Walton: First Symphony

Sir Hamilton Harty

Today I offer the first recording of William Walton's First Symphony, by the man who commissioned it, Sir Hamilton Harty (1879-1941).  The ink was barely dry on the score when the recording was made - or at least, barely dry on the finale, for Walton had completed the first three movements, and Harty had conducted them, in December 1934, before the finale was finished!  Then, in November, 1935, the completed work was finally played by the BBC Symphony under Harty, and a mere month later, this recording was made, with the London Symphony.  It was a rare honor for a British symphony to be recorded soon after its première; even Vaughan Williams' Fourth Symphony, completed the same year, had to wait two years for its first recording:

Walton: Symphony No. 1 in B-Flat minor (1935)
London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Hamilton Harty
Recorded December 9 and 10, 1935
English Decca X 108 through 113, six 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 98.94 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 43.88 MB)

The Walton Symphony is a new transfer.  Back in 2008 I offered these two acoustically recorded sets featuring the not-yet-knighted Hamilton Harty, one as conductor and one as pianist:

Bach: Suite No. 2 in B minor, BWV 1067, for flute and strings
Robert Murchie, flute, with orchestra conducted by Hamilton Harty
Recorded January 20, 1924
English Columbia L 1557 and 1558, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC file, 45.79 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 17.31 MB)

Brahms: Clarinet Trio in A minor, Op. 114
H. P. Draper, clarinet; W. H. Squire, cello; Hamilton Harty, piano
Recorded October 21, 1924
English Columbia L 1609 through 1611, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 74.98 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 30.35 MB)

Both are first recordings of these works; the Bach Suite is slightly abridged (64 bars cut from the fast section of the Ouverture, and the return of the slow section omitted altogether).

Arthur Catterall and William Murdoch

Arthur Catterall

This is to be the first of three posts dealing with uploads I originally offered in 2007-08, featuring the British violinist Arthur Catterall (1883-1943).  Here are three sonata recordings he made in 1923-24 with the Australian pianist William Murdoch (1888-1942).  The first is an abridged version of Beethoven's "Spring" Sonata:

Beethoven: Violin Sonata No. 5 in F, Op. 24 ("Spring")
Arthur Catterall, violin; William Murdoch, piano
Recorded June 6, 1923
English Columbia L 1231 and 1232, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC file, 38.89 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 13.82 MB)

This recording was intended as a replacement for an earlier version by Albert Sammons (also with Murdoch at the piano) that had been issued five years earlier with the same record numbers.  Catterall undertook a number of such re-recordings in June of 1923, not just of violin repertoire but also of piano trio movements with Murdoch and cellist W. H. Squire.  Presumably Sammons was persona non grata at Columbia in 1923, as he was then making records for Vocalion!

The following were not planned as replacements, but as brand-new recordings:

Brahms: Violin Sonata No. 3 in D minor, Op. 108
Arthur Catterall, violin; William Murdoch, piano
Recorded November 18, 1923
English Columbia L 1535 through 1537, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 53.22 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 21.37 MB)

Franck: Violin Sonata in A Major
Arthur Catterall, violin; William Murdoch, piano
Recorded November 18, 1923, and April 11, 1924
Columbia Masterworks Set No. 33, four 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 75.01 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 30.06 MB)

The Franck was issued only in America, and even then it took two tries to get it right!  The original issue, Masterworks Set No. 23, had been of only three of the work's four movements, and out of order to boot.

Symphonies from Sir Landon

Back in 2008 I posted three acoustically-recorded symphonies conducted by the Gramophone Company's "house conductor," Sir Landon Ronald (1873-1937).  Actually, he wasn't yet "Sir" when the first of these was made (he was knighted in 1922):

Dvořák: Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95 ("From the New World")
Royal Albert Hall Orchestra, conducted by Landon Ronald
Recorded November 1, 1919, and September 8 & November 29, 1921
HMV D 536, 537, 587 and 613, four 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 90.14 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 33.38 MB)

All movements are cut except the Scherzo, and I've spelled out the cuts in detail, in a text file accompanying the download.  As of July, 2010, this had proven my most popular download, with Mediafire calculating 545!  Sir Landon did re-record the "New World" electrically, and complete, in 1927.  This is available from Historic Recordings, in Damian's fine transfer.

