It is a delightful suite for children, certainly programmatic music with
13 movements, with texts for each movement in German, French, English,
Spanish and Russian. The jacket has the UNICEF logo and it says: "To
benefit Unicef". The movements are:
1) Come on kids! 2) Mister wind lets the tulips sing 3) the duck's
sermon 4) Here's a riddle 5) Old fir tree, you are too far from the sky
6) The beetle's dance 7) The nightsong of the fish 8) Crazy ride on a
wild horse 9) Hedgehog, where are you? 10) Green prayer 11) Quacks of
thanks: One hedgehog turns into two 12) Rain in the sprinkling can 13)
That's all!
The 2 URANIA recordings I have were both issued in 1952. The
Shostakovich 7th symphony was later re-isued by Grammophono (AB 78685),
and I bought it through CD NOW, and the Debussy and Roussel's Petite
Suites were re-issued by ARLECCHINO ( ARL 157). I bought this in a
regular CD store in Miami.
The Decca recording of Tchaikovsky's 5th and The Nutcracker, I
originally had an LP of the German Decca series called "Dokumente", but
later bought the CD (LONDON/DECCA 425 958-2), of the "Historic" series.
This was when Celi was still an obscure name among most people. Now you
can buy his CDs even in record Clubs!
I got the very old LPs as an onheritance, but many pirate LPs were
issued by a now extinct firm, Rococo records of Canada. The Japanese
issued his videos for years (I bought the Munich-Phil. Tchaikovsky's
fifth 1981 video in Tokyo, and they had also then (1988) Fournier's
Dvokar Concerto, a Bruckner Mass and other things in video. Unlucky me,
seeing all that with only a few yen in my pocket! They are discontinued
now, according to our friend Isozaki from beltran.
I sure wish there are more videos in the future, especially those from
Stuttgart and the RAI. There is an excellent one of Tchaikovsky's 4th.
Symphony (Black and white but stereo), in some sort of greek
amphitheater. I took the maestro to a TV interview here in Caracas in
1977, and watched part of that video. He said it was a good
performance,, and that he had had 12 rehearsals, 6 of them outdoors.
By the way, the EMI re-issue of the Brahms/Mendelssohn/Prokofiev I
mentioned in my previous letter is still available in Japan. I got it
last month from Beltran.
Last, it would be wonderfull for kids all over the world if
Taschengarten is re-issued. I would suggest Serge Celebidachi to produce
a film with his father's music. The recording is there, with an
excellent version, supervised by the maestro himself (It's interesting
to see the pictures on the jacket, with the Maestro conducting among
several microphones!) It beats the hell out of so many mediocre
children music I have had to conduct!