Prokofiev: String Quartet No. 1 (Stuyvesant Quartet)

With this post I now have available all the sets that the Stuyvesant String Quartet made for Columbia prior to the American Federation of Musicians' recording ban of 1942.  I stumbled upon this set, in fact, while I was doing research for my last post featuring the group; in order to make the claim that their recording of Ravel's Introduction and Allegro was the only one to feature John Dembeck on second violin, I had to make sure he wasn't on this Prokofiev Quartet, so I did a Google search on "prokofiev stuyvesant" and lo and behold, this set had just gone up for sale on eBay, and quite reasonably priced, too!  Unfortunately, it was minus the album, since the radio station that had owned it previously had "their own way of cataloguing" its records.  But the music is what really matters, after all, and here it is:

Prokofiev: Quartet No. 1 in B minor, Op. 50
The Stuyvesant String Quartet (Shulman-Glickman-Kievman-Shulman)
Recorded January 15, 1941
Columbia Masterworks set MM-448, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 58.93 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 28.48 MB)

Debussy and Ravel by Newell and Wummer (and others)

Laura Newell, John Wummer, Milton Katims

Two sets this week, the common denominator of both being not only French impressionism, but the same harpist and flutist.  These are Laura Newell, active in the 1940s and 1950s as a freelance harpist (she was Robert Shaw's choice for both recordings by his Robert Shaw Chorale of Britten's Ceremony of Carols), and John Wummer, principal flute of the New York Philharmonic from 1942 to 1965.  They're both joined by Milton Katims, who played second viola on a number of Budapest Quartet recordings of Mozart and Beethoven quintets, and later conducted the Seattle Symphony, for this Debussy trio:

Debussy: Sonata No. 2, for flute, viola and harp
John Wummer, Milton Katims, Laura Newell
Recorded April 24, 1945
Columbia Masterworks set MX-282, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC file, 49.8 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 27.1 MB)

Cover design by Alex Steinweiss
(restored by Peter Joelson)

Laura Newell was also associated with the brothers Sylvan and Alan Shulman, all three being members of the group "New Friends of Rhythm" for which Alan Shulman wrote jazz-influenced arrangements and compositions.  So it's natural that she should have recorded Ravel's Introduction and Allegro with the Shulmans' Stuyvesant String Quartet:

Ravel: Introduction and Allegro
Laura Newell, harp; John Wummer, flute; Ralph McLane, clarinet
Stuyvesant String Quartet (Shulman-Dembeck-Kievman-Shulman)
and
Debussy: The Maid with the Flaxen Hair (arr. Grandjany)
Laura Newell, harp
Recorded March 22, 1940
Columbia Masterworks set MX-167, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 34.1 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 21.6 MB)

As I mentioned in an earlier post about the Stuyvesant Quartet, the two inner parts changed hands several times during their first few years of existence.  This appears to have been the only recording that John Dembeck, who that same year moved to Toronto and eventually became a Canadian citizen, made as their second violinist.

All my old files are now up and running; and the links from my blog have been changed to the new ones.

Shostakovich by the Stuyvesant String Quartet

The Stuyvesant String Quartet as pictured for their recording of the Shostakovich Quartet, Op. 49

This is the second of two posts dealing with the Stuyvesant String Quartet, and presents them in two works by Shostakovich, one of them recorded only a week after the American première of the work by the same artists.  This was the Piano Quintet, Op. 57, which Shostakovich had written the year before, and played the first performance with the Beethoven Quartet in November, 1940.  Here the pianist is Vivian Rivkin, the wife of conductor Dean Dixon:

Shostakovich: Quintet for Piano and Strings, Op. 57
Vivian Rivkin, piano, with the Stuyvesant String Quartet
Recorded May 7 and 8, 1941
Columbia Masterworks set MM-483, four 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 72.85 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 33.42 MB)

