Tuesday, November 15, 2011

The Musical Art Quartet

The Musical Art Quartet, 1928
(photograph from the collection of Tully Potter)
This evening, I present one of two recordings made for Columbia's 1928 Schubert Centennial by the Musical Art Quartet (Sascha Jacobsen and Paul Bernard, violins; Louis Kaufman, viola, and Maria Roemaet-Rosanoff, cello), founded in 1926 by four students at the Institute of Musical Art in New York (now known as the Juilliard School), and still in existence in 1941, when Heifetz and Jesús Maria Sanromá made a famous recording of Chausson's Concert, Op. 21, with them.  One of its members, violist Louis Kaufman, achieved prominence later as a violinist in Hollywood (he left the Quartet in 1933), but at the time of the Quartet's founding, its leader, Sascha Jacobsen, was the famous one - he had been yet another Russian-Jewish child prodigy (and, as such, was immortalized in a 1922 Gershwin song, "Mischa, Jascha, Toscha, Sascha").  I originally offered their recording of Schubert's A minor Quartet, Op. 29, in May 2009:

Schubert: Quartet No. 13 in A minor, Op. 29, D. 804 and
Schubert: Quartet No. 11 in E, Op. 125, No. 2 - Minuetto
Musical Art Quartet
Recorded January 9, 11 and 12, and March 12, 1928
Columbia Masterworks Set No. 86, four 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 83.64 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 33.53 MB)

I suppose the Juilliard String Quartet, founded in 1946 and still going strong some sixty-five years later, can be considered a successor organization to the Musical Art Quartet, and so I present them too, in their first recording of Berg's "Lyric Suite" from an early Columbia LP.  The original lineup of the Quartet, consisting of Robert Mann and Robert Koff, violins; Raphael Hillyer, viola, and Arthur Winograd, cello, is heard on this recording:

Alban Berg: Lyric Suite
Juilliard String Quartet
Recorded April 19, 1950
Columbia Masterworks ML-2148, one 10-inch LP record
Link (FLAC files, 73.74 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 32.96 MB)

This was one of my earliest uploads, from May, 2007, made before I had done any transfers from actual 78s.  This recording was also issued as a 78-rpm set, Columbia MM-957, which, I imagine, is even rarer than the LP.  I don't believe this recording was ever reissued on a standard 12" LP.

4 comments:

  1. great ! thanks so much for all this.

    ReplyDelete
  2. How did I miss your post of this fabulous SQ? There is no way to consider the Julliard SQ as a successor to this group, not nearly in their league. Thank you so much for opening my ears to yet another great SQ. Their intonation and sonority are breathtaking.

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  3. A fine foursome, distinctly modern ensemble, closer to the Flonzaleys than to the Leners or Bohemian Quartet Quartet. They also recorded a memorable Haydn Op. 54/2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9cUemTjfEU
    The Juilliard's early Lyric Suite was issued on LP only in the form depicted. It has been reissued on CD (2011) in a set, West Hill WHRA 6040, UPC 5425008377827

    ReplyDelete
  4. A fine foursome, distinctly modern ensemble, closer to the Flonzaleys than to the Leners or Bohemian Quartet Quartet. They also recorded a memorable Haydn Op. 54/2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9cUemTjfEU
    The Juilliard's early Lyric Suite was issued on LP only in the form depicted. It has been reissued on CD (2011) in a set, West Hill WHRA 6040, UPC 5425008377827

    ReplyDelete