Ravel with the Pascal Quartet, Oscar Shumsky and Bernard Greenhouse

Here, as the result of a request on another site, is another performance by the violinist Oscar Shumsky, who has also been featured in two recent posts.

On this record, Shumsky presents the Ravel Sonata for Violin and Cello with Bernard Greenhouse, previously heard on this site in the Carter Sonata for Cello and Piano.

Pascal Quartet

Also on the LP is Ravel's String Quartet in F major in a sophisticated performance by the Pascal Quartet: Jacques Dumont and Maurice Crut, violins, Léon Pascal, viola, and Robert Salles, cello.

Léon Pascal had been in another notable ensemble, the Calvet Quartet, in the 1930s. The Pascal Quartet was in existence from 1941 to 1973, and made many recordings for this label (Concert Hall Society) in the 1950s. This taping dates from 1951.

Bust by Léon Leyritz

My own tastes lean more to Ravel's Quartet than the later Sonata, although this is a very good performance of the latter work. It apparently was first issued on 78s in 1948, according to fellow blogger Neal of Neal's Historical Recordings, who did a transfer many years ago that is no longer available.

The striking cover art is based on a bust of Ravel by his friend Léon Leyritz. The LP sound is very good.

Early Elliott Carter: Cello and Piano Sonatas

As a follow-up to my post of Elliott Carter's Piano Sonata and Pocahontas Suite, here is the composer's 1948 Cello Sonata and a second version of the piano work. This is from a circa 1952 American Recording Society LP.

Bernard Greenhouse

Carter wrote the cello score for Bernard Greenhouse, then a young soloist. This was several years before the instrumentalist's long and illustrious association with the Beaux Arts Trio. Greenhouse and pianist Anthony Makas gave the premiere of the work in Town Hall in 1950.

On the other side of the LP, Beveridge Webster makes the Piano Sonata his own in a version that I prefer to the Charles Rosen account that appeared here a while back, not that the Rosen isn't a tremendous accomplishment in its own right. But Webster's approach in the stormier passages of the second movement does make the later reading seem deadpan.

Beveridge Webster

Like Rosen, Webster recorded the sonata twice - the second time for Dover, for which he produced seemingly the entire piano literature in low-priced editions that once were commonly found in bookstores.

I am certain this is the first recording of the Cello Sonata; I believe that is true of the piano work as well. The sound is very good.