As I mentioned in the previous post, the Stuyvesant Quartet, founded in 1938 by the Shulman brothers, Sylvan (first violinist) and Alan (cellist), had varying inner voices during its first five or six years of existence.  On the Shostakovich Quintet, these are Harry Glickman (second violin) and Louis Kievman (viola).  For the next recording, made the day before the Petrillo recording ban took effect, these had changed to Maurice Wilk (second violin) and Emanuel Vardi (viola):

Shostakovich: Quartet No. 1, Op. 49
The Stuyvesant String Quartet
Recorded July 30, 1942
Columbia Masterworks set MX-231, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 33.45 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 17.13 MB)

At the time of this recording, Shostakovich had written only one string quartet.  This wasn't the first recording of it, but the previous one, by the York Quartet, was already out of print by the time the Stuyvesant's appeared, having been issued on the fly-by-night Royale label.

Before founding the Stuyvesant Quartet, Sylvan and Alan Shulman played in the Kreiner Quartet, founded in 1935 by the violist, Edward Kriener.  This group, with Josef Gingold as its second violinist, made a handful of recordings, including this first recording of Malipiero's "Rispetti e Strambotti", a work that would later become a specialty of the Stuyvesant String Quartet:

Malipiero: Rispetti e Strambotti (String Quartet No. 1) and
Beryl Rubinstein: Passepied
The Kreiner Quartet
Recorded June 7, July 19 and August 14, 1937
Victor Musical Masterpiece set DM-397, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 63.65 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 38.26 MB)

These uploads complete the "reissue" program I have been working on for the last two or three months; I originally offered these recordings in 2008.

Bloch by the Stuyvesant String Quartet

Ernest Bloch in Switzerland, 1916

This evening I present the first of two posts devoted to the Stuyvesant String Quartet, founded in 1938 by the Shulman brothers, violinist Sylvan (1912-1985) and cellist Alan (1915-2002).  This ensemble became renowned for its recordings of 20th-century quartets, including a number of recording premières.  Among these was their debut recording in the quartet repertoire, the First String Quartet of Ernest Bloch (pictured above in the year in which he wrote it):

Bloch: Quartet No. 1 in B minor (1916)
The Stuyvesant String Quartet (Shulman-Smirnoff-Kievman-Shulman)
Recorded October 10, 1939
English Columbia LX 8511 through 8516, six 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 113.75 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 51.12 MB)

October 10, 1939, would appear to have been a busy day for the Stuyvesant Quartet, for if one believes the data in a Pearl CD issue of Elisabeth Schumann's Bach recordings (which includes the Mass in B minor conducted by Albert Coates), the same players were in the Victor studios on the same date, assisting in accompanying Mme. Schumann in the "Wedding" Cantata, BWV 202, along with harpsichordist Yella Pessl, oboist Mitch Miller and bassist Philip Sklar.

The Stuyvesant String Quartet's inner parts changed hands several times through its first few years of existence.  The Quartet became inactive for a few years during the Second World War, then were reconstituted in 1945 with second violinist Bernard Robbins and violist Ralph Hersh.  This was the lineup for the remainder of the Quartet's career (until 1954).  In 1947 the Stuyvesant Quartet returned to the recording studio, making three sets for New York-based International Records (reissued as LPs by the Concert Hall Society), among which was a further Bloch recording:

Bloch: Quartet No. 2 (1945)
The Stuyvesant String Quartet (Shulman-Robbins-Hersh-Shulman)
Recorded in November, 1947
Concert Hall Society CHC-20, one 12-inch red vinyl LP record
Link (FLAC files, 77.7 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 40 MB)

This wasn't the first recording of the new Bloch quartet; that had been done five months earlier for English Decca by the Griller Quartet.

I originally offered the Bloch First Quartet in 2008, but the Second Quartet appears here for the first time in my transfer.

Anyone interested in the Stuyvesant String Quartet should look into a fine CD reissue by Parnassus Records, featuring quartets by Hindemith, Villa-Lobos and Quincy Porter, and produced by Jay Shulman, Alan's son.  When last I checked, it was still being carried by Berkshire Record Outlet (at a very reasonable $5.99).