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…

Hurrah for job lots!

Recently, I took a punt on a job lot of 78s on eBay... result!

Busoni String Quartet in C Op.19 - (ii) Andante
Mozart String Quartet in G K.387 - (iv) Molto allegro
Odeon O-6273, rec. 10 November 1924
Roth Quartet
(Feri Roth, Mauritz Stromfeld, Herman Spitz, A. Franke)

The seller had been kind enough to list all 150+ discs (other sellers, please note, you lazy so-and-sos!) - but not always with enough detail to be quite sure exactly what they contained. I feared this might be from the Roth Quartet's incomplete recording of Schubert's 'Death and the Maiden' Quartet D.810, issued in Britain on Parlophone (E 10767-68) and transferred by CHARM (their only other British issue, not on CHARM, was E 10656, a snippet of Debussy's Quartet).

Yippee, it wasn't! Instead, I found this interesting acoustical rarity, in an original sleeve, as many in the job lot were: and it contains what must be one of the earliest recordings of a work of chamber music by Busoni - anyone know of an earlier one? What's more, this coupling is not listed in Hansfried Sieben's Odeon Matrizen-nummern der Serie xxB (30 cm) von 6815-9598, (1923-1953) (Düsseldorf, 1988). On the other hand, Sieben does list the players, by surnames only; I've been able to get first names for all but the ’cellist.

My fellow-collector Jolyon Hodson has kindly made this transfer (I haven't the right kit, at the mo) and the scans. By my reckoning, this is only the third ever recording of the Finale of Mozart's K.387 (the first was by the Flonzaley for Victor and the second by the Léner for Columbia) - and it goes at a heck of a lick!

Download the 2 mono FLAC files, fully tagged, in a .rar file from here.

Some ten months later, the Roth recorded the Menuetto of K.387 (xxB 7237, face no. unknown, issued on O-80283). If anyone has that, we'd love to hear it.

I must say I'm chuffed to bits with my job lot bonanza and I hope to be able to post more goodies from it soon. I have some German Parlophons and even rare Homochords (Robert Pollak, Fery Lorant - yes!).

I wish I had more Odeons like this, though. They recorded a lot of chamber music, including some twelve discs with the Roth Quartet. (By the way, why is seemingly no one in Germany posting stuff like this on the web? Is anyone collecting these discs?)

Odeon even recorded a disc of ‘Old English Dances from Shakespeare’s Time’, with the Munich Viol Quintet! That would make Grumpy exceedingly happy...

UPDATE

Jolyon has found a notice, in The Musical Times of November 1924, of a 'very animated performance' of Busoni's Op.19 by the Roth Quartet, 'very well received', at a Busoni commemoration organized by his pupil Edward Weiss - of course, silly me, I'd forgotten Busoni had just died (27 July 1924)!