Chamber music

Long description:

These recordings can be played by anyone within the European Union.

The performers featured in this collection include the Dutch String Quartet, the London Trio and the Philharmonic String Quartet.

About the performers

Le Double Quintette

The full title of Société de Musique de Chambre pour Instruments à Cordes et à Vent was shortened to Société du Double Quintette de Paris; for the disc labels they became Le Société du Double Quintette. Mostly born in the 1860s, the group consisted of ten players plus Georges de Lausney on the piano.

The personnel were: Pierre Sechiari (first violin); Marcel Houdret (second violin); Maurice Vieux (viola); Jules Marnoff (cello); Paul Leduc (double bass); Louis Bas (oboe); Ernest Vizentini (bassoon); Francois Lamouret (french horn); Henri Paradis (clarinet) Adolphe Hennebains (flute).

Dutch String Quartet

The Dutch String Quartet appeared in London during the 1920s. The players were Herman Leydensdorff (born 1891), Julius Röntgen (1881-1951), Bram Mendez and cellist Thomas Canivez (1877-1969). In 1924 they performed Cyril Scott’s Piano Quintet with the composer at the Wigmore Hall. Leydensdorff was transported to Terezin (Theresienstadt) concentration camp during the Second World War.

English String Quartet

The English String Quartet was founded in 1902 by a group of friends who had all studied at the Royal College of Music but they did not adopt the name until 1908. Thomas F. Morris was first violin, Herbert H. Kinsey second violin, Frank Bridge played the viola and Ivor James the cello. When Morris joined the Royal Flying Corps in 1915 Marjorie Hayward became the leader and Bridge was sometimes replaced by Alfred Hobday. Edwin Virgo took over the second violin chair in 1918 but the group officially disbanded in 1925.

The English String Quartet were on the roster of the London Chamber Concert Society and from about 1916 they had mainly given recitals at private houses, such as Marjorie Fass’s homes in Bedford Gardens London, and Eastbourne. Up to 1915 Morris, Bridge and James had a piano quartet with Ada Thomas.

London String Quartet

Founded in 1908, the London String Quartet initially had Albert Sammons as first violin, Thomas Petre, second violin, Harry Waldo Warner, viola (for all but the last four years when he was replaced by William Primrose), and Charles Warwick Evans, cello who remained with the quartet throughout its existence. The quartet disbanded in 1934.

London Trio

Miss Amina Goodwin (died 1942), a British pianist and pupil of Clara Schumann, after returning from further training in Paris in 1882, was accompanying such artists as the great violinist Vieuxtemps. Achille Simonetti (1857-1928) was born in Turin and studied with, among others, Paganini’s only student Camillo Sivori. He was violinist of the London Trio and from 1912-1919 he was professor of violin at the Irish Academy of Music. He died in London in 1928. The English cellist William Whitehouse (1859-1935) studied with Alfredo Piatti. He then taught at the Royal Academy of Music and Royal College of Music in London and King’s College, Cambridge. His most famous pupils were Beatrice Harrison and Felix Salmond.

The London Trio was formed in 1899 with Theodore Werner as violinist and at their second concert in June 1900 they performed a Trio in B minor by Sir Hubert Parry from manuscript. In the same year they gave the British premiere of the Trio in A minor by Max Bruch and later introduced the Trio in F minor by Arensky. The following year Werner was replaced by Simonetti as violinist. During their fourth season in 1902 they performed the Trio in G minor by Smetana.

The London Trio regularly toured Britain. ‘The London Trio have just completed a short tour in Westmoreland and North Lancashire, during which they carried the sacred lamp of chamber music into several towns which are usually visited only by ballad concert parties. They were particularly successful with the Trios of Mendelssohn in C minor and Rubinstein in B flat, both of which were played with great vigour and breadth of style combined with artistic insight.’ By 1909 they were a fixture of the chamber music scene throughout Britain. ‘Since the demise of the Monday and Saturday Popular Concerts, London amateurs of chamber music have to rely upon local organisations for the public performance of concerted music, and amongst them the London Trio is one of those most firmly established in artistic favour. Madame Amina Goodwin, Signor Simonetti and Mr. Whitehouse have now played together for many years, and as all of them are excellent artists a perfect ensemble is the result.’

At their thirteenth season in 1910 the Trio performed all of Beethoven’s Piano Trios and repeated this the following season.

When Simonetti took up his post at the Academy of Music in Ireland his place was taken by Hungarian violinist Louis Pécskai who had travelled to London in 1906 to take up an appointment at Trinity College of Music as professor of violin. In December 1913 the Trio celebrated their 50th performance (presumably in London) at Aeolian Hall and in 1923 celebrated their 100th concert the Wigmore Hall.

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Mark Hambourg

The great English pianist Mark Hambourg (1879-1960) was born in Boguchar, Russia but took British citizenship in 1896. After studies with Theodore Leschetizky he had a long performing and recording career. He came from a musical family with brothers Jan, who was a violinist, and Boris, who was a cellist. Unfortunately the three brothers did not record together but Hambourg recorded with two other stalwarts of the early days of HMV, violinist Marjorie Hayward and cellist C. Warwick Evans.

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Philharmonic String Quartet

The Philharmonic String Quartet, as heard in these recordings, was founded in 1915. There were changes of personnel but the original members were violinists Arthur Beckwith (1887–1928) and Eugene Goossens (1893–1962), violist Raymond Jeremy (1891–1969) and cellist Cedric Sharpe (1891–1978). Goossens, who played second violin, had been a member of the Queen’s Hall Orchestra and Thomas Beecham’s Orchestra from 1912 to 1915 and before he began to pursue his career in conducting from 1921, when he founded his own orchestra, he played with the Philharmonic String Quartet. Goossens was also a renowned composer at this time and the Quartet performed many of his works including the String Quartet Op. 14, each movement of which is dedicated to a member of the group.

