Weber Rondo for Children

I’ve writ­ten pre­vi­ous­ly about the three ear­li­est record­ings of Carl Maria von Weber’s Andante and Hungarian Rondo — two fea­tur­ing German-American bas­soon­ist William Gruner (1920 and 1926), and one with French bas­soon­ist Fernand Oubradous (1938). As a num­ber of peo­ple point­ed out, I left out anoth­er ear­ly record­ing by Eli Carmen from the late 40s. I did­n’t have a copy at the time, but I’ve man­aged to get my hands on one now. This one’s a bit of an odd­ball: it’s only the Rondo, it was record­ed for a chil­dren’s record label, and it was released on a vinyl 78rpm disc. As far as I can tell, this record­ing has nev­er been rere­leased, but you can lis­ten to it below.

Eli Carmen

Elias Carmen was born in New York in 1912 to Russian immi­grant par­ents. His father was a tai­lor.¹1920 United States Federal Census, Brooklyn Assembly District 2, Kings, New York (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, microfilm publication T625, roll T625_1146, page 6A). He start­ed on the French sys­tem, but switched to the German bas­soon when he began stud­ies with Simon Kovar. Carmen and Sol Schoenbach were the first two German bas­soon stu­dents at Juilliard.²Sol Schoenbach, "Remembrances of Eli," To The World's Bassoonists 4, no. 1 (Summer 1974). Carmen played with many orches­tras dur­ing his car­er, most notably the Minneapolis Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the NBC Symphony, and the New York City Ballet. He taught at both the Manhattan School of Music and Yale. Carmen died fol­low­ing an auto acci­dent on December 21, 1973.³Mrs. Ivan Kempner, "Elias Carmen - Farewell," To The World's Bassoonists 4, no. 1 (Summer 1974).

Carmen appeared on a great num­ber of orches­tral record­ings with the NBC Symphony, as well as record­ings of cham­ber music by Beethoven, Ludwig Spohr, Arthur Berger, and Mel Powell. He also record­ed Vivaldi’s Concerto in G minor, “La Notte” with flutist Julius Baker on Odyssey.⁴Donald MacCourt, "Elias Carmen on Recordings," To The World's Bassoonists 4, no. 1 (Summer 1974). But this par­tial Weber is his only tru­ly solo recording.

YPR 1009 Cover

Young People’s Records was estab­lished in the late 1940s, and sold records on a sub­scrip­tion mod­el. Existing chil­dren’s records were meant to be played for chil­dren by their par­ents or teach­ers. But YPR want­ed kids (ages 2 to 11) to actu­al­ly use the records them­selves. To this end, YPR was one of the first com­pa­nies to exclu­sive­ly use the then-new flex­i­ble vinylite for their discs, rather than the old­er and much more frag­ile shel­lac. A large quan­ti­ty of the record­ed mate­r­i­al was writ­ten specif­i­cal­ly for YPR — main­ly songs in var­i­ous styles, but also instru­men­tal works and even mini-operas. YPR’s edi­to­r­i­al board, which includ­ed emi­nent American com­posers and teach­ers Howard Hanson and Douglas Moore, no doubt encour­aged the preva­lence of new com­mis­sions. Recordings of Classical or Romantic com­posers, such as Weber, com­prised a rel­a­tive­ly small por­tion of YPR’s cat­a­log.⁵David Bonner, Revolutionizing Children's Records: The Young People's Records and Children's Record Guild Series, 1946—1977 (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2008).

Records of YPR’s record­ing ses­sion dates evi­dent­ly haven’t sur­vived, but Eli Carmen’s Rondo was released in November 1949. Max Goberman con­duct­ed this and YPR’s oth­er clas­si­cal selec­tions, and what’s billed here as the “YPR Symphony Orchestra” was assem­bled large­ly from Goberman’s own New York Sinfonietta. YPR empha­sized music’s edu­ca­tion­al and devel­op­men­tal ben­e­fits in both its adver­tis­ing and its pack­ag­ing. The text on this record’s sleeve give a kid-friend­ly expla­na­tion of Rondo form:

Rondo for Bassoon and Orchestra
by Carl Maria Von Weber (pro­nounced Fon Vaber) 1786 — 1826

When you tell an idea in words, it is called a sto­ry. When you tell an idea in music, it is called a melody. Just as you can tell a sto­ry in many dif­fer­ent ways, so you can tell a melody in many dif­fer­ent ways — and one of those ways is a ron­do. (Other ways are march­es, dif­fer­ent kinds of dances, sonatas, sets of vari­a­tions. None of these ways of telling a melody have words or sto­ries attached to them.)

The ron­do way of telling musi­cal ideas is to keep com­ing back to the first idea, or melody. In this ron­do — its full name is Hungarian Rondo for Bassoon and Orchestra — we hear a melody, then a new melody, then the first melody, then anoth­er new melody, then the first melody again. Sometimes these melodies are played by the bas­soon alone, some­times by the orches­tra alone and some­times by bas­soon and orchestra.

And a fur­ther note “To Parents” explains why this par­tic­u­lar work was cho­sen for the series:

…Young People’s Records believes the ron­do to be a good form for chil­dren’s lis­ten­ing because it is read­i­ly appar­ent and accept­able. The recur­rence of a basic melody is some­thing the child can eas­i­ly fol­low with­out becom­ing lost in intri­cate prob­lems of design and form. We have cho­sen this par­tic­u­lar ron­do for chil­dren because of the appeal of the bas­soon as an instrument.…

Both labels of my disc—a later Children's Record Guild release, originally recorded for Young People's Records.

Hear Eli Carmen’s Rondo here:

For more about Young People’s Records and the Children’s Record Guild, see David Bonner’s 2008 book Revolutionizing Children’s Records and his web site. The Shellackophile has also dig­i­tized and post­ed a num­ber of YPR titles, which you can down­load (thanks to him for the image of the cov­er above, as it’s miss­ing from my disc).

Notes:

• 1
  1920 United States Federal Census, Brooklyn Assembly District 2, Kings, New York (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, micro­film pub­li­ca­tion T625, roll T625_1146, page 6A).
• 2
  Sol Schoenbach, “Remembrances of Eli,” To The World’s Bassoonists 4, no. 1 (Summer 1974).
• 3
  Mrs. Ivan Kempner, “Elias Carmen — Farewell,” To The World’s Bassoonists 4, no. 1 (Summer 1974).
• 4
  Donald MacCourt, “Elias Carmen on Recordings,” To The World’s Bassoonists 4, no. 1 (Summer 1974).
• 5
  David Bonner, Revolutionizing Children’s Records: The Young People’s Records and Children’s Record Guild Series, 1946—1977 (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2008).

• 1
  1920 United States Federal Census, Brooklyn Assembly District 2, Kings, New York (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, micro­film pub­li­ca­tion T625, roll T625_1146, page 6A).
• 2
  Sol Schoenbach, “Remembrances of Eli,” To The World’s Bassoonists 4, no. 1 (Summer 1974).
• 3
  Mrs. Ivan Kempner, “Elias Carmen — Farewell,” To The World’s Bassoonists 4, no. 1 (Summer 1974).
• 4
  Donald MacCourt, “Elias Carmen on Recordings,” To The World’s Bassoonists 4, no. 1 (Summer 1974).
• 5
  David Bonner, Revolutionizing Children’s Records: The Young People’s Records and Children’s Record Guild Series, 1946—1977 (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2008).