String quartets for a summer day’s sundown
Album Of The WeekFrom the Lebrecht Album of the Week:
If it’s summer music you’re after, it doesn’t come much sunnier than this. Castelnuovo-Tedesco – it translates as Newcastle German – was a Florentine who traced his lineage to the Jews who were expelled from Spain in 1492. Oppressed by Mussolini’s racial laws, he migrated to the US in 1939, his visa sponsored by Jascha Heifetz….
Read on here.
And here.
En francais ici.
Is he a colleague of Klaus Grünberg (Green Mountain, or Mountaingreen, if you prefer) and Joseph Green?
Castelnuovo-Tedesco is a fantastic composer who deserves to be far better known than he is. Sadly, he didn’t compose something flashy to capture the attention of a wider audience, such as “Bolero” did for Ravel.
Missing from two of the three links above is this sentence, the only reference to how the quartet played:
“The Florence-based Quartetto Adorno, recorded in a local castello, play with energised empathy and very sweet tone.”
And apropos to the reference to an Abbey in the little excerpt from Quartet no. 3 shown, Castelnuovo-Tedesco quotes the Dies Irae (one among many composers fascinated with the tune, I guess)… also, I have the Heifetz recording of the Second Violin Concerto coupled with the Walton Concerto (conducted by the composer) on RCA Victor LM 2740…quite a good sounding LP!
Heifetz also recorded Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s “The Lark,” a concert piece for violin and piano, and transcribed (and recorded) a Castelnuovo-Tedesco song as a work for violin and piano and published it as “Sea Murmurs.” It was the sole encore, and thus the last music heard at Heifetz’s famous “last recital.” Later Heifetz agreed to be an honorary vice president of the Castelnuovo-Tedesco Society.
Thank you for reminding me of that! Actually, I have the Heifetz recording of “The Lark” on Victor LM 2074 (with Emanuel Bay) coupled with the Faure Sonata Op. 13 (with Brooks Smith) and the Vitale Chaconne (with Richard Ellsasser at the Organ) in the Respighi transcription…forgot all about it!