Schubert: Quartet in E-Flat (Musical Art Quartet)

Some years ago, I uploaded two of the Musical Art Quartet's major recordings for Columbia, made during 1927 and 1928, noting there were three in total. Well, here's the third and last, one of the group's two contributions to the Schubert Centennial celebrations in 1928:

Schubert: Quartet No. 10 in E-Flat Major, D. 87 (Op. 125, No. 1)
Recorded March 28, 1928
and
Schubert (arr. Conrad Held): Hark, Hark, the Lark (D. 889)
Recorded April 11, 1928
The Musical Art Quartet (Jacobsen, Bernard, Kaufman, Roemaet-Rosanoff)
English Columbia 9473 through 9475, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 60.18 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 35.75 MB)

This set was actually issued in Britain one month before it was issued in the USA, its country of origin. In the USA, it was the last of the Schubert Centennial sets to be issued -- as Masterworks Set No. 96, in December, 1928, coming after Set No. 97, the Octet, which had been issued the previous month. It was viewed as a holdover by the Phonograph Monthly Review, whose editor called the piece "an interesting little work, but hardly as significant as some of the other Schubert recordings."

Sascha Jacobsen (1895-1972), the leader of the Musical Art Quartet, had been an exclusive Columbia artist for nine years (since 1918) when he founded the ensemble. His last recordings for the company as a soloist were made the day after the Quartet's filler side for this set, though the Quartet would continue to record short pieces for Columbia until 1930.

Haydn by the Musical Art Quartet

The Musical Art Quartet, 1926-27

Last fall, when I was doing my "reissues," I re-uploaded a Schubert recording by the Musical Art Quartet (Sascha Jacobsen and Bernard Ocko, violins; Louis Kaufman, viola; and Marie Roemaet-Rosanoff, cello), saying that it was one of three major recordings that this ensemble made for Columbia in the late 1920s.  Well, here's another - and, as it happens, the first of the three, made only a year after the group's founding in 1926:

Haydn: Quartet in C Major, Op. 54, No. 2 and
Haydn: Quartet in D Major, Op. 64, No. 5 ("The Lark") - Finale
The Musical Art Quartet
Recorded January 27, April 4 and April 21, 1927
Columbia Masterworks Set No. 69, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 65.19 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 27.4 MB)

In the earlier post concerning the Musical Art Quartet, I mentioned also that Sascha Jacobsen was the famous member of the group at the time, even to being one of the names mentioned in the title of a 1922 Gershwin song, "Mischa, Jascha, Toscha, Sascha."  (The others, of course, are Elman, Heifetz and Toscha Seidel.)  At the time, that song was familiar to me only by reputation; this state of affairs changed two days ago, however, thanks to YouTube.  Not one of the Gershwins' better efforts, perhaps, but it is rather fun nevertheless.

Tully Potter informs me that the Musical Art Quartet was in existence until 1944, and that Jacobsen and Roemaet-Rosanoff were the two constant members.  (This means that Jascha and Sascha played together, when Heifetz, Sanromá and the Musical Art Quartet recorded the Chausson Concert for Victor in 1941.)  Shortly after founding, second violinist Bernard Ocko was replaced by Paul Bernard, who also remained until 1944.  (Ocko plays on the Haydn set, and Bernard on the Schubert.)  Louis Kaufman gave up the viola chair in 1933 to the, confusingly, almost identically-named Louis Kievman (later to play in the Stuyvesant Quartet); in 1937 William Hymanson became the violist.

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.