally impressive,
in some ways even more so . . .This
pair of records should be in every
library, whether large or small!’

.. A NON PROFIT ORGANIZATION DEOtCATED TO THE BETTERMENT OF RECORDED MUSIC & LITERATURE.

PRINTED IN U S A

Bach

The Four Suites for Orchestra

In 1 6 1 8 the King o£ Spain joined
the Catholic Emperor of Germany
against the Protestants. A local strug¬
gle for power in Bohemia became
widespread and the Thirty Years
War had begun. By its end, with the
Treaty of Westphalia, Germany was
utterly exhausted — all central
government ceased and more than
three hundred independent princes
held absolute sway within their
tiny domains.

From all this unimaginable
turmoil arose some remarkable
developments in the field of the fine
arts generally, and in music in
particular. Germany became the
melting-pot for all that was great in
the surrounding countries. Italy
contributed charm and power of
melody; France gave music for the
harpsichord as well as its own special
kind of “Overture” developed by
Lully (1632-87).

Long before Bach’s time it had
been the custom to group together
two or more dance movements.

The English virginalists did it with

the Pavane and Galliard, and as
seen in “Parthenia” (1611). They
occasionally added a Prelude: so too
the Italian lutenists as shown by
the four books published in Venice
in 1507-8. Froberger (1616-67)
established a nucleus of four dances
(Allemande, Courante, Sarabande
and Gigue) to which others could be
added. The early Sonatas of Corelli
(1653-1713) are almost entirely
dance movements with a Prelude.
Couperin (1668-1733) seems to
imply that his sets of dances were not
necessarily to be performed as a
whole in the written order— instru¬
mentalists choosing whichever most
fitted their mood or circumstances.

In Germany these instrumental
suites were composed primarily by
or for the town musicians ( Stadt-
pfeifer J. To the dances they added
the French “Overture” of Lully
with its slow introduction, its faster
fugal middle section and its slow
conclusion. The dances increased in
number and began to move away
from a fixed order and pattern.

J. S. Bach’s father (Johann
Ambrosius), his uncle (Johann
Christoph) and grandfather (Chris¬
toph) were all town musicians, and
therefore it is perhaps not surprising
that Bach himself should contribute
something great to this class of
composition. The result is remark¬
able in every way. He so enriched
the established scheme of things
that, beside Bach’s work, the primi¬
tive model of Lully becomes almost
unrecognizable. Bach transports us
by his superb handling of instru¬
mental form and texture, his use of
highly cogent differentiation and
organization of his material and by
grandeur and sweep of his melody.
The fugal sections of the Overtures
are well developed, with striking
and sharply contrasted episodes.

In the dances themselves variety is
achieved by differing moods; one
strong, the other tender.

As Schweitzer wrote: “A fragment
of a vanished world of grace and
elegance has been preserved for us
. . . Their charm resides in the
perfection of their blending of
strength and grace!’

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