James Jolly introduces the reissue project
from Gramophone, June 2008
In the September 1923 issue of Gramophone
(the magazine's first issue had been published
in the April of that year) the founding editor Compton Mackenzie made an announcement. "For some time past I have had in my head a scheme that requires much thought
before it can be considered a practical scheme. Briefly, my ambition is to incorporate a number of enthusiasts
for good music on the gramophone in a society which will aim at achieving for gramophone music
what such societies
as the Medici have done for the reproduction of paintings and for the printed book. If
I receive 500 postcards I will take
the next step, which will be to start the
society and give it a name."
Well, he must eventually have got the required number of postcards because in August 1924 the National Gramophonic Society (NGS) was finally formed. For financial reasons, it started by concentrating on chamber music, often of a pretty adventurous or pioneering nature; the 1920s for the record industry were still pretty formative years with very few complete works recorded and a rather conservative attitude to repertoire.
Mackenzie wanted the feeling of a true society and called upon its members (at first five shillings, and later two shillings and six pence, bought you an annual membership though if you were a Gramophone subscriber you were "ipso facto members" – an old Gramophone cartoon poked gentle fun at them) to submit ideas. With his customary ability to call in favours, Mackenzie enlisted the services of the chamber music patron and amateur violinist Walter Wilson Cobbett as one of the Society's musical advisers; he was joined by WR Anderson, Spencer Dyke (whose quartet made quite a number of the early recordings), Alec Robertson, Peter Latham and the magazine's London editor, Christopher Stone.
Almost all of the Society's issues were première recordings. The first release, in the winter of 1924, was of Beethoven's Op 74 String Quartet, the Harp, and Debussy's String Quartet, both played by the Spencer Dyke Quartet. These were followed by a gramophone "first", Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht in its string sextet version. Other notable early recordings included clarinet quintets by Brahms and Mozart
with, respectively, Frederick Thurston and Charles Draper, Mozart's Oboe Quartet with Leon Goossens, and some of the first commercial recordings featuring John Barbirolli – as cellist in music by Gibbons, Purcell and Vaughan Williams (a few years later Barbirolli's conducting debut was captured by the NGS – in Corelli's Christmas
Concerto, Op 6 No 8, Delius's Summer Night on the River, Debussy's Dance sacs et dance profane and Warlock's Serenade for Strings). The NGS ran until 1931 before being wound up due to the low number of subscribers it attracted,
Well, all that was by way of a preamble to the news that Pristine Classical, in association with Gramophone, has embarked on a project to transfer, remaster and make available as downloads the entire NGS catalogue. Employing its highly impressive XR remastering technique, Pristine will be making NGS recordings available in instalments over the coming months. The first thing to emphasise is that these recordings date from the 1920s so do not expect "hi-fi" sound; but Pristine's results with these rare and often noisy originals are quite remarkable and once you get used to listening through the decades you will be rewarded with some truly historic encounters. The International String Quartet's world premiere version of the Ravel Quartet was warmly endorsed by its composer, and there is a wonderfully sensitive performance of the Mozart's Piano and Wind Quintet that features Kathleen Long alongside a very impressive lineup of wind-players: Frederick Thurston, Leon Goossens, Aubrey Brain and John Alexander.
To demonstrate the range of the NGS recordings Pristine has created a very impressive catalogue on its site (pristineclassical.com) that lists all the works with their performers, and specifies whether they were recorded acoustically (up to mid-1926) or electrically (1926-31). Pristine is choosing from both periods/ techniques rather than making the recordings available in strict chronological order but you can see immediately which recordings are already available (marked in cream) and which are newly available (marked in yellow). To launch the NGS project Pristine is offering Gramophone readers a 10 per cent discount on any download purchased from its site until July 31. Simply enter the code [shown in the June 2008 article] into the Discount Code box on the Shopping Cart page and click Update Cart. There are also a couple of free tracks to download of string quartet movements by Raff and Rubinstein.
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