AVAILABILITY
www.BridgeRecords.com
It’s good to see the
Stuyvesant Quartet’s recordings being
re-released. Parnassus has a splendid
disc available, which has been reviewed
here, and now Bridge adds another with
an Impressionist theme. The recital
includes the Debussy and Ravel Quartets,
both recorded in 1951, and add the intriguing
Malipiero that was taped the previous
year. The Shulman with Benny Goodman
comes from the première performance
given in a 1946 broadcast on WEAF.
Malipiero’s First Quartet
is a rather beautiful if diffuse work
dedicated to Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge
and written in 1920 (an earlier work
in the same form was unpublished). Opening
with a solo violin on open strings this
ritornello figure recurs at various
points and acts as both partition point
and motor for more colouristic and textual
themes. There’s no real development
as such, the quartet flourishing instead
on a series of motives and moods, full
of folk fanfare, in unison or singly.
There is a gently lapping episode for
viola over soft pizzicato strings, which
contrasts with the earlier bustling
drama. The idiom is Debussian with admixtures
of folk texture, each panel reflecting
one or other of these influences, including
drone effects and nocturnal impressionism
The quartet ends in a cadence of sheer
baroque beauty, asserting the established
verities and drawing attention to one
of the most enduring loves of his own
musical life, Italian vocal music of
that period.
Alan Shulman, the cellist
of the quartet, who died in 2002, was
also a composer. Whilst working on his
Cello Concerto his brother Sylvan phoned
to say that Benny Goodman wanted to
perform a movement from Mozart’s Clarinet
Quintet on his NBC radio show. Instead
Shulman composed Rendezvous, a five-minute
piece Goodman performed just the once
(according to Shulman he was nervous
about it) though it was taken up and
recorded by Artie Shaw. The work starts
as an intensely evocative piece of Debussyian
extraction for quartet and when the
clarinet joins in we get a jazz vamp.
Good fun.
The Ravel and Debussy
Quartets were recorded in the Village
Lutheran Church in Bronxville, New York.
It’s the acoustic that rather does for
the latter though the former is slightly
better in that respect. A hazy distance
settles over the recording, blunting
incision and giving the playing a slightly
heavier feel than is ideal. They certainly
lack the wristy flexibility and lightness
of the Franco-Belgian Pro Arte Quartet
and their aerated fleetness. The recording
is very unhelpful in the Scherzo, which
can’t really take off as a result, and
the slow movement, which is sensitively
shaped but lacks the sweetness amidst
the delicacy of the finest recordings.
Similarly the Ravel, though in better
sound, is never quite diaphanous enough
and the flexibilities of tonal and metric
matters such are cultivated by the Pro
Arte and Bouillon Quartets are never
really replicated by the Stuyvesant.
Nevertheless this is
a worthy salute to a fine quartet. The
booklet notes are extensive and very
generous, the transfers taken from LPs
or tapes since the original masters
are missing (other than the Shulman
which was made from a copy of the broadcast
transcription disc). All this has been
done with care and concern.
Jonathan Woolf
see also
The
Stuyvesant String Quartet Paul
HINDEMITH (1895-1963) Quartet
in F minor Op. 10 (1918) Heitor
VILLA-LOBOS (1887-1959) Quartet
No. 6 in E major (Quartetto Brasileiro
No. 2) (1938) Quincy
PORTER (1897-1966) Quartet
No. 7 (1943) 
The Stuyvesant String Quartet Recorded
1947-50
PARNASSUS PACD 96026 [68.41] [JW]
Equal
to all demands, impeccably eloquent,
acutely sensitive to colour and weight
and rhythm. I loved these recordings
… see Full
Review
for
details