Bell Telephone Calling - musical DVDs from Bell Telephone Hour TV show

National Review, Sept 30, 2002 by Jay Nordlinger

When the CD came along, a lot of us were nervous: You mean we'll have to get rid of our LPs and tapes? You mean we'll have to re-buy? But the pure convenience of a CD soon won us over, even if a few of us were suspicious about that sound -- which seemed to come from nowhere, ungrounded.

Now the DVD is upon us, in spades, and videocassettes will perhaps go the way of the dodo (or the LP, for that matter). The DVD -- a shiny little disc just like the CD -- is an inarguable blessing. One can skip around, just as on a CD, with no tiresome reversing or fast-forwarding. The DVD is mainly a bonanza for movies, I suppose -- just as with a videocassette -- but music-lovers have a reason to rejoice, too. All those who want to see their music should be pleased.

And what is there to see? Well, mainly opera, of course, the most "visual" of the types of music. But there is utility in seeing orchestral concerts and recitals, too, if only to satisfy curiosity: What did so-and-so look like? How did he present himself? What was his magnetism, if any, in the hall?

Video Artists International is an invaluable source for historic CDs, videos, and -- increasingly, as the medium rises -- DVDs. The company offers a nice menu of these "video discs," prominent among them complete operas, of course. We see -- not only hear, but see -- Joan Sutherland's Norma, with the late Tatiana Troyanos as Adalgisa. We see Beverly Sills's Violetta, in La Traviata -- one of her most distinguished roles.

But we also see some old television. There was a time when classical music had a place on TV, and not just public TV, a few times a year. The fearsome Toscanini reigned supreme in NBC's Studio 8-H. Leonard Bernstein staged his Young People's Concerts. And The Bell Telephone Hour had a run from 1959 to 1968. You could see about anything on the Hour: a jazz band, Maria Tallchief and Rudolf Nureyev in a pas de deux, a comedy routine, and Birgit Nilsson singing the Immolation Scene. That's during the same hour, by the way.

The show was the baby of Donald Voorhees, the silver-maned conductor and all-purpose music man from Allentown, Pa. He got his start on Broadway, then linked up with radio. His Bell hour started on radio in 1940, then moved to TV -- to Studio 8-H, in fact -- in '59.

Video Artists International has culled segments from the TV episodes and fashioned them into several videocassettes and DVDs: We have the ballet dancers, and singers, and violinists, and pianists. Since opera stars hog a lot of attention in the wider culture, we'll have a look at the pianists and violinists, on two amazing, illuminating DVDs.

The Great Pianists DVD features ten pianists, in a variety of music, most of it of the "popular" kind: the Grieg Concerto, that sort of thing. The proceedings occur with great dignity, even solemnity. Everyone is garbed in concert tails, and takes formal, silent bows (there seems to have been no studio audience). Baldwin Pianos must have been a sponsor of this show, because we have many, many shots -- unavoidable shots -- of the Baldwin name on the Bell piano.

First up is Claudio Arrau, the Chilean pianist, at the height of his powers in 1962, when he was 59. The eccentricities that were to mark his later years had not set in. He plays the Rondo of Beethoven's Emperor Concerto, and does so bracingly, manfully. And Don Voorhees turns out to be a creditable conductor, even if he doesn't threaten Fritz Reiner's reputation.

Next comes the Cuban pianist Jorge Bolet in Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue -- and Voorhees relinquishes the podium for Paul Whiteman! It was Whiteman, of course, who conducted the premiere of the Rhapsody, with the composer at the piano, in 1924, a full four decades before this Bell telecast. Imagine knowing what Paul Whiteman looked like -- while conducting! But then, now there's no need to imagine. Here, he is immensely dignified, even stately, as though reluctant to appear too much the jazzman before a national television audience. But at one point the camera catches him in a sweet, amused, grateful smile. Priceless -- and a visual benefit, not an aural one. Bolet, unsurprisingly, is excellent.

It's good to see, and hear, the American pianist John Browning, playing the last movement of Brahms's D minor concerto at age 30. He seems to have drifted away from the concert scene now. This performance is intense, fast, and gripping. It is a young buck's performance, full of impetuosity -- and Brahms would have loved it. The movement is truncated -- so is Gershwin's Rhapsody, for that matter -- in accordance with the demands of television. Browning takes the final section of the movement like the wind, leaving poor Voorhees and the boys far behind.

A particular treat is to see Robert Casadesus, the Frenchman known especially for his Impressionism (Debussy, Ravel) and Mozart. (Curiously, the two repertories have often gone together.) Here, however, he plays Beethoven, at which he was equally adept. The third movement of the "Appassionata" Sonata is classic Casadesus, which is to say disciplined, rigorous, and sharply etched. One has to pinch oneself a little: This was American television? Prime time?