Louis Kaufman “Historic Recordings of 20th Century American Works”: Ernest Bloch Violin Sonata No. 1, Quincy Porter Second Violin Sonata, Works of William Grant Still. Music & Arts CD 638 (1990) barcode 017685063823
Reissue Music & Arts CD-4638 barcode 017685463822
Note: this is the barcode under which that edition is listed on Music & Art’s website and found online, but whenever online listings display a backcover photo, it is that for the original release. So if anybody has an actual copy displaying that later label number and barcode (and possibly copyright year of re-release), let me know – and please send photo.
A fine tribute to a notable American fiddler
Originally posted on Amazon.com, 13 January 2007
The American violinist Louis Kaufman (1905-1994) can claim an obscure, yet seminal contribution to music in the 20th century (not to be confused with 20th century music). In 1947, he recorded, for the Concert Hall Society label, a piece by an obscure Venetian composer, vaguely remembered only through some transcriptions made by Bach. The composer was Antonio Vivaldi and the composition was The Four Seasons (reissued in 2005 on Naxos Historical 8.110297-98, link will open new tab to my review). Now talk about being influential!
The chance occasions of professional life brought Kaufman to the Hollywood studios in the 30s and 40s, where he featured in more than 400 solo film performances. He later quit to embrace a “serious” career, and contributed to 20th century music as well by premiering a number of notable compositions including concertos by Martinu, Milhaud and Sauguet. He was also an early champion of Barber’s and Piston’s violin concertos and Copland’s violin and piano sonata (his 1947/48 recording with the composer at the piano was reissued in the early 90s on Bay Cities BCD 1019). Yet he never acquired a stature and reputation equal to those of the leading American violinists, Menuhin, Stern or even Ricci.
In 1989/90 Music & Arts brought out two collections, one devoted to recordings of French 20th century pieces on CD-620, no barcode (with concertos by Milhaud and Sauguet, and Poulenc’s Violin Sonata, see listing on Discogs.com), and this one. It is intelligently composed, bringing together three composers of roughly the same generation (they were born within the last 20 years of the 19th century), Bloch being the only non-native (he was thirty-six when he settled in the US). There is a further connection, as Porter studied with Bloch and there are some stylistic similarities between their respective violin and piano sonata. The recordings date from 1954 (Porter), 1955 (Bloch) and 1972 (Still). In a note on the disc’s back cover, Music & Arts makes amends about the sound quality of the Porter recording, as the master tape had disappeared and they had to make the remastering from a tape copy in faked stereo owned by Kaufman – but they didn’t need to be apologetic: it sounds fine, with a spacious atmosphere and none of the artificial instrumental positioning and bass-treble fiddling often associated with fake stereo. By comparison, the mono sound of the Bloch recording is more distant and boxy, with a shrill edge, though well defined, and the Still does have some of that artificial positioning.
Of the three composers represented here I find the pieces by Still to be the most disappointing. William Grant Still (1885-1978) was one of the first black American classical composers, a student of Chadwick and, unbelievably, of Varèse, in the early 20s, when the French-born composer had turned radical and was writing Amériques. Ennenga for string quartet, harp and piano was composed in 1956 and pictures Still’s impressions of African music. I find the piece something of an embarrassment with its imagined, cloying melodies and mock naiveté. There is a kind of mawkish and innocuous charm to the two Danzas de Panama (1953). The Tamborito sometimes bring to mind the kind of “world music” the Kronos Quartet likes to commission and play, while the Punto sounds like the kind of vapid trifle the 78rmp era was fond of.
Quincy Porter (1897-1966) is – at least to me – a rather obscure figure of American academic music (he was taught at Yale by Horatio Parker, and later became Dean then Director of the New England Conservatory of Music) but, on the basis of this composition, he is worth much better than that. He was also a student Vincent d’Indy in Paris and of Bloch in Cleveland, and the influence of both can be heard in his second sonata for violin and piano from 1933. Though not as thorny as Bloch’s and without its Jewish flavor, his sonata is powerful, muscular, with the same kind of alternation between hushed mystery and sweeping passion that you find in Bloch’s similar pieces but also in those by composer’s of the school of Cesar Franck and D’Indy (Ropartz, Pierné, Le Flem, Roussel, Sauguet, Enesco’s 2nd).
But the piece of real substance is, of course, Bloch’s massive and brutal 1st Violin and Piano Sonata (1920), in which Kaufman is partnered by Pina Pozzi (only in December 2010, some years after this review was originally posted, did I discover that she is a woman, and changed the “he” and “his” of my orignal review accordingly). They start the opening “Agitato” rather cautiously but with a suitable big tone from Kaufman, if not the tonal beauty commanded by Isaac Stern with Alexander Zakin in 1959 (now on “Isaac Stern A Life In Music vol. 28” with Sonatas of Hindemith and Copland, Sony SMK 64 533). Yet after four minutes, on the return of the agitated music after the first lyrical episode, the movement builds up to genuine fire and tension. The more lyrical passages have great beauty in their meditative atmosphere. The player’s ensemble is always precise (more so than Stern and Zakin who constantly sound on the verge, as if carried away by their own frenzy), and Pozzi comes as a fine surprise: her playing is suitably robust (hence my assumption that she was a man) and better still she never over-pedals, affording great clarity and snap to Bloch’s hammering textures, but never at the expense of the required vigor. There are two small cuts in the first movement, at 6:18 and 9:46. In the second movement “Molto quieto”, taken at a pace close to Bloch’s tempo indication (unlike Stern’s broader approach), Kaufman doesn’t have the beauty of tone to fully convey the music’s hushed mystery, but Pozzi magnificently realizes all the subtleties of Bloch’s piano writing, and the both attain genuine drama in the more animated passages. Likewise, the duo produces tremendous, raw power in the finale, with again two cuts, at 2:00 and 5:18, the last one a little awkward as it entails prolonging a violin note over piano harmonies for which it wasn’t meant.
If only because of its sonic limitations this is not the disc to have if you want Bloch’s sonata, but it is a fine tribute to a fine American fiddler.