BMInt seldom reviews recordings, but the excuses for this one include follow-up to an earlier concert review, and local and historical interest. On August 28^th Delos released an album (DE3619) of chamber and orchestral music for cello by Boston eminence Arthur Foote (1853-1937), featuring cellist Julian Schwarz, including the premiere commercial release of the Cello Concerto in G Minor, Op. 33 (1893), with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by the eminent Gerard Schwarz (Julian’s father). The chamber music includes various shorter pieces and the formidable sonata in E Minor, op. 78 (1913), with pianist Marika Bournaki. 

Back in February we reported (HERE) on the local premiere of the cello concerto, and noted that Julian Schwarz (we’ll just call him Schwarz going forward, and specify Gerard where context requires) had a recording pending, and this is it. 

To start, as the album does, with the chamber music, one starts at the beginning, with the Three Pieces for Cello and Piano, op. 1 (1881). These, an Andante con moto, an Andante, and an Allegro con fuoco, show Foote establishing himself as an heir to the Schumann-Brahms traditions of European music, but also demonstrate Foote’s affinity for the cello (he himself was a pianist and organist). The music is gentle but earnest, the performances likewise. Going a bit out of chronologic order, the next item is the Aubade, op. 77 (1912), which to these ears sounded more like a nocturne than a morning-song (think of Poulenc’s “choreographic poem” of that name or Ravel’s Alborado del Gracioso), but then dawn and dusk have much in common, apart from direction. The singing lines in mellifluous 6/8 were well presented, while the performers and the recording (engineer: Bernd Gottinger) kept the instrumental sonics well balanced. The last of the short pieces was the Scherzo, op. 22 (about 1889-90), a fleet-footed Mendelssohnian shimmer in its outer sections with a lyrical Sicilienne trio. All of these pieces are charming, reflect deep knowledge of what the cello can do (the Aubade, dedicated to the BSO’s principal and Kneisel Quartet cellist Alwin Schroeder, indulges in some flashier writing), and have points of musical interest; they’re by no means fluff.

All that said, when it came around to the cello sonata (1913-18), also probably intended for Schroeder but not published or performed then, and premiered only in 1976 by cellist, scholar, editor and longtime professor at Williams College Douglas B. Moore (not to be confused with composer Douglas S. Moore), Foote took American cello chamber music to a new level of expressive maturity and technical sophistication. This is major chamber music, indeed, reflected in the fact that it has received more performances and recordings than almost any American cello sonata (bar Barber’s and maybe Carter’s), including by Moore’s with Paula Ennis-Dwyer and Andrés Diaz’s with Samuel Sanders. While each of these has its strengths, Schwarz and Bournaki’s new entry is probably the best mix of strong performances, instrumental balance, and sound quality. We’re also aware of various live performances that have taken place, by the performers who have recorded it as well as widely touring artists like Zuill Bailey.

The sonata’s three movements are all impressive. The opening Andante appassionato is just that, emotionally intense, with a chromatic harmonic palette, and moments of melodic depth in its main subject that here allow Schwarz to show off the fine colors in his mid-18^th century Gennaro Gagliano. The second subject, a great melody, gives equal scope to Bournaki, who brought her powerful yet bright Hamburg Steinway B to the party. The second movement, Andantino con moto, continues the affective concentration in an idiom drawing from a wide range of influences yet wholly Foote’s own, with a dramatic range of dynamic shapes, while the sprightly 6/8 finale, Vivace assai, caps off this thoroughly engrossing work, which really should be part of standard cello-piano repertoire; the superb performance and recording it receives here should help that process along. Thanks go to Moore for publishing his edition of the sonata and the other chamber works contained on this recording (one omission from the recording is the Romanza, which was a transcription of the slow movement of the cello concerto, with which it confusingly shares the opus number 33. This lacuna, though you still get to hear the music, suggests a necessary footnote to the self-characterization of the album as the “complete” cello works by Foote.

The capstone of the album, of course, is the premiere recording of the concerto, which Moore had performed back in the day from manuscript materials found in the Philadelphia Free Library, but for which Schwarz has produced and published his own edition taking account of various corrections and alternatives Foote had inserted.

As a component of Foote’s oeuvre, the concerto is unique in that it’s the only one of his rather few orchestral works in one of the grand historic forms: there’s a tone poem, a serenade, a suite, and the orchestration of a set of piano pieces. We sketched its history in our review of Schwarz’s local performance, but a quick recap is that it was begun in 1884 and completed in 1893, making it the earliest cello concerto by an American. That said, its premiere in Chicago by the Theodore Thomas Orchestra (now known as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra) in November 1894, by its principal Bruno Steindel, came some months later than that of the Second Cello Concerto of Victor Herbert in New York (Herbert’s first concerto was written in Vienna before the composer immigrated to the US). The Herbert Second is widely regarded as the inspiration for Dvořák’s concerto, and it is unknown whether either Herbert or Dvořák knew about the impending performance of the Foote. In any case, while the Foote was cordially received, its reception lacked the éclat surrounding the Herbert, with some reviewers (especially the one from Frederick Grant Gleason in the Chicago Tribune) complaining that it gave too much weight to the orchestra over the soloist, so for whatever reason Foote didn’t pursue publishing it, leaving the MS and parts to be discovered by Moore (who never recorded it except in a sonically execrable live performance available on YouTube) and then rediscovered by Schwarz.

We won’t add much to what we said before about the concerto’s content and structure except to note that repeated listening has persuaded us that there is some very tight motivic integration going on between and within movements of this piece: the chromatically descending principal melody of the first movement is answered by its reversal in the beautiful second subject, and the pattern of that opening motive is echoed in the lyrical slow movement and even, though more broadly, in the capricious finale (which also has a wonderfully proto-Dvořákian folkish tune in it).

It’s pretty clear from the passionate, pellucid and perfectly balanced performance the concerto gets on this album that any imbalances in orchestral and solo dynamics that appeared at the premiere were the result of the TTO/Seindel performances and not inherent in the piece. Indeed, the balance between Julian and Gerard Schwarz’s contributions could not have been more perfect, and Gerard contrived to keep the orchestral textures clear and precise, with propulsive, reflective, and yet never rushed or static tempi. By contrast, we might add, one often detects much greater balance problems in recordings of the Herbert Second (we have never heard a live one).

A final word about production values: The cover art (a portrait by Thomas Eakins not, alas, of Steindel but of his successor as CSO principal Rudolf Hennig) and printed notes are attractive and informative, and available as part of a download (we checked the Apple site), if that’s how you want to get it. Our publisher, whose playback equipment is more sensitive than ours, reported that the quality of the MP3 tracks is nearly as good as the lossless AIFF files that comprise the physical CD. It makes a great addition to one’s holdings of cello music, American music, and Romantic music in general.

Vance R. Koven studied music at Queens College and New England Conservatory, and law at Harvard. A composer and practicing attorney, he was for many years the chairman of Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble.