Yesterday Sony Classical released its latest anthology of historically significant recordings. The title of the collection, however, is slightly deceptive: Juilliard String Quartet: The Early Columbia Recordings 1949–56. While Juilliard performances can be found on each of the sixteen CDs, the quartet “shares space” with other performers, including one entirely different string quartet. The reason for this is that the Juilliard was a significant participant in an ambitious Columbia project entitled Modern American Music Series.
This project was launched in the early Fifties with a recording of William Masselos playing Charles Ives’ first piano sonata, a decidedly bold “first step.” Indeed, the effort was significant enough to draw the attention of the academic community; and the composer Vincent Persichetti wrote an article about the entire project, which appeared in the July, 1954 issue of The Musical Quarterly. By that time twelve albums had been released in the series, and the project was still going strong.
Four of the twelve albums discussed in Persichetti’s article can be found in the new Sony Classical release. However, only one of them consists entirely of Juilliard performances, the most recent of the four, which couples Peter Mennin’s second quartet with Andrew Imbrie’s first. The Sony collection also includes three additional albums that were released after Persichetti had completed his article; and the Juilliard “shares space” on each of them.
I have mixed feelings about the fact that this new collection is not devoted exclusively to the earliest recordings of the Juilliard. I am also a bit curious about why 1956 was selected as the cutoff point. The first fifteen CDs all account for the founding members of the ensemble: violinists Robert Mann and Robert Koff, violist Raphael Hillyer, and cellist Arthur Winograd. However, Claus Adam replaced Winograd in 1955, meaning that he can be found on the final CD in the collection.
More disquieting is how little staying power can be found in the overall Modern American Music Series repertoire. Going all the way back to the project’s origins, I have to confess that, while I have had several satisfying encounters with recital performances of Ives’ second (“Concord”) sonata, I know the first only through the few recordings of it I have acquired. Indeed, the only composition in the Modern American Music Series CDs in this Sony release that I have heard in performance is Leon Kirchner’s first string quartet (thanks to the Telegraph Quartet); and in the Sony collection it is performed by the American Art Quartet of violinists Eudice Shapiro and Robert Sushel, violist Virginia Majewski, and cellist Victor Gottlieb!
I suppose the “punch line” of the Modern American Music Series and the role of the Juilliard String Quartet in the release of those recordings is: “Modernism is not what it used to be.” However, the fact is that it never was! What may be more interesting is that Telegraph brought a freshness to Kirchner’s music that never really “found its voice” in the Hollywood studio where the American Art Quartet made its recording for Columbia. Perhaps Columbia was more interested in establishing itself as a source of “highbrow content” without giving much thought to whether the “final product” was found satisfying by the composer and/or the performers.
Mind you, the Fifties was the decade in which I first embarked on “serious listening.” However, it was also a decade in which my tastes were pathetically narrow. I would like to think that there are new generations of listeners that are more open to diversity than I was at that early age. Will they be drawn to the Modern American Music Series recordings, or will their tastes turn to visions of modernism that have left the Fifties back in the dust?
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