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The Gramophone, February 1926 - notes from the archive
Reflections on this recording by Nick Morgan, April 2009 The first thing to remember is that this world-premiere recording was led (as well as paid for) by a man who had just celebrated his 78th birthday (born 11 July 1847) and was not then, nor had ever been, a professional violinist. Yes, it has many fallible moments: as the piece progresses, Cobbett sounds more and more tired, as well he might! Not counting any (undocumented) run-throughs for technical tests, for the twelve sides issued, twenty-four takes are known to have been recorded over two days - and there were probably more. It was an ambitious, pioneering undertaking: when this was recorded, as far as I know, only one complete Schubert quartet (not counting the Quartettsatz) had ever been recorded, D.810 in d, as had the 'Trout' Quintet (only once each). At 12 sides, it shared, with HMV's set of the Franck Quartet, issued in August 1925, the distinction of being the largest chamber music set issued up to that time. What we are offered here is a precious window into the forgotten (in fact, never very well-known) world of private chamber music making among the English ruling classes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Among all the misconceived and oft-repeated pronouncements about England as Das Land ohne Musik is one which has been especially hard to refute: that there was no chamber music tradition in England. But, as the historian of British chamber music Christina Bashford is finding, not only was there a thriving and innovative public chamber music scene, gentlemen played chamber music in country houses, vicarages and rectories, colleges and schools, barracks and taverns. One of them was Walter Willson Cobbett, who made his fortune in the machine-belt business but was a life-long lover of chamber music and, in old age, its promoter, practitioner and patron (see Cobbett at Wikipedia). He fell in love with it when he heard Joachim, no less, lead a Beethoven string quartet at London's famous 'Pops' in London's St. James's Hall (probably in the late 1860s). Cobbett loved playing and he played. In his famous Cyclopedia, he wrote: 'I myself during the last sixty years have been able to devote on an average about two hours daily to the playing of concerted music, to practising the violin or viola parts in advance, to studying scores and, as far as possible keeping up my technique.' (He also wrote, 'I am not exceptionally robust, but the considerable strain involved in three hours' strenuous playing of quartets and sonatas not only leaves me unfatigued, but with a greater sense of buoyancy when the last note is heard than when the first note was sounded.' But we can forgive him the signs of strain evident in the Schubert Quintet.) The performance itself hardly sounds amateurish, apart from the leader's occasional lapses and some ragged ensemble: it is projected, dramatic and felt. The style is mixed: Cobbett uses less vibrato than his colleagues, as might be expected: I don't know all their ages but he was surely by some margin the oldest and has a basically 19th Century playing style. The others were all, I believe, professionals: Emily Keady (violin), Susan Spain Dunk (viola) and Marie Dare ('cello I), with Charles Crabbe ('cello II). Most if not all of them played at the South Place Concerts in Finsbury and so this set also offers us a glimpse of the playing heard by that famous audience of chamber-music lovers, less well-off than those who cold afford to go to concerts in the West End but no less dedicated and knowledgeable, as well as of the music they loved: South Place's most prolific quartet leader violinist was John Saunders, on whose tombstone, as Cobbett mentions in his article, was engraved a melody from the Schubert Quintet. Nick Morgan is currently researching a PhD on the National Gramophonic Society. He is also a noted radio producer and has written many articles on historic recordings.
This Recording - Technical assessment Original surface quality: Not too bad, though heavy swish evident through most sides. Other notes: One of the biggest problems when making an acoustic recording of a string quintet such as this is the lack of noise they make. A huge amount of sound was required to enter into the horns which led directly to the disc cutter - whilst this might be adequately provided by, for example, a military brass band (as heard on tracks of our Sullivan Cylinders release), and might also be heard from a suitably adjusted orchestra - or indeed a powerful tenor like Caruso - the finer nuances of string chamber music were much harder to capture. The effect when listening directly to these discs is one of extreme distance. One hears a good deal of record surface noise - and these were better pressings than many from the NGS - and then, somewhere in the background, one can just about discern that there may be a quintet playing something vaguely familiar. Bringing this to the fore, tackling the aforementioned surface noise, and doing something about the tonal distortion created by the recording horn, is therefore a major task. One wants not only to be able to hear the performance, but also to enjoy it without constant distractions, and one wishes it to sound at least reasonably convincingly like a string ensemble - albeit playing heavily adapted instruments equipped with amplification horns! It is very hard to over-estimate the difficulty of achieving this, and the many hours of often mind-numbingly tedious work involved, for example, in removing or reducing, one at a time, each of an estimated four thousand heavy swishes that ran throughout the bulk of the recording - the mere selection and computerised "zapping" of each one takes about 3-5 seconds, and the results then have to be checked, perhaps re-done or further adjusted, in a process which requires both eyes, both ears, a keyboard hand, a mouse hand and one's full, undivided attention. It is not a process currently open to automation, alas. If I've done a good job, you won't notice this, and my words will only go to console myself for the mental and physical exhaustion which bringing off this particular restoration caused me! I trust in doing so that I have succeeded in bringing to you a most remarkable world première recording, one of the longest of the NGS series, and one that (after a few day's rest of the ears for me) I find real pleasure in listening to in its fully restored state!
