Music Album Review: '100 Fiedler Favorites: Boston Pops - Fiedler'
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| (C) 1994 BMG Classics, a division of Bertelsmann Music Group |
My father did not
invent the Boston Pops, although he was always delighted when people thought he
had. “Many think that way because I’ve been in it so long and there’s almost no
separation between Pops and Fiedler,” he said with uncharacteristic pride.
“It’s sort of a household term, and when you’ve done it so long, the two are
just as closely knit.” – Johanna
Fiedler writing about her father, Arthur,
in the liner notes for 100 Fiedler
Favorites.
I don’t remember exactly
when I discovered Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra. Certainly
not before I was 11 or 12; my widowed mom’s record and tape collection was
small and didn’t include any light classical music albums. And in the mid-1970s,
I didn’t own a lot of records, either. In fact, my one-and-only vinyl long-play
(LP) album was a 33-rpm compilation of waltz music by Josef and Johann Strauss,
Jr.
I do know, though, that I started watching Evening at Pops, PBS’s long-running series
of televised performances by the Boston Pops Orchestra, during the last years
of Arthur Fiedler’s nearly 50-year-long tenure as the ensemble’s conductor.
Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops: On the Beautiful Blue Danube
Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops: On the Beautiful Blue Danube
Fiedler was not the Boston Pops Orchestra’s first conductor –
he was actually the 18th musical director of the Boston Symphony’s
off-season ensemble, which began its long tradition of delighting audiences
with performances of light classical works, marches, orchestral arrangements of
popular songs, and – starting in the 20th Century – show tunes and
movie themes. But as the first American-born
musician to lead the orchestra was, in the words of the Boston Pops’ official
history, Fiedler “established the Boston Pops as a national icon” through a
plethora of recordings – mostly for the RCA Victor label – and on
nationally-televised concerts on Evening
at Pops.
I probably started watching Evening at Pops late in its fifth season (1975); Mom and I were living
in the Miami suburb of Westchester then, and the series – which ran on PBS until
the Boston Symphony, citing the cost of production, canceled it after the
2004-2005 concert season – was one of our favorite shows.
Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops: American Salute
Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops: American Salute
I received my first Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops
Orchestra recording shortly before I started high school at my alma mater,
South Miami Senior High, in the fall of 1980. It was, as I recall, a
multi-record box set issued by Reader’s Digest. It was through that huge
collection that I first heard music from Victory
at Sea, Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance No. 1” – a composition that millions
of high school graduates have heard at commencement ceremonies for more than 50
years – and Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” the revolutionary 1924 composition
that fused jazz with elements of classical music.
A recording – sold by Radio Shack in the late 1970s and
early ‘80s – also made its way into my cassette collection when I received my
first tape recorder/player in 1981. It had a smaller selection of music than
the Reader’s Digest collection of vinyl LPs, but ironically it outlived its
33-rpm counterparts. I still have that tape in a storage bin, even though I
have no tape deck to play it in.
100 Fiedler Favorites
Curiously, I didn’t
own any recordings by Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra on compact disc
(CD) until very recently. When I started buying recorded music on my own in my
teens, I purchased albums recorded by the Pops under the baton of Fiedler’s
successors John Williams and Keith Lockhart, first on audio cassettes and, since
the summer of 1990, CDs. It wasn’t a knock-on Maestro Fiedler; it was a
combination of shortsightedness and my need to keep my leisure-related expenses
under control.
A few months after my mom passed away, I decided to correct
this oversight by purchasing 100 Fiedler
Favorites, a seven-disc collection of CDs with – of course – 100 musical jewels
from various genres: light classical pieces, marches, waltzes, show tunes, movie
themes, and orchestral versions of pop and
rock songs made famous by such artists as Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Tony Bennett,
Stevie Wonder, Bobby Darin, and Roberta Flack.
As Fiedler’s daughter Johanna writes in the liner notes for 100 Fiedler Favorites:
Under my father’s direction,
the Boston Pops played almost everything. He was always quoted as he, in turn,
quoted Rossini: “The only bad music is the boring kind.” Going to a Pops concert
with my father conducting was certainly never boring…
It’s hard to imagine
now, but when my father began conducting the Pops, much of the light-classical
repertoire was rarely played. Symphony concerts concentrated on big works, and
the vast treasure trove of the kind of music found in this collection was
almost unheard – Sousa marches, Strauss waltzes, light, delectable works that
were being simply forgotten. My father, who had grown up hearing this music,
wanted to rectify the neglect. “I feel,” he said, “that much of this music needed
somebody to love it and caress it, to fondle it and perform it – not to look
down their noses at it like a dirty thing. This has kept me alive musically.
Maestro Fiedler left us nearly 40 years ago, but his philosophical
approach to presenting music survives and thrives.
The Boston Pops Orchestra – led for 13 seasons by Oscar-winning film composer
John Williams after Fiedler’s passing and, for the past 23 seasons, by Keith
Lockhart - is a natural treasure. The Pops now tours the U.S. and other countries
on a regular basis, and per the Boston Pops’ website,” Mr. Lockhart's tenure
has been marked by a dramatic increase in touring, the orchestra's first Grammy
nominations, the first major network national broadcast of the Fourth-of-July
spectacular from the Esplanade, and the release of the Boston Pops' first
self-produced and self-distributed recordings.”
There are, of course, many CD and digital albums recorded by
Maestro Fiedler – the grandfatherly conductor who did not believe there was any
music that should not be performed by his orchestra – and the Boston Pops
Orchestra. RCA Victor and other labels made hundreds of records during Fiedler’s
tenure, and selections from those albums can be found here. As any fan of the
Pops can attest, the music in 100 Fiedler
Favorites straddles many eras and many genres – from Baroque fugues by
Johann Sebastian Bach to Lennon-McCartney’s rock-and-roll era hit song “Eleanor
Rigby.”
This 1994 box set from BMG Classics, a division of Bertelsmann
Music Group contains 100 musical performances culled from recordings made
between 1956 and 1974. The tracks are distributed among seven CDs; each disc reflects
a specific theme. For instance, Discs One through Three focus primarily on
light-classical pieces; Disc Four is a collection of waltzes; Disc Five
features marches – some military, others from operas and operettas; Disc Six presents
“American” music by such composers as Copland, Gershwin, Cohan, and Rodgers; and
Disc Seven explores pop songs from the Big Band era all the way to the
Seventies.
I bought this box set at a difficult time in my life; my mom
had passed away in July of 2015 and I was trying to cope with the challenges of
living alone in the house we had shared for almost 40 years. Music – especially
music that my mom and I had listened to together when I was younger – helped me
endure the emotional angst I felt during those dark months of mourning and
turmoil. And because listening to Maestro Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra
assuaged the anxiety and the pain of losing my mother, I was able to get a grip
on things without losing my sanity.
The music, of course,
is beautiful. Whether it’s an overture from a Verdi opera (“Grand March” from Aida” or a cover of “Smoke Gets in
Your Eyes,” there is something for every fan of music. If you’re down and blue,
a stirring Sousa march – “The Stars and Stripes Forever” is a favorite of mine –
will have you toe-tapping and wanting to cheer. If you’re tense, a soothing
rendition of Brahm’s “Cradle Song” will calm and relax you – maybe even help
you fall asleep.
And if you’re in a jazzy mood – well, 100 Fiedler Favorites has you covered on that front, too. There are
some nice melodies from the Jazz and Big Band eras in this box set, including
Glenn Miller’s “Moonlight Serenade,” George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” and
Wingy Manone-Joe Garland’s “In the Mood.”
Whether you’re feeling – as the late and much lamented WTMI (Miami)
classical station’s promos used to say – classy or jazzy, 100 Fiedler Favorites is a highly enjoyable musical collection I heartily
recommend it.
