By the ungracious condescension of His Grouch the Archgrump

Beethoven Piano Trio in Bb Op.97 ‘Archduke’
Loveridge-Martin-Hooton Trio
rec. 1958/59?
World Record Club T[P] 36

Grumble. Mumble. Wumble! Mutter. Splutter. Whinge. Grizzle. Grouse. Kvetch. Rouspète. Râle.

On the other hand, what a nice chap who sold me this via eBay. Very happy. Thank you.

The sleeve says ‘T 36’ but the labels say ‘TP 36’ – anyone know why? The labels also say, rather charmingly, ‘First issued 1939’! As it happens, I have seen the WRC supplement for June-July 1959 which lists this LP. I don’t know of a stereo issue; the Club was already putting out stereo records but only of orchestral music, as far as I can make out.

Iris Loveridge is quite well represented on CD, by a 3-CD set of Bax’s piano music and a mixed recital of Moeran and Gordon Jacob, all on Lyrita. There’s an excellent article about her by Rob Barnett on Musicweb International. Loveridge also made other LPs and 78s.

Florence Hooton currently has just one CD to her name, also on Lyrita, of ’cello music by Bax and Jacob. She appears on many 78s, in different trios (one with Frederick Grinke) and duos (one with Gerald Moore). On CHARM, you can hear her playing Sammartini and – wait for it – Webern’s String Trio! (Unfortunately, she has been spelled ‘Hooteon’ in CHARM’s metadata for the Webern.) I found a short obituary in a music journal, which told me that she died aged 75 in 1988, a highly respected teacher, and had studied with Emanuel Feuermann.

In 1938 Hooton married the Canadian-born violinist David Martin, who is written up by Giles Bryant in the wonderfully useful Canadian Encyclopedia. From that, I learn that Martin studied with Kathleen Parlow, led the Philharmonic String Trio and after the War founded his own String Quartet and Piano Trio. Martin made 78s and LPs with all groups, as well as with the Boyd Neel String Orchestra; a fair number have been reissued on CD.

I really like this record. The sound is a little iffy: at the start the piano is too recessed and almost sounds like a Graf or Beethoven’s own Broadwood. But I love the sound Loveridge gets from it: it has a gentle, plummy quality which makes me suspect it’s an old-fashioned, less famous make, possibly British? The recorded balance is not ideal (not easy, recording piano trios, I know) and, on my otherwise nice copy of this LP, there is distortion on some peaks at the end.

This is excellent music-making of the second rank, the kind of thing the self-appointed arbiters (arbiter?) of taste at RMCR don’t want you to hear, still less enjoy. By ‘second rank’, I only mean in comparison to international stars. The performance really comes into its own in the slow movement, where Loveridge achieves a serene, generous calm. After a well managed transition, the finale is unruffled but purposeful, rather than hectic. Yet there is power in reserve.

It’s also the kind of performance, I imagine, one might have heard at, say, the South Place Sunday Concerts in the 1950s. I recently went to the Concerts’ home for many decades, the Conway Hall, for the first time, I’m ashamed to say, to hear Beethoven’s ‘Ghost’ and two other piano trios played with passionate commitment by a young ensemble led by a friend, the gifted and versatile Australian violinist Madeleine Easton.

The ‘Ghost’ slightly showed up its neighbours, even Mendelssohn’s Op.66. And with the ‘Archduke’, we’re in yet another league. What a work. This is what it’s all about, eh? In a sense, I’m only here because of the ‘Archduke’. In 1982, helping to decorate my parents’ house during the university summer holidays, I listened non-stop to BBC Radio Three and, one day, while I was blow-torching paint from a door frame or a skirting board (or was I sand-papering stair balusters?), someone put on the Cortot-Thibaud-Casals version.

Bingo. Damascus. That was the single experience which opened my ears to the pleasure – not only the value and the interest, the sheer pleasure – of historical recordings. Soon after, I went to the Music Discount Centre, newly opened in Dean Street, and bought the Opal LP transfer. And the rest is grumpiness.

Because I didn’t want to separate the last two movements, only three mono, fully tagged FLACs, in a .rar file, here.

Snarl. Gnash. Fume. Grind. Introspect! Curse. Blast. Seethe…

Ffunky Ggibbons, Locke & Purcell

Here's another one you won't want!

But I love these recordings of 17th C consort music by string quartet. They bring it out of the music chest and the library and into the concert hall - especially peformances as confident as these, by the New Music String Quartet: Broadus Earle, Matthew Raimondi (violins), Walter Trampler (viola), Claus Adam (cello). Recorded by Peter Bartók in about 1952, I reckon, for his own label, on which this was first released as LP number 913, some time in the first half of 1953. The Quartet made quite a few interesting LPs of early music for Bartók, from Alessandro Scarlatti to F.X. Richter; some have been reissued on CD - but not this one. This World Record Club Recorded Music Circle issue must date from the late 1950s, no? I wish I knew more about this fascinating label: all info grumpily received.

The two Gibbons 4-part Fantasias (his only two) have been transposed up a fourth; at this pitch and in the NMSQ's hands they zing with high tension and rhythmic drive. Perhaps the Quartet should have upped Locke's sixth Consort of Ffowre Parts too; it comes across least well of the 5 pieces here. This was not its first recording; amazingly, that was made in 1929 by the National Gramophonic Society, with André Mangeot and his International String Quartet playing Mangeot's edition of a transcription by Warlock (I dunno what edition was used here - quite possibly the same?). The movements are Fantazia, Courante, Ayre, Saraband.

The famous Purcell Chacony, on the other hand, has a reticent delicacy that I really like - no Nymanesque chugging or overblown climax. Not on the disc, anyway.

Download the 5 fully tagged mono FLAC files in a .rar archive from here.