The Coolidge Quartet Completed (II)

Victor Chapman, 1916

Here is the next installment of my Coolidge Quartet series. The "Music for Four Stringed Instruments" by Charles Martin Loeffler, based on a Gregorian chant for Easter Sunday ("Resurrexi"), was composed to honor the memory of Victor Chapman, the first American aviator to be killed in the First World War - in 1916, a year before the USA itself actually entered that war. Loeffler, evidently, was a friend of Chapman's father. The piece makes unusual demands on the cellist, who must, several times during the second movement, tune the lowest string down while playing it. This was the first recording of the work, and the Coolidge Quartet's second recording of anything:

Loeffler: Music for Four Stringed Instruments (1917)
The Coolidge Quartet (Kroll-Berezowsky-Moldavan-Gottlieb)
Recorded May 27, 1938
Victor Musical Masterpiece set DM-543, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 63.82 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 43.86 MB)

The Coolidge Quartet's version of Beethoven's G Major Quartet, Op. 18, No. 2, competed directly in Victor's catalogue with one by the Budapest Quartet. Irving Kolodin, in his 1941 "Guide to Recorded Music," preferred the Coolidge version, saying that "the Coolidges have apparently made a particular study of this work, for they play it with extraordinary grace and flexibility. Comparatively the Budapest performance is a bit heavy-handed though superbly executed."

Beethoven: Quartet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 18, No. 2
The Coolidge Quartet (Kroll-Berezowsky-Moldavan-Gottlieb)
Recorded April 28, 1939
Victor Musical Masterpiece set M-622, four 10-inch 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 53.54 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 36.55 MB)

Loeffler: Partita for Violin and Piano

Charles Martin Loeffler, 1917
(pencil sketch by John Singer Sargent)

81 years and one week ago today, May 19, 1935, the Alsatian-born American composer Charles Martin Loeffler died in Medford, Massachusetts, at the age of 74. Two and a half weeks later, Odessa-born violinist Jacques Gordon (1899-1948) began recording one of Loeffler's last works, his four-movement Partita of 1930, an unaccountably neglected work of which I can trace no subsequent recording. Gordon's partner in this undertaking was Lee Pattison (1890-1966), better known as one-half of the Maier and Pattison piano duo that was popular during the 1920s. The set was issued by Columbia late in 1936 or early in 1937, and is quite rare, because it was deleted from the catalogue upon CBS's takeover of Columbia in 1939:

Loeffler: Partita for Violin and Piano (1930) and
Loeffler (arr. Gordon) Peacocks, Op. 10, No. 4
Jacques Gordon, violin; Lee Pattison, piano
Recorded June 5, 12, and July 30, 1935
Columbia Masterworks Set No. 275, four 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 92.60 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 54.43 MB)

The movements of Loeffler's Partita, dedicated to Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, are an Intrada, loosely in the form of a Baroque ouverture à la française, a Sarabande (by Mathieson) with 5 variations, a Divertissement with echoes of tango and ragtime (!), and a Finale des tendres Adieux whose opening reminds me strongly of the last movement of Brahms' first violin sonata, though the musical language is nothing like Brahms.

This recording appears to be Jacques Gordon's only one of a large-scale work for violin and piano. He was much more active in the recording studios as a quartet leader. The Gordon String Quartet made some dozen recordings for Columbia, Schirmer, and Concert Hall; for the last-named label they recorded William Schuman's Third Quartet.

Griffes: Poem for Flute and Orchestra

Here is something that will delight flute fans and fans of American music: the first-ever recording of the impressionistic Poem for Flute and Orchestra, composed in 1918 by Charles Tomlinson Griffes (1884-1920), who is pictured above.  It is played, magnificently, by Joseph Mariano (1911-2007), Professor of Flute at the Eastman School of Music from 1935 to 1974, with Eastman's director, Howard Hanson, leading the Eastman-Rochester Symphony Orchestra.  This is from a somewhat battered copy of Victor 11-8349, recorded May 8, 1942 - and not helped by the fact that it was pressed during World War II in recycled shellac!  But the beauty of the performance, I think, makes up for the less-than-perfect sound.

Link (FLAC file, 23.26 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 10.2 MB)

Arguably, no other man ever did more for the cause of American classical music than Howard Hanson, who once estimated that over 2,000 works by 500 American composers (including, of course, himself) were premiered in Rochester during his 40-year tenure as director of the Eastman School.  Earlier I posted to RMCR several of Hanson's early Victor recordings with the Eastman-Rochester Orchestra, including two of his own works.  These are still available for download.  The details:

Howard Hanson: The Lament for Beowulf, Op. 25

with the Eastman School Choir
Recorded May 7, 1941

and

Spencer Norton: Prologue from Dance Suite
Recorded May 9, 1941

Victor set DM-889, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 52.27 MB)

Link (MP3 files, 25.72 MB)

Howard Hanson: Symphony No. 1 in E minor, Op. 21 ("Nordic")
Recorded May 7, 1942

Victor set DM-973, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 65.99 MB)

Link (MP3 files, 29.36 MB)

Charles Martin Loeffler: A Pagan Poem, Op. 14 (after Virgil)

Piano obbligato: Irene Gedney; English horn: Richard Swingly
Recorded May 10, 1941

Victor set DM-876, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC file, 56.21 MB)

Link (MP3 file, 27.85 MB)