Customer Reviews

The Early String Quartet in the U.S.A.

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First of three Vox Box sets (The best is the third, American String Quartets, 1950-1970).

Charles Ives is the silent presence throughout this collection, for many of these works represent what Ives rebeled against & parodied. But given their time & place, we are now more appreciative of the "Boston School" & their contemporaries. What is remarkable is that this music sounds more American than German to our ears. Deliberately so in Daniel Gregory Mason's Quartet on Negro Themes. A contemporary of Ives, Mason (b. 1873) deserves credit for recognizing the best fruit of our musical vine; he took up those themes with care, respect & admiration.

Likewise the first of Charles Tomlinson Griffes' Two Sketches Based on [Chippewa] Indian Themes, a lovely piece in which he sensitively, & sentimentally, tried to capture the tone qualities of Native American performance as well as the modalities. The work has originality.

The example of Dvorak eventually got to Charles Whitefield Chadwick (b. 1954). Typed as an "academic" in the liner notes, the label hardly accounts for the high spirits, cheeky humor, & the ease with which he incorporates a vernacular musical language. This Quartet now strikes the ears as related to Ives' First Symphony, which has a bolder harmonic language & is more entertaining, yet both make a similar overall impression.

Charles Martin Loeffler (b. 1861) used a motif from Gregorian chant in composing his elegiac Music for Four Stringed Instruments in memory of his Victor Chapman, a pilot killed in World War One. It's a worthy work from tragic decade that inspired so many memorable memorials.

The pretty andante in Henry Hadley's nicely-crafted Piano Quintet could have come from the Paris Conservatoire.

Even The four brief pieces "as originally written for open strings" & attributed to Benjamin Franklin are amusing novelties; someone put effort into making them.

One would not mistake the Kohon Quartet for The Emerson, but on these late-Sixties recordings they perform with enthusiasm & committment. The Kohon premiered the complete Ives 1st Quartet in performance (1957) & on vinyl (1964, Vox), & they received the Grand Prix du Disque in 1964 for their recording of the Alban Berg String Quartet #3. Although most of these compositions are now available elsewhere, Early American String Quartets is a very good sampler.

A great CD of rarely heard music. The energy and raw edgyness of the performance is compelling. It's not an over-processed sound, instead it's very real. Highly recommended!

A selection of excellent compositions for string quartet by leading American composers from around the turn of the previous century, this recording brings neglected masterpieces to life. Sadly, they are little better known today than 40 years ago, when the Kohon Quartet first played them on LP. The Chadwick and Loeffler pieces are superb, reminiscent of Dvorak and Debussy but with an American sensibility and every bit as good. Griffes' sketches uses "Indian Themes" and the Daniel Mason's Quartet draws on "Negro Themes." Europeans were searching out folk, oriental and national tunes as points of departure for their work at about this time, so these pieces fit into what was then a mainstream approach. While accomplished as workings out of folk melodies, these compositions are less satisfying as pure music. Still, definitely enjoyable to listen to. The Foote quartet and Hadley piano quintet are solid with passages of genuine transcendence and arresting development. Well-crafted but emininently lyrical, a la Robert Schumann.

The quartet attributed to Benjamin Franklin is a curiosity but not a bore. Originally conceived for specially tuned instruments and only open (unstopped) strings, it provides jaunty and pleasant airs and harmonies. A little out of place in this collection, but then, in what program would it seem in place? This raises my quibble with the title. Only the Franklin (or whoever) is really "early." As I recall, Moravians and others (mostly immigrants) were writing music including string quartets 100 years or more before these pieces. So a better description might be "American String Quartets from the Gilded Age."

The Kohon Quartet plays expressively and precisely, with musicianship and verve. Ditto for pianist Isabelle Byman on the Hadley. (I couldn't find the quartet players names on the CD reissue; a Grammaphone review of another 60's recording listed Harold Kohon, Raymond Kunicki, violins; Bernard Zaslav, viola; Robert Sylvester, 'cello.) I would prefer a warmer tone and richer acoustic, but that could be a result of the older analogue recording. All in all, a great pair of chamber music CD's worth hunting down not just for the repertoire's historical significance but for the sheer joy of these late romantic gems.

Fascinating exploration of now forgotten American composers. The program notes are well written and informative. Unfortunately the performances rarely rise above an undergraduate, state-school level, and often sink below. The recorded sound one dimensional and the quartet sounds as if they play on plywood instruments. However, if you're researching repertoire, this is an important recording, and hopefully these beautiful pieces will be visited by greater artists in the near future!