The Philharmonic String Quartet championed British music giving first performances of works by Arnold Bax, Eugene Goossens, Cyril Rootham and Arthur Bliss. Other British composers whose works they frequently performed included Frank Bridge, Albert Sammons, Ethel Smyth, Joseph Holbrooke, Charles Wood, York Bowen, and Edward Elgar. At one of Thomas Dunhill’s concerts of British chamber music (which took place from 1907-1919) they played Dunhill’s Phantasy in F major and the Quartet in F major by Dr Charles Wood. Other ‘modern’ composers whose names appeared on the Quartet’s programmes include Glière, Tcherepnin, Ravel, Stravinsky, Franck and Debussy while from the standard repertoire they performed quartets by Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn and Schumann.

In June 1915 the Philharmonic String Quartet accompanied Gervase Elwes in On Wenlock Edge by Vaughan Williams, premiered a new work by Arthur Bliss, and performed other works by Bridge, Sammons and Smyth. Before everything was available on record it was not easy to become familiar with new works so in November 1915 they gave a second performance of the Bliss Quartet and were joined by Waldo Warner for the Quintet Op. 111 by Brahms. The next year they gave a series of four concerts at the Aeolian Hall in London but then some of the players were called up on active service. Soon after the March 1916, Sharpe was taken into the army and the ensemble was suspended. After serving in the Glamorgan Yeomanry and the Tank Corps, Sharpe was eventually invalided home from France to work at the War office. Beckwith also served in the army from 1916.

When the Philharmonic Quartet re-appeared in March 1918 Goossens was replaced by Frederick Holding. It was reported that ‘The Philharmonic String Quartet, consisting of Arthur Beckwith, F. Holding, R. Jeremy and C. Sharpe came to life again on Thursday at the Steinway Hall. Some of them have been on active service for a long period, and one is invalided as a result of it.’ By March 1919 Holding had succeeded Beckwith as first violin - ‘The Philharmonic String Quartet which now consists of Mr Holding, Mr [Thomas] Peatfield (returned from active service), Mr Jeremy and Mr Sharpe…..’ but at this performance Goossens joined them at the piano in a performance of his own Quintet. The group then toured Britain and in 1920 they performed two concerts at the Salle Gaveau in Paris where they were joined by singer John Goss, while at the end of 1921 they gave ten concerts at Chelsea Town Hall ‘to popularize the chamber works of leading contemporary composers’ in which they played about twenty British works. By the beginning of 1924 further changes to personnel had taken place and later that year the Quartet disbanded.

Soon after their initial London appearances HMV asked the Quartet to record on 12th July 1915. However, the record company asked for much more popular repertoire and their first issued disc in October of that year, was of the famous Minuet by Boccherini. Then came Schubert’s Death and the Maiden variations and the slow movement from the D major Quartet by Tchaikovsky. More regular fare was recorded the following year and it was not until 1918 that HMV recorded the Quartet’s readings of works by Ravel, Holbrooke and Bridge.

The recordings made in 1915 and 1916 have Beckwith, Goossens, Jeremy and Sharpe as performers while those from 1918 are Beckwith, Holding, Jeremy and Sharpe. The 1920 recordings are played by Holding, Peatfield, Jeremy and Sharpe.

Some of these discs are quite rare and we are still missing four sides. It would be good to have the complete published recordings available here, so if anyone has copies of the following they will be gratefully received.

08048 Glazunov 5 Novelettes Op.15 - (iv) Valse
08049 Coates: Bouree

D53 Holbrooke: Piano Quartet No. 2 in G minor Op. 21 – Allegro marcato
Holbrooke: Piano Quartet No. 2 in G minor Op. 21 – Lament

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Renard Trio

The Renard Trio comprised the Glaswegian violinist Horace Fellowes (1875-1975), not to be confused with musicologist Edmund Horace Fellowes, cellist Jacques Renard (1873-1960), not to be confused with the American band leader of the same name, and Vienna born pianist Richard Epstein (1869-1919). Epstein studied piano with his father Julius Epstein (1832-1926) who was a friend of Brahms and teacher of Mahler, before going to London where he worked as soloist and accompanist. At the outbreak of the First World War he went to the United States and died in New York at the age of fifty. Renard was a well-known cellist in London at the turn of the twentieth century. In 1897 he became principal cellist of the Crystal Palace Orchestra with whom he performed Saint-Saëns’s First Cello Concerto. With Epstein and violinist John Saunders, Renard gave the first British performance of the Trio Op. 1 by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. During the Second World War Renard went to the United States and became principal cellist of the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York where he died at the age of 87. Horace Fellowes was leader of the Scottish Orchestra and formed his own string quartet. After retiring from concerts he taught at the Royal College of Music and Drama in Glasgow.

Flautist Eli Hudson (1877-1919) joined the Renard Trio on a number of recordings as well as making solo recordings for HMV. Like the members of the Renard Trio, Hudson was a popular performer in the first decade of the twentieth century often appearing as soloist or in chamber groups and performed regularly with composer William Hurlstone. He was a co-founder of the New Symphony Orchestra and in 1908 performed Bach’s Orchestral Suite in B minor with this orchestra conducted by Edouard Colonne.

All recordings on this site are governed by licence agreements.

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