On Tue, 23 Jun 1998, Douglas Clark wrote:
> I was talking to Fred Beake last night about my Bloodaxe LP of
> `Briggflats' which has Basil reading to the music. He says it is
> not the Stream recording which is a different thing (and may not
> have the music?). There must be two recordings around.
- This would be the Bloodaxe recording then, with George Malcolm playing
(on record) the Scarlatti and a godawful fadeout ending... Bunting was
much older, slower at this point (than at the time of the Stream
recording); a very different set of performance weights apply. It's good,
but it very nearly comes unstuck at the Harpsichord bit: Malcolm favours a
system of repeats which is radically different to that preferred by
Valenti, Kirkpatrick, Bunting and most performers since. Thus:
Kirkpatrick et al:
||:a:b:||:a1:b1:||
Malcolm:
||:a:b:a1:b1:||
Malcolm's version is perfectly "valid" is musicological terms, but BB
hadn't been aware of it. You can hear him coming to what should be the
double bar of the first half, and hiccuping because Malcolm goes on, not
back. Thereafter the harpsichord is a kind of pleasant background noise,
rather than a real structural element of the poem. It's also a pity that -
for length reasons no doubt - the other four Scarlatti sonatas which
should go between movements are left out. The Stream recording, to be
sure, has no Scarlatti at all, but is a good, sharp, straight reading.
RC
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