and got to know classical music from my parents' quite sophisticated record collection. But they also bought some records specifically for me and my younger brother. Some of these are familiar enough: "Tubby the Tuba," of course, and Danny Kaye's "The Little Fiddle." But some others were on the long-gone label Young People's Records, and I must have played them often as I remember them well.The repertoire was not what you might expect. Two of the records (they were 78s, made of vinyl so that clumsy children couldn't break them) were titled "Country Dances" and "Everybody Dances," the music being some of Mozart's contredanses which he composed for the carnival balls in Vienna. Max Goberman conducted a chamber orchestra of freelancers that he used, under various names, for grown-up recording projects.
The other one I remember was "The Music of Aaron Copland for Young People"; it included brief excerpts from "A Lincoln Portrait," "Billy the Kid," "Appalachian Spring," and "El Salon Mexico," linked by a scripted dialogue between a mother and child, both adult actresses. Walter Hendl conducted members of the New York Philharmonic; he was their associate conductor at the time. A bit of that dialogue about "A Lincoln Portrait" has stuck in my memory these 70 years or so: "That music sort of feels like Abraham Lincoln, I mean the kind of man he must have been." Music appreciation for children, vintage 1948.
So why am I writing about these records, which I no longer have? Because I found two of them on YouTube. "Country Dances" is not there; its music is the 6 contredanses K. 462. But here's side 1 of "Everybody Dances," the contredanses K. 123. The flip side, not included here, is K. 609 nos. 1-3, the first being Mozart's arrangement of his hit tune "Non piu andrai".
I must remember that remarkably apt approbation when next you post a link...
