PASP016:
Hungarian Dance No. 8 in A minor - Brahms
MP3
price
Albert
Sammons, violin
with piano accompaniment
Recorded
in October, 1916, released as Columbia D.1350
Matrix
number: 65423
Download ID: 240943
(Duration
2'55")
Play
30s sample:
We discovered
this disc when researching for our October 2006 series of Brahms chamber
music recordings. A remarkable find - a near-mint acoustic Columbia ten-inch
release, which couples this with a short piece written by Sammons himself
- I immediately resolved to add it as a 'late entry' to our schedule.
Subscribers to our streaming audio service, Pristine Audio Direct Access,
were invited to listen to it themselves within two hours of its discovery
- the condition and duration of the recording allowed me to transfer,
restore and remaster it and post it online within this short space of
time!
It is unclear
from the record's label as to whose transcription of what was originally
a piece for piano duet this is, but it's most likely Joachim's - we would
welcome confirmation of this point! The Hungarian Dances themselves, although
attributed to Brahms, were in fact based on pre-existing melodies, and
the composer never attempted to claim otherwise. He had learned most of
them from the violinist Eduard Remenyi, and it is perhaps appropriate
that they returned to the violin for this incarnation, in addition to
Brahms' orchestral arrangements, and those by other composers and musicians,
most notably Dvorak.
Albert
Sammons, pictured above, and represented elsewhere on this site in
his wonderful recording with Tertis of Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante (PASC044)
of 1933, was Britiain's foremost violinist of the first half of the twentieth
century, a superb musician and dedicated artist. We believe that this
wonderfully evocative recording has never been reissued before - it also
appears to be the only recording of Brahms that Sammons ever made.
