Auguste Mesnard was born November 17, 1875 in Cognac, France. He began his musical career as a violinist, studying at the Ecole Nationale de Musique d’Angoulème, and earning a first prize from there in 1891. After an unsuccessful audition to enter the Paris Conservatoire, one of his musical colleagues in Angoulème suggested that he take up the bassoon instead. He evidently took to the instrument right away, as he managed to gain entry to Eugène Bourdeau’s bassoon class at the Paris Conservatoire only two years later (November 1893). He won a first prize there in 1897, and went on to bassoon […]
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 […]
Most of the early recordings that feature the bassoon did so in a comical fashion. A handful of artists recorded Quentin Ashlyn’s song “The Bassoon” in the first decades of the 20th century, and I have in my collection a couple of very strange (at least to modern ears) “laughing records” from the same era that include the bassoon. In 1911, Carl Borgwald recorded Julius Fučík’s classic “Der Alte Brummbär” in 1911 (released as “Polka Fantastique” in the U.S.). And in 1918, Edison released two somewhat silly piccolo/bassoon duets: “The Elephant and The Fly” and “The Nightingale and the Frog”, […]