Dual Alliance

The Dual Alliance, I here you ask what is he on about, was a defensive alliance between Germany and Austria-Hungary, which was created by treaty on October 7, 1879 as part of Bismarck's system of alliances to prevent/limit war, sort of fell apart in 1918 but this  last throw of the dice did produced some good recordings - also the Austrian Schubert and the Hungarian Liszt was a dual alliance of sorts - history lesson over, phew.

Satyr at 78 toeren klassiek has made available a whole shelf of electrical recording under Leo Blech so this earlier acoustic recording is really dedicated to his hard work.

Schubert-Liszt:  Ungarischer Marsch
(From Divertissement a l'hongrois D. 818)

Kapelle des Staats-Theater Opernhaus, Berlin
Conducted by Leo Blech

DGA 69554 [040938/9] 

[1165m & 1166m]
1917

1 Flac  file HERE at Mediafire. [about 17Mb].

Liszt's piano arrangement is more readily recorded and performed than this orchestral version. Leo Blech recorded it both acoustically and electrically the latter version must have been abbreviated as it was reduced to one side as a filler on HMV D 1987.

During the dark days of the First World War  Kapelle das Stadst-Theaters Opernhaus under Leo Blech recorded quite a number of compositions of German, Austrian, Hungarian and Czech composers, just as in Britain, British compositions started to be recorded, most notably the start of the relationship between Elgar and the gramophone

The 'royal' was no longer appropriate after the collapse of the German Empire in 1918, the Opera was renamed Staatsoper Unter den Linden and the Königliche Kapelle became Kapelle der Staatsoper. Whatever name it chose to call itself we today know it as the Staatsoper Unter den Linden or Berlin Opera House orchestra today.

Although this has nothing to do with the music the orchestra or Blech  I will bore you for a minute on briefly outline how these records entered the UK. In 1914 The Gramophone Co. Ltd lost control Deutsche Grammophon Aktiengesellschaft [DGA] when it was seized as enemy property and sold by the German government to Polyphon who subsequently developed as an  independent entity. The Gramophone Co. Ltd also lost the use of the HMV trade mark's use in Germany to Polyphon and although the Versailles Treaty allowed the return of all matrices recorded before the outbreak of war everything recorded subsequently by DGA remained with the German company.  This record was pressed during that interregnum period after armistice but before the  final arbitration ruling on 22 July 1924 up until which time Germany continued  export with the HMV Trademark to countries that had been neutral during the war. After the a courts ruling records appeared for export under the Polydor label created specifically for this purpose.

Surprising anything actually got recorded, pressed and marketed in those confusing times; normally this record should have had the trade mark overlaid to hid the dog and gramophone. One example I have has it scratched out with a knife!

Losing the plot

Edison lost the plot and also lost the war of the Phonographs to the ever rapacious Gramophone. A few last futile attempts to record something better than excerpts and transcriptions of chamber music were however made. This wonderful, compelling, artless performance has been left to languish far too long. I don't think anyone has ever attempted to re-issue it, and I have not been able to locate any reviews either, it did however manage to get listed in WERM.

The set has a few pressing problems that I have minimized as much as possible without interfering too much with the sound quality; side joins were also a bit tricky due to rallentandos.   On The New York Trio much of the information I have pulled from the web, various newspapers and journals but big gaps still remain in  my knowledge of this group.

Schubert: Piano Trio in B-flat major, D.898 (Op. 99)

The New York Trio

Clarence Adler, piano Louis Edlin violin  

Cornelius van Vliet cello

Edison Diamond Disc 80899-80901

[18527 B-1-1; 18528 A-1-1; 18529 A-1-4; 18530 B-1-1; 

18531 A-1-1; 18532 A-1-1; 18533 A-1-2; 18534 A-1-4]

Recorded: Thursday 24^th May 1928

Coupled: Monday 17^th September 1928

Discontinued: Tuesday 31^st December 1929

4 Flac files in a .rar file, Here at Mediafire. [about 86Mb]

The New York Trio was founded about October 1919 the original members being Scipione Guidi, violin, Cornelius van Vliet cello and Clarence Adler piano. Scipione Guidi left the trio in 1923, probably due to his commitments as Concert Master of the the New York Philharmonic from 1921 and was replaced by the violinist Louis Edlin. The trio remained with these three players until at least 1929. I believe for the a number of years there was some sort of interregnum as I find no mention of the trio again until 1936 when the group now included John Corigliano as violinist but was not named as The New York Trio.

