I should have been in Belgium the summer of 1975, after my sophomore year of college. Long story, about a girl, of course. Instead, I spent that summer working the night shift at a Cape Cod restaurant called the Hearth ‘n Kettle. I cooked, I bused tables, and I washed dishes. Back then the workers weren’t immigrants. The crew included the year-round locals and the summertime college kids. There was some flirting, and some of that paid off, but mostly we all just worked hard and got along.
A radio was always playing in the back room of the restaurant. The big songs that summer included “Love Will Keep Us Together” by The Captain and Tennille, “Rhinestone Cowboy” by Glen Campbell, and “Listen to What the Man Said” by McCartney and Wings. But the one that I never tired of hearing was, “I’m Not in Love” by 10cc.
By chance, while cleaning up my lists of favorite channels on the cable TV DVR, on Music Choice I happened to hear the beginning of a symphony that sounded interesting, by a Swedish composer I couldn’t recall ever hearing before. Kurt Atterberg.
I ended up sitting through the entire piece, and enjoyed it enough to buy a CD copy on Amazon. Here is Atterberg’s 8th symphony, taken from the same performance that I ordered:
Why is Kurt Atterberg’s name not more familiar? When he wrote his 8th symphony in the 40’s, Romantic music was still popular, at least with general audiences.
After ordering the CD I went looking for an answer, and found a possible explanation. Atterberg was believed to be a Nazi sympathizer.
Another musical figure with a Nazi connection, the German conductor Herbert Von Karajan, found terrific success after the war, but Atterberg’s career faded. He stayed on at his day job in Sweden’s patent office, apparently ignored and embittered.
Until February 2 the logo picture in the upper left corner will be the cover of one of my all-time favorite records, a 1971 recording by the BSO of “The Planets” by the English composer Gustav Holst. I am surprised and pleased that Deutsche Grammophon is putting the LP back in print, and my pre-ordered copy will be here on Friday.
“The Planets” is categorized as a suite, and not a symphony, but for all practical purposes a symphony it is. I first heard the Steinberg BSO recording of “The Planets” at the start of my freshman year of college. My roommate Brad played his copy on my then-new Dynaco A25 speakers, and I was totally blown away, as the old saying goes.
The legendary Dynaco A25 speaker, made in Denmark.
I certainly wasn’t unfamiliar with Classical music, but I did not yet have any Classical records in my collection. The previous April I had been in Boston Symphony Hall for the first time — not for a BSO concert, but with my girlfriend to see Randy Newman, whose warm-up acts were Sandy Denny and Martin Mull!
The suite was only 60 years old when I first heard it, and it was unlike any other symphonic music I had ever heard. “The Planets” inspired me to buy Classical records — on budget labels — almost exclusively for a while, including Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos and some Mozart Symphonies. Deutsche Grammophon isn’t a budget label, and for Christmas that year I requested my own copy of the Holst album. My mother worked in Concord, Massachusetts, and she bought a copy at a small record shop in the center of town. I was very excited and appreciative on Christmas morning, and I played the LP many times during the semester break.
Thanks in part to my generation’s embracing of “The Planets,” as well as the popularity of John William’s “Star Wars” score, Holst found his way into the standard symphonic repertoire. I still play my Christmas present from Mom, but those grooves have a lot of mileage on them, and I’m looking forward to having a new pressing. As YouTube sound quality goes, this transfer of an original copy of the LP is about as good as it gets. The record is in excellent condition, and the guy who posted it used a $700 Nagaoka MP-500 phono cartridge.
This video features Linda Ronstadt in the shiny striped dress with hoop earrings that were made famous by photographer Henry Diltz. It also shows why Capitol Records producer Nick Venet had studio musicians, rather than Linda’s band the Stone Poneys, play on her recording of Mike Nesmith’s song, “Different Drum.”
