More from the Erling Bloch Quartet

In time for Carl Nielsen's birthday this year (June 9), I present the first recording ever made of a string quartet by him, done during the early months of the Nazi occupation of Denmark by the Erling Bloch Quartet. This recording does not appear to have been reissued on CD; Danacord passed over it in favor of the Koppel Quartet's 1954 account (though their 1984 LP set of early Nielsen chamber recordings did contain a rather inept transfer). I also offer two single discs by the Erling Bloch ensemble to ride, as it were, the coattails of the Nielsen. The details:

Nielsen: Quartet No. 4 in F Major, Op. 44
The Erling Bloch Quartet (Bloch-Pedersen-Kassow-Svendsen)
Recorded October 26, 1940
HMV DB 1-3, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 71.21 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 42.42 MB)

Hakon Børresen: Scherzo (from Quartet No. 2 in C Minor, 1939)
and
Schubert: Quartettsatz in C Minor, D. 703
The Erling Bloch Quartet (Bloch-Friisholm-Kassow-Svendsen)
Recorded November 19, 1942
HMV DB 5282, one 78-rpm record
Link (FLAC files, 23.70 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 14.98 MB)

Stravinsky: Concertino for String Quartet (1920)
The Erling Bloch Quartet (Bloch-Friisholm-Kassow-Christiansen)
Recorded August 26, 1952
HMV DA 5275, one 10-inch 78-rpm record
Link (FLAC file, 13.81 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 9.16 MB)

The delightful scherzo by Hakon Børresen (1876-1954), a Dane of Norwegian heritage who studied with Johan Svendsen, reminds me of the Scherzo of Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony, with its pizzicato main section and arco middle section. Yes, the Schubert is complete on one side, thanks to a brisk tempo and the omission of the repeat. The Stravinsky is, I believe, the ensemble's last recording to be issued as a 78,

The issue series in which the Nielsen set found itself was HMV's first automatic set series in Denmark, most of whose numbers were recorded during the Second World War (except for one reissue). I am aware of the existence of the following issues in it:

DB 1-3  Nielsen: Quartet No. 4 (Erling Bloch Quartet)
DB 4-6  Schubert: Fantasia in C, Op. 159  (Erling Bloch, Lund Chistiansen)
DB 7-9  Schubert: "Unfinished" Symphony  (Stokowski, from 1927 Victors)
DB 10-13  Beethoven: "Kreutzer" Sonata  (Bloch, Christiansen)
DB 14-16  Beethoven: "Spring" Sonata  (Bloch, Christiansen)
DB 17-20  Nielsen: Symphony No. 2  (Jensen, earlier recording from 1944)

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.

Schubert: Rosamunde (Harty)

The great Sir Hamilton Harty (1879-1941) contributed to Columbia's centennial celebrations of both Beethoven and Schubert in 1927-28 with major recordings of works then new to Columbia's catalogue. Of Beethoven he recorded the Fourth Symphony, and of Schubert the "Great C Major." Both of these have been professionally restored by Mark Obert-Thorn, working for Pristine Classical, but I am unaware of any reissue of Harty's other Schubert Centennial recording, this set of excerpts from "Rosamunde":

Schubert: Incidental Music to "Rosamunde" (Op. 26)
(with Overture to "Die Zauberharfe")
Hallé Orchestra conducted by Sir Hamilton Harty
Recorded May 2, 1927 (Overture) and April 27, 1928 (Incidental Music)
Columbia Masterworks set MM-343, four 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 84.86 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 53.98 MB)

This set has a curious issue history. It didn't appear in the USA until 1938, and then with a different overture than the one in the 1928 British issue. There are two overtures associated with "Rosamunde" (Schubert not having written one specifically for the Helmina von Chézy play), the other one being that for "Alfonso and Estrella" - and Harty recorded both, the latter one on the same day as the incidental music. Both overtures were, in fact, issued as single records by American Columbia before this set appeared.

Encores - The First Piano Quartet

Founded in 1941 as a radio ensemble, the First Piano Quartet, consisting of four pianists - Vladimir Padwa, Frank Mittler, Adam Garner and Edward Edson - enjoyed great popularity during its first decade or so of existence. It's easy to understand why. Their arrangements, made by the players themselves, were great fun, were usually quite brilliant and were performed with a tightness of ensemble that made the four pianos sound almost like one super-piano. The music chosen, popular classics and semi-classics, made few demands on listeners' ears; the pieces never exceeded two 78-rpm record sides in length. When the "FPQ" began recording for Victor in 1946, the company initially didn't consider them Red Seal material, putting their first three single releases and their first album (a set of Lecuona favorites) in the black-label 46-0000 "Double Feature" series. By 1948 these had all been reissued with red labels, and all their subsequent releases appeared as Red Seals, including this, their third album:

First Piano Quartet Encores:
Liszt: Liebestraum No. 3
Grieg: In the Hall of the Mountain King
Rimsky-Korsakov: Flight of the Bumblebee
Mendelssohn: Scherzo in E minor
Villa-Lobos: Polichinelle
Brahms: Lullaby
Rachmaninoff: Italian Polka
Schubert: Moment Musicale No. 3
Liadov: The Music Box
Shostakovich: Polka (from "The Golden Age")
Virgil Thomson: Ragtime Bass
Recorded Dec. 22-23, 1947
RCA Victor WMO-1263, three 45-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 57.85 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 42.70 MB)

The group's last RCA release was 1952's "FPQ on the Air" (LM-1227/WDM-1624), by which time Padwa had been replaced with Glauco d'Attili - the first of numerous personnel changes to the ensemble. A few EP reissues followed, but their recordings had all but vanished from the Schwann catalog by 1959, though the group continued to exist until 1972.

The First American Recording of an Unabridged Symphony

For Leopold Stokowski's birthday this year (April 18, 1882), I present what is not only his first recording of an unabridged symphony, but the first such recording anywhere in the USA, in fact the only American recording of an unabridged symphony made during the acoustical era.  (I say "unabridged" instead of "complete" because some may consider Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony not to qualify as a complete work.  I don't agree with that assessment myself; I have always suspected that Schubert didn't finish it because he knew that it is perfect as it stands, and that to add the obligatory scherzo and finale to create a finished symphony would be akin to drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa!)  The first five sides were waxed on Stoki's 42nd birthday (after apparently unsuccessful attempts the previous December and January), ninety years ago:

Schubert: Symphony No. 8 in B Minor ("Unfinished")
Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski
Recorded April 18 and 19, 1924
Victor 6459 through 6461, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 64.29 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 39.38 MB)

This set was Victor's first entry in a series of albums they called the "Music Arts Library of Victor Records" - issued in tandem with an abridged recording of the Schumann Piano Quintet as a five-record package.  Alas, I don't have the album or the Schumann, but I did find online a newspaper ad (from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, dated October 9, 1924) announcing the series, and here is a cross-section:

Victor's subsequent issues in this series included a number of Blue Label sets, among them Sir Landon Ronald's 1922 version of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.  The series continued into the early electrical era before being supplanted by the much more famous "Victor Musical Masterpiece" sets in 1927.

Schubert by Ormandy

Cover design by Nancy Donald

My Ormandy series continues with some rather rare repertoire for him - two early Schubert symphonies in nice, well-sounding, straightforward performances.  The odd thing about this release is that it didn't appear until 1972, a full ten years after both works were recorded, and four years after Ormandy and the Philadelphians had moved back to RCA!  Columbia, of course, had plenty of Ormandy still "in the can" after this move, but this was one of the last releases, and certainly one of the most delayed.  My guess is that the slight differences in pitch that are noticeable between tape edits in certain sections (particularly the Scherzo of No. 6) mitigated against releasing these performances in 1962:

Schubert: Symphony No. 4 in C Minor, D. 417 ("Tragic") and

Schubert: Symphony No. 6 in C Major, D. 589 ("Little")

Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy

Recorded January 17 (No. 6) and April 8 (No. 4), 1962

Columbia Masterworks M-31635, one stereo LP record

Link (FLAC files, 304.5 MB)

Link (MP3 files, 83.69 MB)

Two other Ormandy recordings were released at the same time as this Schubert LP, and bear adjacent catalog numbers.  M-31634 is Beethoven's Fifth and Eighth Symphonies, itself a reissue from his complete Beethoven cycle from the 60s, and D3M-31636 is a three-record set of the Brahms symphonies, recorded in 1966-68, and not a reissue.  This lately turned up on eBay, sealed, and fetched the unbelievable price of $152.50!  Both the Beethoven and Brahms issues bear the phrase "The Fabulous Philadelphia Sound Series," which is missing from the Schubert issue.

