Uploaded by sanfranphono on Jul 27, 2009
John McCormack, the great Irish tenor, was a great interpreter of the German lied, though he actually recorded only very few Lieder.
His somewhat spotty command of the German language may be a reason that we do not have more of his sublime interpretations.
This extraordinary record was recorded on 31 MAY 1932, Studio 3, Abbey Road, London, with EDWIN SCHNEIDER, piano. Originally unpublished, it was later included in the great Hugo Wolf Society collection.
Recorded on the fabulous 1946 CAPEHART Phonograph.
Occasional distortions are digital artifacts.
The spliced in footage is of a 1929 John McCormack concert:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnuUwY8bX1w&feature=PlayList&p=F090FA6...
Illustrations run the gamut from Greek statuary to Japanese woodprints.
Hugo Wolf, the depressed and misanthropic Austrian, was the most intense of German Lied composers, plumbing the emotional depths of the lyrics in unheard expressive intensity.
It was only natural that he should be drawn to the poems of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, this all-knower and all-loving of German Poets.
Composed in Goethes Sturm-und-Drang period of 1770, Ganymed is one of a series of poems exploring the experience of the Divine from the perspective of the mortal.
In an additional twist, Goethe here uses his own pantheistic belief that the God can be found in Nature, Nature being an expression of the all-encompassing Divinity.
GANYMED
=========
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
How in the morning light
You glow around me,
Spring, Beloved!
With love's thousand-fold bliss,
to my heart presses
Your eternal warmth,
a sacred feeling,
endless beauty!
Would that I could clasp
You in these arms!
Ah, at Your breast
I lie and languish,
and Your flowers and Your grass
rush themselves to my heart.
You cool the burning
thirst of my breast,
lovely morning wind!
The nightingale calls,
loving, for me from the misty vale.
I am coming, I am coming!
but whither? To where?
Upwards I strive, upwards!
The clouds float
downwards, the clouds
bow down to yearning love.
To me! To me!
In Your lap
upwards!
Embracing, embraced!
Upwards to Your bosom,
All-loving Father!
The Capehart De Luxe Turn-Over Record Changer was the epitome of luxury radio-phonographs.
Check out more photos and description of the machine here:
http://myvintagetv.com/Carsten%20Sales%20Ads/salelist.htm
Produced unchanged from 1930 - 1950, updated electronics always provided the finest in high fidelity with the unsurpassed Capehart Record changer.
The changer is a true engineering marvel of precision careful handling of records, and plays 16 records on both sides.
The post-war Capeharts are the finest machines Capehart ever sold: The GE Variable Reluctance Cartridge (8 grams) and powerful tube electronics provide a Fidelity and Volume that is still unsurpassed.
It makes 78 RPM records sound better than any other way of reproduction.
A word to the sound:
I have recorded the actual record on the machine with an external condensor mike. Volume has been adjusted to maximum level. If you find that the volume of my videos are lower than on other videos, the reason may be the absence of artificial compression and volume boosting.
Enjoy.
Check out more great tunes and amazing vintage phonographs at My YouTube Videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q342zZx4id0
More about this and other machines
on my Changer Website
http://myvintagetv.com/updatepages1/changer%20videos/changer_videos.htm
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Uploader Comments (sanfranphono)
Video Responses
All Comments (18)
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Clarkson writes that Newton Arvin attempted suicide at least three times... "One of those attempts was stamped with a particular, telling pathos. It was the winter, and he walked around a pond near his apartment to watch a group of skaters, ruby-cheeked in the frigid air and glowing with the undimmed vitality of youth..."
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"Newton would have traded everything he had done and all he had written if he could have exchanged places with one of those robust young athletes skating effortlessly across the ice. After gazing at them for some time, he trudged home to his apartment, opened a bottle of liquor, and played over and over, a recording of John McCormack singing Hugo Wolf's Ganymede."
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I generally admire JM, but here I find it painful and laborious!
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@heathfieldclose A native German I knew liked John's German with that delicious brogue. I think g. Moore accompanied on this, but Teddy Schneider used to help the Master with his German diction.
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I own a copy of the HMV 78 of McCormack doing this song. It is definitive.
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It was very clever to synch the short clip of Teddy and John performing to the 1932 HMV recording [which was with Schneider, not Moore]! They might almost have been performing the same song on film - but is that possible?
In 1932 John sang Gerontius, and Fred Gaisberg was keen to record the complete oratorio with McCormack and Elgar, but HMV bosses ruled it out.
That would have been worth hearing!
saltburner2 9 months ago
@saltburner2 No, just careful adjustting of the video clip, and perhaps some tweaking of the video so that the mouth movements seem resonable.
Didn't know that McCormack did Gerontius, would have been a treat, though Widdop is divine too.
sanfranphono 9 months ago
Thanks for the comment. This was canned a translation from the web. I just made sure that there was no major mistake.
Artwork and the Mythos of Ganymed - read the Wikipedia entry - hugely interesting. From Plato to the Christian interpretation of G as a prefiguration of St. John. You have to love these old archetypical Myths. And of course Goethe, who would spin them back- and forwards : )
sanfranphono 2 years ago