NB. Where gaps between movements came partway through a disc side these have been left as they were recorded rather than lengthened artificially, even though they are perhaps almost uncomfortably short at times.
National Gramophonic Society recordings- a technical perspective
The vast majority of the original discs came from Gramophone magazine's own near-mint collection, carefully preserved in the EMI vaults at Hayes and largely unplayed for many decades. Where a choice of discs was present, naturally the very best sides were chosen for transfer, which took place at Pristine Audio over the spring, summer and autumn of 2006. Discs were carefully cleaned and a choice of custom-made stylii were available to achieve the optimum replay possible. Transfers were made at 24-bit resolution and then archived in 32-bit sound. Some initial restorations were carried out at the time of transfer, but all of the recordings presented here have been newly XR-remastered, starting in February 2008, directly from those high-quality transfers. Without the benefits of modern audio restoration technologies, it is safe to say that a good number of the Society's output would be beyond the listening tolerance of all but the most devoted and dedicated music-lover. Of the 165 numbered discs it is not until we reach discs 103-4 (the Malipiero String Quartet No. 2) that something truly remarkable happens sonically, a result of switching allegiances to the Columbia Record Company for recording and pressing duties. Prior to this the results are variable in the extreme - and the problems don't really stop after disc 104 either - we are still talking about the early days of electrical recording, and it seems clear from this history of the Society that money was tight. But for the 1920's listener, these matters would surely have been secondary to being able to hear any of these works at all, as the National Gramophonic Society's remit was to record music that had been ignored by the other record companies. The challenge for the 21st Century therefore is to render these recordings in such a way as to be faithful to the musicians as well as sparing the listener too much pain. I've tried to strike a careful balance between noise reduction and the dangers of over-processing and deadening the sound which, in some cases, may leave some of the blemishes more obvious than you might be used to hearing - if this is the case in any particular recording, I can only respond with "well you should have heard it before I started work on it!" There are many fine recording here, and I hope you will enjoy them as much as I have. Andrew Rose, March 2008
The National Gramophonic Society The National Gramophonic Society (NGS) was founded in 1923 by the novelist Compton Mackenzie to promote music which was ignored by major music companies. The Society was established for the recording and publication by subscription of classical music, principally chamber music, which was of limited circulation. Prominent on the committee for the selection of material was Walter Willson Cobbett, who was joined by Spencer Dyke (leader of a string quartet), W. R. Anderson, Alec Robinson, Peter Latham and Compton MacKenzie. Cobbett (b 1847), a chamber-music specialist, had founded the Cobbett Competition in 1905 for a short form of String Quartet composition or 'Phantasy', and for other short chamber works, prizes won variously by William Yeates Hurlestone (1876-1906, pianist) (1905), Frank Bridge (1908), John Ireland (1909), J. Cliffe Forrester (1916), H. Waldo Warner (viola of the London Quartet) (1916), York Bowen (1918) and Cecil Armstrong Gibbs (1919). In 1921 he was offering further awards to Royal Academy and Royal College of Music graduates, and commissioned many new chamber works from English composers. The National Gramophonic Society was therefore an expression of this impetus to the development of the taste for modern chamber music. The records, issued on 12-inch 78rpm (or in some cases 80rpm) discs with distinctive yellow labels, included the first-ever recordings of familiar works such as the C major quintet of Schubert and Brahms's clarinet quintet, along with pieces (then relatively little known) by Henry Purcell, Vivaldi and Mozart. The organization also helped several living composers such as Ralph Vaughan Williams, Arnold Bax, Peter Warlock (first recording of The Curlew), Eugene Goossens, Arnold Schönberg (original chamber version of Verklärte Nacht) and Sir Edward Elgar to gain greater recognition for their works. The repertoire consisted largely of chamber music, featuring the Spencer Dyke Quartet and the International String Quartet, but included some works for small orchestra and a few vocal items. Musicians who took part included John Barbirolli (as both cellist and conductor), the clarinettists Charles Draper and Frederick Thurston, the oboeist Leon Goossens, the violinist Adila Fachiri, and the pianists Donald Francis Tovey, Harold Craxton, Kathleen Long and Ethel Bartlett. The NGS ceased operations in 1931. Notes from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Gramophonic_Society
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