Two by the Coolidge Quartet

The Coolidge Quartet with Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge
(left to right: Nicolai Berezowsky, William Kroll,
Mrs. Coolidge, Nicholas Moldavan, Victor Gottlieb)

Today I present two more sets by the Coolidge Quartet, that pioneering group named after the great patron of early 20th-century chamber music, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge.  On records, besides their aborted project to record the complete Beethoven quartets, the Coolidge Quartet brought to American record buyers many previously unrecorded works; they had a penchant for American works, as well as for unearthing rarities from the Classical era.  Both are represented here:

Griffes: Two Sketches Based on Indian Themes and
Chadwick: Quartet No. 4 in E minor - Andante semplice
The Coolidge Quartet (Kroll-Berezowsky-Moldavan-Gottlieb)
Recorded May 27 and 31, 1938
Victor Musical Masterpiece set M-558, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 46.55 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 25.62 MB)

Schubert: Quartet No. 9 in G minor, D. 173
The Coolidge Quartet (Kroll-Berezowsky-Moldavan-Gottlieb)
Recorded October 28, 1938
Victor Musical Masterpiece set M-641, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 53.85 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 32.15 MB)

Schubert "Great C Major" (Bruno Walter, 1946)

Cover design by Alex Steinweiss
(restored by Peter Joelson)

Today I present a recording that is very dear to me, as it was my introduction not only to this wonderful symphony, but the very first set of 78s I ever bought (or, more accurately, that was bought for me, by my grandmother, for $8.49 plus tax) at Clark Music, the wonderful music store that I wrote about in this post.  I was all of 10 years old, that fall of 1973, when I discovered the place, and of the twenty or twenty-five classical album sets in mint condition there that had remained unsold since the late 1940s, this one beckoned to me, mainly because I knew Schubert to be a Great Composer - I don't think I had even heard of most of the other composers represented in that motley collection - and moreover, it was a great big Symphony on six records!  Such is a child's reasoning.  Of course, this isn't the same copy as that one.  I wore that one out within two or three years, eventually obtaining another to replace it, which was sold off along with most of my 78s eight years ago.  This copy came to me courtesy of Ken Halperin of Collecting Record Covers:

Schubert: Symphony No. 9 in C Major, D. 944 ("The Great")
Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York conducted by Bruno Walter
Recorded April 22, 1946
Columbia Masterworks set MM-679, six 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 124.35 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 64.3 MB)

Bruno Walter, it seems to me, came closer to the essence of this symphony than anyone else, and I don't think I'm saying that merely because I "learned" the work through this recording.  This is the second of his three recordings of it - the first was in 1938, with the London Symphony for HMV, and the last was in 1959, with his California-based, eponymous Columbia Symphony Orchestra.

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.

Symphonies on American Odeon

Today I present two samples from the earliest album set series to be offered to the American record buyer, that of Otto Heineman's General Phonograph Corporation, drawing on masters recorded by Parlophon in Germany, and released on the Odeon label.  (For an excellent article about the American Odeon label, click here.)  The first of these may well, in fact, be the very first complete symphony issued in an album in the USA - ironically, of an "unfinished" symphony - Schubert's:

Schubert: Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D. 759 ("Unfinished")
Orchestra of the German Opera House, Berlin, conducted by Eduard Mörike
Recorded November 22, 1921
American Odeon 5008 through 5010, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 55.88 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 22.92 MB)

The Schubert "Unfinished" has the distinction of being the symphony recorded the most times during the acoustic era - eighteen - but only nine of these recordings were intended as unabridged, and this is the first one of those.  I say "intended" because this recording actually omits four bars between sides 1 and 2.

Next is a sample of one of the earliest Beethoven symphony cycles on record.  Perhaps "cycle" is a misnomer, since different conductors were used, but in the twilight of the acoustic era, two companies in Germany vied with each other for the honor of having all the Beethoven symphonies recorded and on sale.  The first to start its series, in 1923, was Deutsche Grammophon (using five different conductors, among them Fried, Klemperer and Pfitzner), but before they could finish (Nov. 1925), Parlophon (using two conductors -Mörike and Frieder Weissmann) had started and finished their series.  All of the Parlophon series were released in albums by American Odeon.

Beethoven: Symphony No. 6 in F, Op. 68 ("Pastorale")
Berlin Opera House Orchestra conducted by Frieder Weissmann
Recorded November 21 and 24, 1924, and January 21, 1925
American Odeon 5086 through 5090, five 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 111.44 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 41.71 MB)

When I had both of these sets in my possession three to four years ago, I did not, alas, have a scanner.  The Schubert album even had liner notes printed on the inside front cover, which I did transcribe into a text file that I include with the download.  But I have no way of showing what the lovely purple labels looked like, other than to show this photo of a Richard Tauber record from the same series, that I lifted from an eBay auction:

The National Gramophonic Society, Part 1

The National Gramophonic Society was founded in 1923 by Compton Mackenzie, under the aegis of his new magazine, "The Gramophone."  Its aim was to promote and record complete works of chamber and instrumental music that had hitherto been neglected by the major record companies as being unprofitable.

In my heyday as a collector I had about a dozen of these sets, including the very first issue which is pictured above.  Either through borrowing copies back or working from tapes I had made, I managed to upload nine such sets in 2007-08; three of these I have already posted on this blog.  This is to be the first of two posts to take care of the others.  Here are four acoustically-recorded sets:

Beethoven: Quartet No. 10 in E-Flat, Op. 74 ("Harp")
Spencer Dyke String Quartet
Recorded July 30, 1924, by Columbia
National Gramophonic Society A, B, and C, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 72.2 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 27.48 MB)

Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4 (version for string sextet)
Spencer Dyke String Sextet
and
Schubert: Piano Trio No. 2 in E-Flat, Op. 100
Harold Craxton, Spencer Dyke and B. Patterson Parker
Recorded October 10 and December 30, 1924, and January 7, 1925, by Columbia
National Gramophonic Society H, I, K, L, M, N, O, and P, eight 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 198.73 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 69.9 MB)

Brahms: String Sextet No. 1 in B-Flat, Op. 18
Spencer Dyke String Sextet
Recorded May, 1925, by Parlophone
National Gramophonic Society Z, AA, BB, CC, and DD, five 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 83.87 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 33.06 MB)

Eugene Goossens: Two Pieces for String Quartet, Op. 15;
Orlando Gibbons: Fantasias Nos. 6 and 8;
Purcell: Four-Part Fantasia No. 4 in C minor
Music Society String Quartet
Recorded May, 1925, and February, 1926, by Parlophone
National Gramophonic Society DD, FF, and BBB, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 43.17 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 16.35 MB)

These were first recordings of all the works concerned, and in the case of the Schoenberg, probably the first recording of any of his music.  It should be mentioned that the cellist in the Music Society String Quartet was none other than John Barbirolli, some of whose earliest recordings as a conductor were made for the N.G.S. and can be heard at the CHARM website.

Happy Birthday, Ralph Vaughan Williams!

Today was Ralph Vaughan Williams' birthday (born October 12, 1872), and to acknowledge this, another "reissue" of uploads that I originally made in 2008, which was a Vaughan Williams anniversary year (he died 50 years prior).  This features Sir Malcolm Sargent conducting two works, the Overture to his incidental music for Aristophanes' "The Wasps," and "The Lark Ascending":

Vaughan Williams: The Wasps - Overture
Hallé Orchestra conducted by Malcolm Sargent
Recorded July 3, 1942
Columbia Masterworks 71605-D, one 78-rpm record

and

Vaughan Williams: The Lark Ascending - Romance for Violin and Orchestra
David Wise with the Liverpool Philharmonic conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent
Recorded April 18, 1947
English Columbia DX 1386-87, two 78-rpm records

Link (FLAC files, 56.49 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 24.98 MB)

Sir Malcolm was knighted in the year that the second of these two Vaughan Williams recordings was made; before that, he was billed on labels as "Dr. Malcolm Sargent," as he is in this recording of a Schubert Overture (which is not a reissue but a new upload):

Schubert: Overture in the Italian Style, in C Major, D. 597
Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Malcolm Sargent
Recorded March 21, 1944
English Columbia DX 1157, one 78-rpm record
Link (FLAC file, 18.74 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 7.82 MB)

Early Schubert by the Guilet Quartet

Back in November, Squirrel's Nest gave us a transfer of the first recording of Bartók's Fourth String Quartet played by the Guilet String Quartet for a Concert Hall limited edition release of 1946.  A year later, the same ensemble and label, in a general release this time, offered the early Schubert quartet which I present here, a recording mentioned in TIME Magazine's May 26, 1947 issue.  The article mentions Schubert's being 20 years old when he wrote it, but it's now believed he was actually 16, and that this is the last of five quartets Schubert wrote in 1813.  Whatever its genesis, it's a charming work well played by the Guilet ensemble:

Schubert: String Quartet in E-Flat, D. 87 (Op. 125, No. 1)
The Guilet String Quartet
Recorded c. 1946-47
Concert Hall Society Release AE, three vinyl 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 45.81 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 29.52 MB)

Schubert as Finished by Ernst Křenek

This week I present one of Schubert's finest unfinished works, the Piano Sonata in C major, D. 840.  He left only the first two movements completed, with two others in fragmentary form.  Most pianists are content to play just the two completed movements, but not Eduard Erdmann - some of whose recordings Satyr has been giving us lately.  In 1921, Erdmann asked Ernst Křenek (1900-1991) to complete the sonata for him.  Křenek (pictured above as a young man) obliged, and his version was published in 1923.  It's a fine one which is all but forgotten today, and it appears to have been recorded only twice.  In the 1950s it was included as part of Friedrich Wührer's traversal of Schubert's piano sonatas in three Vox Boxes, but before that it had been recorded by Ray Lev for the Concert Hall Society in its subscription series.  It is this version which I present here:

Schubert-Krenek: Piano Sonata in C major, D. 840 and
Schubert: Allegretto in C minor, D. 915
Ray Lev, piano
Recorded c. 1947
Concert Hall Society set B-3, four red vinyl 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 53.12 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 34.24 MB)

Ray Lev (1912-1968) was an unfortunate figure among American pianists; in 1950 she was identified as a Communist sympathizer by the "Red Channels" report naming 151 alleged Communists in the entertainment industry.  This effectively ended her career and a comment on one blog that I've seen actually speculates that she committed suicide (she died on my fifth birthday, May 20, 1968) - see here.  The excellent Wikipedia article about her, written by my friend and fellow record collector David Hoehl, can be found here.  Her recording of the Schubert C Major Sonata is excellent but may not be to all tastes; it's considerably more brisk than Wührer's or any others that I've heard (Kempff, Richter).

Albert Sammons plays Grieg

Here is a rare sonata recording by the man considered by many to be the greatest British violinist, Albert Sammons (1886-1957).  It is of Grieg's Sonata in G, Op. 13, recorded on March 12, 1925 with Sammons' longtime sonata partner William Murdoch (1888-1942) at the piano.  This was one of the last acoustical recordings made by Columbia (they had switched to the Western Electric recording process by October 1925) and consequently experienced a very short catalogue life, issued in November 1925 and deleted in Feburary 1928.

Grieg: Violin Sonata No. 2 in G, Op. 13
Albert Sammons, violin; William Murdoch, piano
Recorded March 12, 1925
English Columbia L 1661 through L 1663, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 63.25 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 24.61 MB)

The three Grieg violin sonatas enjoyed a much greater circulation 75-100 years ago than today.  Heifetz recorded Op. 13 in the 1930s, and there's a famous 1928 recording of Op. 45 in C minor by Fritz Kreisler and Sergei Rachmaninoff.  This Sammons recording appears to be the first one made of Op. 13, a charming work.