Track Listing for 100 Fiedler Favorites
Disc 1
1. Suppe:
Light Cavalry Overture
2. Bach-Caulliet:
Little Fugue in G minor
3. Dinicu-Heifetz:
Hora Staccato
4. Prokofiev:
March from The Love for Three Oranges
5. Kreisler:
Tambourin chinois
6. Liszt:
Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2
7. Grieg:
Morning from Peer Gynt Suite No. 1
8. Wagner:
Ride of the Valkyries from Die
Walkure
9. Borodin:
In the Steppes of Central Asia
10. Weber:
Oberon: Overture
11. Copland:
Hoedown from Rodeo
12. Granados:
Intermezzo from Goyescas
13. Rossini:
William Tell: Overture
Disc Two
1. Suppe:
Poet and Peasant Overture
2. Nicolai:
The Merry Wives of Windsor: Overture
3. Wagner:
Prelude to Act III of Lohengrin
4. Brahms:
Hungarian Dance No. 6
5. Grieg:
Solvejg’s Song from Peer Gynt Suite
No. 2
6. Weber:
Der Freischutz: Overture
7. Borodin:
Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor
8. Mozart:
Sleigh Ride
9. Rimsky-Korsakov:
Procession of the Nobles from Mlada
10. Jessel:
Parade of the Wooden Soldiers
11. Enesco:
Roumanian Rhapsody No. 1
12. Khachaturian:
Sabre Dance from Gayne
Disc Three
1. Debussy:
Reverie
2. Wolf-Ferrari:
Dance of the Cammoristi from Jewels
of the Madonna
3. Bach:
Air on the G-String from Suite No. 3
4. Brahms:
Cradle Song
5. Handel:
Largo from Xerxes
6. Schubert:
Serenade
7. Rimsky-Korsakov:
Song of India from Sadko
8. Khachaturian:
Lullaby from Gayne Suite No.1
9. Drigo:
Serenade
10. Mendelsohn:
Spring Song
11. Toselli:
Serenade
12. Mascagni:
Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana
13. Boccherini:
Minuet from Quintet No. 11
14. Liszt:
Liebestraum
15. Tchaikovsky:
None but the Lonely Heart
16. Puccini:
Humming Chorus from Madama Butterfly
17. Humperdinck:
Dream Pantomime from Hansel and
Gretel
Disc Four
1. J.
Strauss, Jr.: Tales from the Vienna Woods
2. Waldteufel:
The Skater’s Waltz
3. J.
& Josef Strauss: Pizzicato Polka
4. J.
Strauss, Jr.: Wine, Women and Song
5. J.
Strauss, Jr.: Thunder and Lightning Polka
6. J.
Strauss, Jr.: Roses from the South
7. Lehar:
Waltzes from The Count of Luxemburg
8. Josef
Strauss: Music of the Spheres
9. J.
Strauss, Jr.: Acceleration Waltz
10. J.
Strauss, Jr.: On the Beautiful Blue Danube
Disc Five
1. Verdi:
Grand March from Aida
2. Herbert:
March of the Toys from Babes in
Toyland
3. Sousa:
Semper Fidelis
4. Tchaikovsky:
Marche miniature from Nutcracker
Suite No. 1
5. Gould:
Yankee Doodle
6. Morse:
Up the Street
7. Berlioz:
Rakoczy March from The Damnation of
Faust
8. Rodgers:
March of the Siamese Children
9. Ippolitov-Ivanov:
Procession of the Sardar from Caucasian
Sketches
10. Planquette:
Sambre et Meuse
11. Beethoven:
Turkish March from The Ruins of
Athens
12. Alford:
Colonel Bogey
13. Emmett-Black:
Dixie
14. Gould:
American Salute
15. Gershwin:
Strike Up the Band
16. Mendelsohn:
War March of the Priests from Athalie
17. Sibelius:
Alla marcia from Karelia
18. Gounod:
Funeral March of a Marionette
19. Elgar:
Pomp and Circumstance No. 1
20. Hansen:
Valdres March
21. Bagley:
National Emblem March
22. Sousa:
Stars and Stripes Forever
Disc Six
1. Gershwin:
Cuban Overture
2. Gershwin:
Rhapsody in Blue
3. Copland:
El Salon Mexico
4. Gould:
Gavotte
5. Gould:
Blues
6. Rodgers:
Slaughter on Tenth Avenue
7. Anderson:
The Typewriter
8. George
M. Cohan Medley (Give My Regards to Broadway; Mary’s a Grand Old Name; Little
Nelly Kelly; You’re a Grand Old Flag; You Remind Me of My Mother; Harrigan;
Yankee Doodle Dandy)
Disc Seven
1. Garland:
In the Mood
2. Lennon-McCartney:
Eleanor Rigby
3. Parish-Carmichael:
Stardust
4. Brecht-Weill:
Mack the Knife from The Three-Penny
Opera
5. Popp-Cour:
Love Is Blue
6. Kern-Harbach:
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
7. Presley-Matson:
Love Me Tender
8. Anderson:
The Syncopated Clock
9. Raskin:
Laura
10. Lai-Barouh-Keller:
A Man and a Woman
11. Miller-Parish:
Moonlight Serenade
12. MacColl:
The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face
13. Calero-Monterde:
La Virgen de la Macarena from The
Brave Bulls
14. Mancini-Mercer:
Moon River
15. Mancini-Mercer:
Days of Wine and Roses
16. Herman:
Mame
17. Cory-Cross:
I Left My Heart in San Francisco
18. Wonder:
You Are the Sunshine of My Life
19. Gade:
Jalousie
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