Landon Ronald's next recording of a symphony was of Beethoven's Fifth, a work that holds the distinction of being the symphony recorded complete the most times during the acoustic era.  Ronald's version is the fifth, after Friedrich Kark's for Odeon (in 1910), Artur Nikisch's for Deutsche Grammophon (1913), Josef Pasternack's for Victor (completed in 1917) and François Ruhlmann's for Pathé (of unknown date, but surely before 1922):

Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67
Royal Albert Hall Orchestra, conducted by Sir Landon Ronald
Recorded in September and October, 1922
Victor Blue Label 55250 through 55253, four 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 95.07 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 37.89 MB)

I have the original album, a handsome "Music Arts Library of Victor Records" production, and I have included JPEGs of each sleeve, on each of which are printed liner notes in a florid style characteristic of the time.

Ronald also re-recorded the Beethoven Fifth electrically.  He did not, however, re-record the Tchaikovsky "Pathétique" (this job fell to Albert Coates):

Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74 ("Pathétique")
Royal Albert Hall Orchestra, conducted by Sir Landon Ronald
Recorded in January, May and June, 1923
Victor Blue Label 55240 through 55244, five 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 123.66 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 42.7 MB)

Sir Landon made two further acoustical recordings of symphonies: the Schubert "Unfinished" (a complete version of 1923 to replace an abridged version of 1912), and the Brahms Second.  The latter can be heard at the CHARM website.  He also made the first electrical recording of a symphony: Tchaikovsky's Fourth (which, again, is available in Damian's transfer at Historic Recordings).

The L.S.Q. and the L.S.Q.

Léner String Quartet

In the early 1920s English Columbia had two different string quartet ensembles that could claim the initials "L.S.Q."  The first was the London String Quartet, which began recording for Columbia in 1914, then about 1920 jumped ship and moved to Vocalion.  They eventually returned in 1924, but while they were away, a different "L.S.Q." came on board - the Léner String Quartet, founded in 1918 by four students at the High School of Music in Budapest: Jenö Léner, Jozsef Smilovits, Sándor Roth and Imre Hartman.  At first they were heard on records only in isolated string quartet movements, usually abridged, but by 1923 they had recorded their first complete quartet, Mozart's K. 465 (a work they never re-recorded):

Mozart: Quartet No. 19 in C, K. 465 ("Dissonance")
Léner String Quartet
Recorded November 7 & 8, 1923
English Columbia L 1545 through 1548, four 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 81.76 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 31.38 MB)

The following year they recorded their first complete Beethoven quartet - and they would become famous for being the first group to record a complete Beethoven cycle:

Beethoven: Quartet No. 14 in C-Sharp minor, Op. 131
Léner String Quartet
Recorded February 11, 21, 22 and August 25, 1924
English Columbia L 1581 through 1585, five 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC file, 116.2 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 43.77 MB)

The above two sets had the distinction, along with the Léners' recording of Haydn's Op. 76, No. 5, of being the first complete string quartets available to the American record buyer, being part of the initial release of Columbia's new "Masterworks" album series of complete works.  The Beethoven was Set No. 6, the Haydn No. 7 and the Mozart No. 8.  (The first five had all been symphonies.)

In 1924 the London String Quartet returned to the English Columbia fold, their initial release being this first complete recording of Haydn's "Emperor":

Haydn: Quartet in C, Op. 76, No. 3 ("Emperor")
London String Quartet
Recorded December 15 and 17, 1924
English Columbia L 1633 through 1635, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 73.38 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 25.96 MB)

By this time the London String Quartet was being led by James Levey, with founding members Thomas Petre, H. Waldo Warner and C. Warwick Evans covering the other parts.

For those interested in the London String Quartet, I highly recommend a new release on the Music & Arts label, a survey of their concerts at the Library of Congress from 1943-1951.