Only a month after making this recording, and still by the acoustical recording process, Sammons made his first complete recording of a violin concerto, and his only recording of a non-British concerto at that.  This was Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1, with an unidentified orchestra conducted by Sir Hamilton Harty.  Early in 2008 I did a transfer of this recording, which is still available for download:

Bruch: Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26
Albert Sammons, violin, with orchestra conducted by Sir Hamilton Harty
Recorded April 9, 1925
Columbia Masterworks Set No. 30, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC file, 65.85 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 24.17 MB)

Albert Sammons, for all his many achievements as a soloist, was also a great quartet leader.  He was one of the founding members of the London String Quartet in 1908 and played first violin in it for nine years, until being called up for military service in 1917.  The Fall 2010 issue of Classic Recordings Quarterly features a fine article by Tully Potter about the LSQ and its recordings.  Late in 2007 I did transfers of a group of LSQ recordings from 1915-17 (when Sammons was still in it), featuring music by Mozart, Schubert, Schumann and Tchaikovsky, which are still available for download:

Mozart: Quartet No. 16 in E-Flat, K. 428
Schubert: Quartet No. 12 in C minor, D. 703 ("Quartettsatz")
Schumann: Quartet No. 3 in A, Op. 41, No. 3
Tchaikovsky: Quartet No. 1 in D, Op. 11: Scherzo
London String Quartet (led by Albert Sammons)
Recorded 1915-17
English Columbia L 1015, 1043, 1044, 1199, 1200, 5 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 105.6 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 38.35 MB)

Classics from Arthur Pryor's Band

In the earliest days of commercial recording (roughly, from 1890 to 1910), military and concert bands, unlike orchestras, were frequent visitors to the recording studio. The reason for this is simple: massed strings didn't record well, while brass and woodwinds did. Bands recorded everything: popular songs of the day, medleys from operettas and musical shows, dance music, and, of course, marches. This upload, however, focuses on band transcriptions of standard orchestral repertoire. The following works are presented:

GRIEG: Peer Gynt Suite - "Morning" and "Death of Ase"
LISZT: Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2
LISZT: Hungarian Rhapsody No. 9 - Finale
ROSSINI: William Tell Overture
SCHUBERT: Unfinished Symphony - First movement (abridged)
TCHAIKOVSKY: Marche Slave (abridged)
WAGNER: Tannhäuser Overture (abridged)

These were all recorded between 1905 and 1914 (complete recording details are supplied in a text file accompanying the recordings) by Arthur Pryor's Band, one of the most active concert bands making records in the USA during this period.

Link (FLAC files, 134.31 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 49.75 MB)

Arthur Pryor (1870-1942) was a virtuoso trombonist who joined Sousa's Band in 1892, becoming assistant conductor of that legendary organization before leaving to form his own band in 1903. It was Pryor who actually conducted Sousa's Band on records - apparently the great man considered recording beneath him. He was also a composer, his most famous piece being "The Whistler and His Dog." (Fans of "The Little Rascals" films will remember Buckwheat pretending to whistle while a somewhat damaged record plays behind a curtain; "The Whistler and His Dog" is the tune in question.)

A particularly pioneering effort is represented by the movement from Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, which was recorded in 1910 and released in November of that year. It would appear that this was the very first time Victor recorded any part of a symphony. The record must have sold reasonably well, for the band had to remake it two years later. Clearly, the record-buying public had a taste for "serious" symphonic fare. Certainly my copy of Victor 31798 was much loved by its original owner!

In 1912, Victor embarked on a program of recording abridged symphonic works, not with a band, but with its own in-house orchestra, the Victor Concert Orchestra. Two Haydn and two Mozart symphonies, the Beethoven Fifth and the Schubert Unfinished, as well as movements from Mendelssohn's "Italian" and Dvorak's "New World," were among the offerings. Most of these do not credit any conductor, though Walter B. Rogers, Victor's house conductor, was probably responsible for most of them. Nearly three years ago, I uploaded to the newsgroup "rec.music.classical.recordings" (RMCR) a selection of these recordings, containing the following:

HAYDN: Military Symphony (No. 100 in G)
MOZART: Symphony in G minor (No. 40, K. 550)
MOZART: Jupiter Symphony (No. 41 in C, K. 551)
BEETHOVEN: Leonore Overture No. 3 (Op. 72a)
BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 4 - Adagio
    (played by Vessella's Italian Band, as a filler for the Leonore Overture)

These are still available for download at the following links:

Link (FLAC files, 181.49 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 67.8 MB)