From the Back Room: Bloch and Herbert

No sooner had I posted Buster's Back Room, where I listed some of the many projects I had completed but never offered on this blog, than a few people asked for this record.

It's a good one - from 1952 and the American Recording Society, it includes two relatively neglected works: Ernest Bloch's Trois Poèmes Juifs and Victor Herbert's Cello Concerto No. 2.

Walter Hendl

The works are split between two conductors: Walter Hendl, an American who at the time was the music director of the Dallas Symphony, and Max Schoenherr, an Austrian whose recorded works tended to be on the lighter side, such as operetta. Both were accomplished musicians.

Max Schoenherr

The record did attract some notable critical acclaim. John Briggs of the New York Times led his column about recent recordings with these thoughts: "The American Recording Society, aided by a grant from the Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, is continuing to turn up unusual and interesting works over-looked in the rush of ordinary commercial recording.

"Such a piece is the Victor Herbert Cello Concerto, newly available on records as performed by Bernard Greenhouse and the American Recording Society Orchestra, Max Schoenherr conducting.

Victor Herbert

"The concerto is a workable piece, designed for practical performance, affording the soloist ample opportunity to display his virtuosity. It is by no means a trivial work. The composer of Naughty Marietta and The Red Mill was also first 'cellist of the Philharmonic-Symphony and for some years conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony. His concerto is the work of a musician trained in the thoroughgoing nineteenth-century German school, writing for an instrument which he knows at first hand. Herbert’s manipulation of the orchestra is easy, fluent and unforced."

Bernard Greenhouse

Cellist Bernard Greenhouse, who was then a solo artist, would help found the famed Beaux Arts Trio in 1955, with pianist Menahem Pressler and violinist Daniel Guilet.

Ernest Bloch

Bloch's superb Trois Poèmes Juifs also received praise from the Times and the Saturday Review. The Times: "On the same recording is heard a fine performance of Ernest Bloch's sensitive and moving Trois Poèmes Juifs, played by the American Recording Society Orchestra under the direction of Walter Hendl." The Saturday Review added that the piece was "beautifully formulated" and "well-performed," and that Hendl directed with "eloquent effect."

The Bloch may be the sole recording of the work: A Classical Discography does not list another. Herbert's two Cello Concertos have each been recorded a few times.

Both of these performances are listed as being by the "American Recording Society Orchestra," which generally turned out to be a European ensemble. A Classical Discography lists the Herbert as being recorded by the Vienna Symphony, but does not have an ID for the orchestra heard in the Bloch composition.

The recording of the concerto was tubby (I've addressed that characteristic), although the cello was and is well caught. The Bloch is nicely done.

LINK

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.