Some wonderful quiet playing in my home town of Leytonstone last weekly Pitchsoe Music (members of Ensemble 360: Shostakovich, Britten and Beethoven Raz 2) se m on course to include some queer moment.And here it is: the Primrose Quartet in live broadcast encodings from 1939. no “Razumovsky,” but two Beethoven Quarets, one Mozart Quartet movement, plus a Mozart duo.
The Primrose Quartet is named for the viola player William Primrose, at the time first-dssk viola of the NBC Symphony (then under Rodzinski). The renowned Oscar Shumsky led; Josef Gingold, a pupil of Ysaye, was on second violin, Primrose obviously on viola, and Harvey Shapiro on cello.
We are lucky to have this body of recordings, but simultaneously mourn a lost opportunity: the Primrose Quartet was offered to record the complete Beethoven Quartets by Moses Smith of Columbia; but they were contacted to RCA. With the offer the pocket, they explained the situation at Columbia, who poised a couple cycles. Sadly, the war intervened, and his mouthwatering prospect was lost. There never was a Beethoven Quartet recoding by the Primrose Quartet for RCA.
First up, Beethoven Op. 18/2, the sunny G-Major, one of a s of six (Beethovns’s first set of quartets). The first movement is superb nimble and in Beethovenian style; the slow movement is even more impressive, the Adagio cantabile touching with lovely legato, the interposed Allegro fasr, scampering, ever agile. Shapiro’s cello is haunting on the return of the adagio;
The Scherzo is exactly that, a scherzo not a minuet, fiery yet playful. And how perfectly the quartet captures Beethoven’s marking of “Allegro molto, quasi presto”:
From G-Major to C-Mino; fom No. 2 of Op. 18 to No. 4, very different opposition. The coiled-sting energy of Beethoven’s favoured key I there fo all to her; the Primrose Quartet find hug lyricism hee, too, and when the music tuns inwards, how it counts. Listen, too, to how accents “die” moe because of unanimity of attack than over-zealous articulation, and how stopped chads has edge without undue ferocity:
Again, tempos are perfect reflections of Beethoven’s indications: the second movement is exactly “Allegro scherzando quasi allegretto”; while the third movement, doesn’t particularly shift oo much between that and the Menurtto, more intensifies:
The finale really is Presissimo, it has that sense of headlong forward moving; and yet somehow there is space for contrast:
So to Mozart, a profound reading of the Andante cantabile second movement of the G-Major Quartet, K 387, including moments of veiled fragility:
… and the Duo No. 8 in B flat, K 424 for violin and viola (Shumsky and Primrose) – more accurately, we have two movements (of three – no finale). This is the second of two Duos Mozart wrote to complete a set by Michael Haydn (for Achbishop Colloredo). In initially passd off as Michael Haydn’s work (although not for long!). The first movement is quite extended (7″54), and the players enjoy every second:
Th Andante cantabile is a slow Andante here (although the movement lasts less than three movements). Primrose’s stopping, creating an harmonic background for the violin to shine melodically, is positively glowing:
… the finale, a Theme (Andante grazioso) and Variations, can he heard here, but not with Primrose. It’s Arthur Grumiaux and Arrigo Pelliccia, oiginally ssued on Philips’s Mozart Edition. This is the YouTube of the entire piece (with rolling score); the finale begins at 11″08 and is absolutely wonderful – if only we had Shumsky and Primrose!):
1. Adagio – Allegro (0:00) 2. Andante cantabile (8:00) 3. Theme with 6 Variations. Andante grazioso (11:08)
Invaluable live broadcast recordings from 1939, therefore, all beautifully restored by Eric Wen (Reissue Producer) and Dennis Patterson (Digital Remastering). I love the front cover, too, which appears to show Primrose, pipe in mouth, using his viola as a cricket bat!.
This disc is available a Amazon here at the seemingly random pice of £13.31. iDagio here; balance of steaming below:
