Hindemith: String Trio No. 2 (Goldberg, Hindemith, Feuermann)

Front of booklet for Columbia Set 209

This may not be a particularly rare recording, having been reissued numerous times on CD labels devoted to historical recordings (the current availability of these, however, may be another matter). But I have come across a nice early US pressing of the set, complete with its booklet of program notes containing an analysis of the piece (by Roy Harris, of all people), and so here it is:

Hindemith: String Trio No. 2 (1933)
The Hindemith Trio (Goldberg-Hindemith-Feuermann)
Recorded January 21, 1934
Columbia Masterworks Set No. 209, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 64.74 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 42.17 MB)

This set has the distinction of containing the first work of Hindemith to be issued on records in the USA on domestic pressings (April, 1935); hitherto, American record collectors interested in Hindemith had to rely on imported pressings (mostly from Polydor). The recording remained available until the end of Columbia's production and sale of classical 78s, about 1951 or so.

The week of this recording saw a flurry of activity in the studio for these three gentlemen. Also on January 21 (a Sunday), Goldberg and Hindemith recorded a Mozart duo (K. 424), then, the following day, the full trio recorded Beethoven's Serenade (Op. 8). On Tuesday, January 23, Goldberg had to leave for a concert tour; coming to the studio to bid his colleagues farewell, he found them listening to the playback of a Scherzo that Hindemith had written that morning for himself and Feuermann! This was intended as a filler for a recording Hindemith made the same day, on five 10-inch sides, of his solo viola sonata (Op. 25, No. 1), though in the end it was not used as such, being released instead in the Columbia History of Music, Vol. 5. On Saturday, January 27, Feuermann recorded Hindemith's solo cello sonata to complete this valuable little group of recordings. All of them were made available on American Columbia during the 1930s, though only the two trios and the Scherzo survived the purge of wartime deletions.