Some Early Orchestral Red Seals

Leopold Stokowski, 1924

As I mentioned earlier, back in 2008 I posted a whole series of acoustical orchestral and chamber music recordings.  Most of these were of European (chiefly British) origin, simply because that's where most of this  recording activity took place.  I did offer two American-made sets, however, and here they are:

Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64 - Andante and
Rimsky-Korsakov: Dance of the Tumblers (from "The Snow Maiden")
Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski
Recorded April 20 and March 19, 1923
Victor Red Seal 6430 and 6431, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 50.01 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 18.3 MB)

This recording is complete as issued; apparently, there was no thought of recording the entire symphony (which, of course, Stokowski did several times in subsequent years).  An incredible wealth of information about Stokowski's recordings can be found at Larry Huffman's amazing site, http://www.stokowski.org/.

Alfred Hertz

Wagner: Parsifal - Prelude and Good Friday Spell
San Francisco Symphony Orchestra conducted by Alfred Hertz
Recorded January 24, 26, 31 and February 2, 1925
Victor Red Seal 6498 through 6500, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 74.17 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 26.25 MB)

Alfred Hertz (1872-1942) was the San Francisco Symphony's second music director (the first was Henry Hadley), and this was the first appearance on records of that organization, whose concertmaster at the time was Louis Persinger, Yehudi Menuhin's (and later Ruggiero Ricci's) first violin teacher.  Hertz himself was intimately associated with Wagner's "Parsifal," having given the first performances of the opera outside of Bayreuth with the Metropolitan Opera, New York, in 1903.

Marjorie Hayward and Una Bourne

Marjorie Hayward

The British violinist Marjorie Hayward (1885-1953) and the Australian-born pianist Una Bourne (1882-1974) were both veterans of the recording studio as soloists when, in 1918, they began the partnership for which they are best remembered, with an abridged version of Beethoven's "Kreutzer" Sonata.  They went on to do abridged versions of the Franck and Elgar sonatas, which can be heard at the CHARM website, and, with the coming of electrical recording, they set down Mozart's K. 378 and Grieg's Op. 45 sonatas, which Damian's 78s has available for download.  And here is the Beethoven collaboration that started it all:

Beethoven: Violin Sonata No. 9 in A, Op. 47 ("Kreutzer") (abridged)
Marjorie Hayward, violin; Una Bourne, piano
Recorded February 20, 1918
HMV C 844 and C 854, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC file, 48.32 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 17.28 MB)

Una Bourne's most substantial recording as a solo pianist is this one of Grieg's Op. 7 sonata, which appears to have been the only recording of the entire work made during the 78-rpm era, though Grieg himself had recorded two of its movements in 1903 (the best transfer of these is Ward Marston's, on his own CD label, Marston Records).  It is only slightly abridged, with about a minute's worth of music cut from the finale:

Grieg: Piano Sonata in E minor, Op. 7
Una Bourne, piano
Recorded April 20, 1921
HMV C 1023 and C 1027, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC file, 48.24 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 16.83 MB)

The Composer as Accompanist

John Ireland

Back in 2008 I offered two different recordings featuring composers as piano accompanists in their chamber works.  One of these was John Ireland (1879-1962), who made at least two such recordings of which I am aware.  One was of his First Violin Sonata, with Frederick Grinke, for Decca in 1945.  This has turned up on a Dutton CD, but I am unaware of any subsequent release of the other recording, that of the Cello Sonata with Antoni Sala, with, as a filler, a solo piano piece by Ireland, which I present here:

Ireland: Cello Sonata in G minor (1923)
Antoni Sala, cello; John Ireland, piano
Recorded October 25, 1928
and
Ireland: April (1925)
John Ireland, piano
Recorded February 18, 1929
English Columbia L 2314 through L 2317, four 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 59.62 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 26.73 MB)

I know very little about Antoni Sala, other than that he was Spanish and was the cellist on a fine Parlophone recording of the Arensky Piano Trio, Op. 35, with Eileen Joyce and Henri Temianka, which turned up some years ago on a Biddulph double CD set devoted to Temianka.

Walter Piston

There could hardly be imagined a more different musical idiom than that of the other composer-pianist whom I present here, Walter Piston (1894-1976), in one of his very rare appearances on records as a performer.  Here he accompanies Louis Krasner in his Violin Sonata, a recording which appeared only a month before Krasner's famous recording of the Berg Violin Concerto, which Krasner commissioned:

Piston: Sonata for Violin and Piano (1939)
Louis Krasner, violin; Walter Piston, piano
Recorded November 24, 1939
Columbia Masterworks set MX-199, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 39.01 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 21.22 MB)

This recording was reviewed in the TIME magazine issue of August, 1941, where Piston is described as an "atonalist."  He was hardly that!  Wonder if the review had him mixed up with Berg?

Columbia had two sets of music by Piston on its catalogue during the 78-rpm era; here's the other one:

Piston: String Quartet No. 1 (1933) and
Cowell: Movement for String Quartet (Quartet No. 2, 1934)
Dorian String Quartet
Recorded September 27, 1939
Columbia Masterworks Set M-388, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 55.52 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 27.23 MB)

The cellist in the Dorian String Quartet was the 23-year-old Bernard Greenhouse; the other members were Alexander Cores and Harry Friedman, violins, and David Mankovitz, viola.

The National Gramophonic Society, Part 2

Paul Juon

Here's the second of two posts to deal with the re-uploads of my National Gramophonic Society sets, featuring two electrical recordings of chamber works in which woodwinds are prominent.  By far the lesser known of these works is the Chamber Symphony by Paul Juon (1872-1940).  This delightful work, which despite its title is really an octet for piano, woodwinds and strings, was published as such in 1905 with a dedication to Julius Block, the agent of Edison who recorded so many Russian musicians on cylinders, including Juon himself.  When I first uploaded this recording in 2007, I had done the side join in the first movement incorrectly, owing to the lack of either a score or a modern continuous-play recording.  Since then I have had access to a score (which can be had here at the Internationam Music Score Library Project), and this error has now been corrected.  Unfortunately the score also revealed that cuts had been made in the last two movements.  Despite this, it's a fine performance, featuring Rae Robertson (one-half of Bartlett and Robertson) on piano, and Leon Goossens on oboe:

Paul Juon: Chamber Symphony in B-Flat, Op. 27
New Chamber Orchestra conducted by Charles Kreshover
Recorded December 31, 1929, by Columbia
National Gramophonic Society 144 through 146, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 61.54 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 28.53 MB)

Leon Goossens also performs on the other work presented here, that of the Mozart Quintet for Piano and Winds, which features Kathleen Long as the pianist.  The ensemble is rounded out by Frederick Thurston (clarinet), John Alexandra (bassoon), and Aubrey Brain (horn):

Mozart: Quintet in E-Flat, K. 452, for piano and winds
Kathleen Long (piano) and ensemble
Recorded March 19, 1928, by Columbia
National Gramophonic Society 121 through 123, three 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 45.69 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 20.83 MB)

Happy Birthday, Franz Liszt!

Tomorrow is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Franz Liszt (born October 22, 1811), and, to celebrate, I'm taking a little break from my reissue postings to offer something kinda fun.  I must say at the outset that I cannot count myself a Liszt fan, although I do recognize his pre-eminent position as a pianist (and oh, if only he had lived a few years longer, he could have left us a recording of his playing!).  But as a composer, it seems to me that he took himself too seriously about 90% of the time.  Of course, most of the Romantics did this, but in Liszt's case, it usually backfired.  I suspect his essential temperament was a fun-loving one - no doubt, he had fun playing the piano! - and the works of Liszt that I usually enjoy hearing are those that exhibit this, such as the Hungarian Rhapsodies and the Mephisto Waltz.  I also enjoy hearing Liszt in "fun" arrangements, such as the one I offer here:

Liszt: Liebestraum No. 3 in A-Flat
and
Chopin: Nocturne in E-Flat, Op. 9, No. 2
J. H. Squire Celeste Octet
Recorded January 29, 1932
Columbia DX 362, one 78-rpm record
Link (FLAC files, 22.43 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 9.24 MB)

Perhaps J. H. Squire (1880-1956) didn't intend these salon orchestra arrangements, played by an ensemble consisting of strings, piano, harmonium and, yes, celesta, to be fun, but that's how they come across nearly a century later.  Notice how the two cadenzas in the "Liebestraum" are played by the pianist in the group, as if in acknowledgement of their essential un-transcribability!

A number of Edison Blue Amberol cylinders played by the Moss-Squire Celeste Orchestra, which I presume was a precursor to the Squire Celeste Octet, can be heard online at the USCB's Cylinder Digitization Project.  These are fun, too.