Biographies:

Cornelius van Vliet

Cornelius van Vliet (1889-1963), the founder of the trio, was born in Holland. He played with the Concertgebouw and later became principal of the orchestras at Leipzig and Prague. He moved to the United States in 1911 to play with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra. He went on to become principal cello with the New York Philharmonic from around 1922 to at least 1928. His time probably coincided with Mengelberg,s tenure as music director. He then became principle cellist with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. This could have been prompted by the dispute between Mengelberg and Toscanini which lead to Mengelberg leaving New York in 1930. Van Vliet later taught at the University of Colorado, and retired in 1953.

Aaron Copland & Clarence Adler

Clarence Adler (1886-1969) was born in Cincinnati. He was spotted by Romeo Gorno, a professor at the Cincinnati College of Music, and at the age of twelve Adler was already giving concerts in the South and Midwest of America. By 1902 he realized he needed more advanced training and moved to Berlin where he became a pupil of Alfred Reisenauer, himself a pupil of Liszt and Leopold Godowsky. In 1913 Adler returned to the United States and settled in New York, where he performed with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under Willem Mengelberg and the New York Symphony under Walter Damrosch. It was probably through these concerts that he met with van Vliet to form the New York Trio. From 1919 Adler became a respected pedagogue and pianist who taught both Aaron Copland and Richard Rogers. He still performed, often on radio, but his main influence was teaching private classes in New York and Lake Placid.

Victor de Gomez (l) & Louis Edlin (r)
Cleveland Symphony Orchestra 1920

Louis Edlin was born in New York in 1889 of Russian-Jewish parents. He began studying at the age of nine with Arnold D. Volpe (1869-1940), a Lithuanian-born American composer and conductor who came to the United States in 1898. Arnold Volpe organized and conducted his Volpe orchestra, a training orchestra in the years prior to WWI and Louis Edlin gained his first orchestral experience there. Eldin moved to Europe in 1906 and first studied at the Paris Conservatoire with the Belgium Guillaume Rémy and then to Berlin from 1909 where he studied with Fritz Kreisler, among other teachers. Returning to New York in 1911 Eldin played in the first violin section of the New York Symphony from 1911 to 1913. In the 1913-1914 season, Edlin become Concertmaster of the Russian Symphony of New York. Then in the next season he became a member of the first violin section of the Philharmonic Society of New York where he stayed until 1919. At the recommendation of the Philharmonic conductor Josef Stransky, Edlin was appointed Concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra where he stayed until the end of the 1923. During his Cleveland years, Edlin taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music and played in the Cleveland String Quartet. In 1923, Edlin returned to New York City and joined the faculty of the Institute of Musical Art (Juilliard) and also that year became a member of the New York Trio. In 1926 Louis Edlin became radio conductor of the Atwater-Kent radio orchestra and later served as a section head of violins and a conductor at the National Orchestral Association, a training orchestra for orchestral musicians in New York City in the 1940s. My last notice of Edlin is from 1951.

Repertoire:

I have but meagre information on what the trio performed although the Schubert was in their repertoire from at least 1922. I have tabulated the information I have managed to glean online from various articles and newspapers of all the concerts known to me which can be downloaded HERE [10Kb PDF]

Recordings:

Of recordings I have only been able to trace the Schubert and a live recording from 1953.


Interestingly a different, unpublished? take of the first side [A-1-1] of this performance is available through the Thomas Edison National Park HERE.

A tape held at the Library of Congress of a concert by New York Trio recorded in the Coolidge Auditorium of the Library of Congress, Washington, on Feb. 6, 1953. This includes Mozart trio B flat major, KV502; Beethoven Variations on Ich bin der Schneider Kakadu, op. 121a Beethoven Trio in B flat major, op. 97 and Walter Piston Trio (1935), The Piston I understand was issued on a disc – anyone have that?

Chronology:

The Altenberg Trio web page HERE has the following information on the The New York Trio history.

NEW YORK TRIO (I) [ New York, NY (US) ] (1919 - 1923)

piano: Clarence ADLER * 10.03.1886 Cincinnati, OH (US)† 24.12.1969

violin: Scipione GUIDI 

cello: Cornelius van VLIET * 01.09.1886 Rotterdam (NL)

NEW YORK TRIO (II) [ New York, NY (US) ] (1923 - )

piano: Clarence ADLER * 10.03.1886 Cincinnati, OH (US)† 24.12.1969

violin: Louis EDLIN * 30.09.1893 New York, NY (US) 

cello: Cornelius van VLIET * 01.09.1886 Rotterdam (NL)

NEW YORK TRIO (III) [ New York, NY (US) ] 

piano: Clarence ADLER * 10.03.1886 Cincinnati, OH (US)† 24.12.1969

violin: John CORIGLIANO * 28.08.1901 New York, NY (US)† 01.09.1975 Norfolk, CT (US) 

cello: Cornelius van VLIET * 01.09.1886 Rotterdam (NL)

Edison:

I ought to say something about Edison. It was unusual to have such a long work recorded over eight sides by Edison so it must have been partly to celebrate the Schubert Centenary and partly to compete against the Cortot, Thibaud, Casals, issue on HMV & Victor.

Edison was losing sales rapidly for the following reasons: a) his sales were concentrated on short popular pieces b) Edison himself vetted all records – he was not too musical and deaf as a post c) hill & dale recordings were not compatible with any other system of reproduction d) the company had made losses since 1924 e) their main clients were outside the cities and almost all rural f) they were late into using electrical recordings – well I could go on but I think you can see where this is headed. The company was wound up in October 1929 and all stock sold or destroyed. The records were issued sometime after the coupling date and from the matrix number I don't think they sold many copies. Three takes were made, A, B and C from which one would be chosen for issue. A mould would be made; and stampers made from that mould: thus A-1-1 equates to take A mould 1 stamper 1. You can see that most of these did not get past the first stamper and those that did may have been due to failures in processing.

Edison Advertisement:

As an addenda I have copied out the blurb in the Edison Supplement for July, August, September 1928.

'Franz Schubert is to-day probably the best known and best loved of all the world's great composers. Yet one hundred years ago he lived and wrote obscure and penniless in his native city of Vienna – a simple, cheerful, generous soul. On November 19 1828, he died there – practically of starvation and almost friendless – at the lamentable age of thirty-one. They found in his room “ a quantity of old music, value $2” now part of the richest single heritage of music ever bestowed upon an astonished world.

'Of the many lovely things that Schubert wrote, one of the loveliest is his Trio in B flat – an exquisite tone-poem, to be approached in loving reverence by musicians – to be heard in thrilled silence by the listener. It is music that speaks of the soul.

'In 1919 three great artists – Adler, Edlin and val Vliet – founded the New York Trio. Nine rich years of ensemble experience have brought to their present performance a perfection of finish and balance which, combined with the music of Schubert, results in beauty almost incredible … Hear this great Trio complete on four records -80898-80901.'

First Edition of the Op 99 Trio, published Vienna 1836

Never believe what it says on the label....

Well this recording is indeed incomplete as well as mis-titled so proved a bit of a challenge all round - I have cleaned the sound up but the acetates are a bit worn and I did not want be too intrusive. I have left the sides just as they are so be warned the music suddenly stops and starts in places. In all 24 minutes were recorded so the performance is missing something over 6 minutes.

Schubert:  String Quartet No.8, D. 112

(incomplete)

New Italian String Quartet

Four sides on two acetate discs

Originally recorded at the Freemason's Hall, Edinburgh

Wednesday, 29th August 1951

Score from IMSLP

1 Flac file HERE at Mediafire. [about 68Mb].

I have reversed out picture of the disc's centre as the yellow crayon is a bit indistinct but what it states is 'Quartet in F  K.590 1st mov. New Italian 4/3/52.'

Now if you want to know this very, very long winded process of identification then by all means read on!

Having listened to this it certainly was not the Mozart or Beethoven as advertised on the BBC Third Programme for 11pm on Monday 4th of March 1952. I do not know what caused the error, wither it was a last minute change to the programme, someone making the wrong announcement (unlikely) or the anonymous person who made these discs getting it wrong - clearly whoever recorded it was  blissfully unaware of the mistake for the paper sleeves also have the Mozart K.590 written on them.

Anyway thanks to CharmNick for instantly spotting the composition, I can only admit to knowing the 'tune' and probably would have worked it out in the end, but deferred to The Chamber Music expert! [My wife tells me I'm an oily so and so]

On board SS Liberté (French Line), 1951

I only hoped this was actually the Italian Quartet playing as another oddity about this recording is that the schedule calls the players 'The New Italian Quartet,' they had however changed their name to just plain Italian Quartet or indeed Quartetto Italiano by 1952. Also 11pm on Monday night is an odd time to have a live audience so I suspect the recording must have been made earlier, but when or indeed where. The records came from Edinburgh and they came with a batch of other transcriptions of various Edinburgh Festival items from the 1950s so I suspect that they may also be transcriptions from a performance first broadcast from the Edinburgh Festival of 1951 and so thanks to Google News I pin-pointed the answer to this seeming conundrum. The following  extract is by Harold Thomson, music critic of the The Glasgow Herald, published on the 30th August 1951 reviewing the performance of the morning of the Wednesday 29th.

'New Italian Quartet Delights: Some of the finest playing of the Edinburgh Festival has bean heard from the New Italian Quartet, who gave the second of their two morning concerts in the Freemasons' Hall yesterday. Well matched in tone and temperament, they have maintained a consistently high standard in works of widely differing character, and in particular their soft playing will long be remembered by those who heard it. Their second programme began with Mozart's Adagio and Fugue in C minor K 546. …Schubert early Quartet In B flat Opus 168 (" done in 4½ hours." according to the composer), was rather sentimentally treated to begin with, but the menuetto and finale had rhythmic grip as well as delicacy in the quieter passages.' The last item in the concert was Schumann's Quartet in  F major.

I don't have a copy of the recording issued in April 1954 on Decca LXT 2855 but it would be interesting to see how their commercial performance compares.

Something a bit longer

I have spent most of the day preparing a wall ready to be daubed with paint tomorrow and I have a dripping nose, so thought to listen to some Schubert for comfort. BBC Radio 3 has had wall-to-wall Schubert the week before last but I can't think they broadcast these performances. Another good blogger, Grumpy Nick is coming over tomorrow in order that we do Coleridge-Taylor Festival!

Schubert: Piano Trio in E-flat major, D.929 (Op.100)

Michael Raucheisen,  piano, Jani Szántó violin 

& Josef Disclez, cello

Polydor: 95225-95229 

[526bi IV-541 bi IV] 

Recorded 1928, Berlin

Score at IMSLP

Schubert: Ave Maria D. 839 

arr. for violin & piano by August Wilhelmj 

Georg Kulenkampff, violin & Franz Rupp, piano

Polydor: 95229 

[371 be] 

Recorded 1928, Berlin

Score at IMSLP

2 Flac files in a .rar file, HERE at Mediafire. [about 118Mb].

The labels on the records have the rather bizarre name of the group as Munich Chamber Music Combination. I know from the German catalogues and WERM that the members of the 'Combination' are in fact Raucheisen, Szántó and Disclez [biogs below]. The recording was undoubtedly issued as part of the great Schubert Centenary celebrations, each side with the usual 1928 copyright date on the discs. That the records could only be obtained in the UK and USA via specialist shops, or on special order has made them difficult to find, and unlike a great number of the Polydor issues, this particular set did not make an appearance on Brunswick or Decca labels. I do not believe it was reviewed in The Gramophone or reissued on CD.

The recording takes up nine sides so a ‘lollipop’ filled the tenth side. I know it is Ave Maria by Schubert but this performance by the violinist Georg Kulenkampff with Franz Rupp as his accompanist is utterly lovely,  portamento and rubato, what happened? why did we loose these so so human qualities in our music making for so long, big softy that I am. The trio is not half bad either just in case you think I’m slacking here. Note at the end of the Ave Maria someone is hammering!

Towards the end of the 19th century the school of Munich composers led by Ludwig Thuille began to gain a reputation which spread beyond the city. The representatives of the Munich school active in the early years of the 20th century, such as Courvoisier, von Franckenstein and von Waltershausen, were succeeded by Haas, Kaminski and others such as Fritz Büchtger, Karl Höller, Harald Genzmer, Günther Bialas, Wilhelm Killmayer and Josef Anton Riedl, while Carl Orff and Karl Amadeus Hartmann achieved international standing. (Cribbed from Grove) Something more for me to explore!


Below are biogs of the three performers, Raucheisen is well documented but I have found it difficult to locate much information on his partners in this recording; any further information gratefully recieved.

Michael Raucheisen

Michael Raucheisen (1889-1984) was born in Rain, Swabia From 1902 Raucheisen lived in Munich, and from 1920 until the end of his pianistic activity in 1958, in Berlin. He studied at the Munich High School for Music. Around 1906 he played first violin at the Prinzregententheater and was organist in St. Michael. In 1916 he focused exclusively on the role of the piano accompanist and from the beginning of the 1920s until the end of the Second World War he was song accompanist for many singers, including Frida Leider, Erna Berger, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Karl Schmitt-Walter, Karl Erb and Helge Rosvaenge, to mention only a few. From 1933 he strove to create a complete catalogue of German language songs on gramophone recordings, for which, from 1940, he became head of the department of song and chamber music at the Berlin Rundfunk. After the War he was banned from his work for some years on account of his possible collaboration with the Nazi regime, and afterwards he appeared only occasionally in public.

Jani Szántó

Jani Szántó (1887-1977), a Hungarian violinist he studied in Budapest, Vienna, and Leipzig and was  appointed professor at the State Academy of Music in Munich in 1918 and with Felix Saupe, Haas and Josef Disclez he form the Munich String Quartet in 1920. He had left Germany in 1939 to escape Nazi persecution, and became the director of the Philadelphia Musical Academy in 1943 there he remained the director until he retired in 1962.


Josef Disclez (1888-1955) was born at Namur, Belgium, trained at the Brussels Conservatoire and subsequently worked in Brussels, Berlin and Munich and from 1914 he was principle cellist in the Bavarian State orchestra and a professor at the State Academy of Music in Munich.