THE GRAMOPHONE:
Even more valuable [than the new Naxos CD of Bach by Wanda Landowska] is the first CD transfer of the pre-war Columbia “Society” set of Bach’s The Art of Fugue in a string quartet version by Roy Harris and Mary DH Norton played by the Roth Quartet. We’re given the 14 fugues but not the four canons, all feelingly played with the odd touch of portamento to offset the austerity. A “conjectural completion” of the last fugue isn’t played by the quartet (who offer us a particularly intense rendition of the unfinished original), but by the pianist-composer-educator who prepared it, Sir Donald Tovey. Fine transfers from Divine Art – especially laudable given certain unavoidable problems posed by the original 78s – and excellent annotations.
Rob Cowan

MUSICAL OPINION:
This famous recording was made by Columbia Records in 1934 and first released on ten 12” 78s in a single Society Issue Album. Bach, of course, left the final Fugue unfinished and did not specify which instruments were to play the entire composition, if indeed he intended it for performance at all. Additionally, there are several movements the authorship of which has long been disputed. The American composer Roy Harris and his compatriot Mary D H Norton produced this version of the fully authenticated movements for String Quartet around 1930 and the recording contains Sir Donald Francis Tovey’s conjectural completion of the unfinished final Fugue. Even in this unfinished and rather uncertain form, it remains one of Bach’s greatest and most enduring intellectual and musical achievements.

This famous recording, now over 70 years old, has been overlooked for far too long by those companies who specialise in reissuing important recordings of the past, and it is with much gratitude and pleasure that I welcome this excellent transfer by Andrew Rose and the Pristine Audio company for the Divine Art label. Nevertheless, the recording is an old one, and listeners should not expect relatively modern sound, although this transfer has removed almost all of the original surface noise and has improved on the rather boxy sound of the original so we can listen with pleasure and profit to this musically very important CD. Strongly recommended, not merely to collectors of historical recordings.
Robert Matthew-Walker

MUSICWEB:
Bach’s Art of Fugue up through the early twentieth century was assumed to be a scholarly work for study by music students, not intended for performance. This despite Karl Czerny having issued a two stave piano arrangement which suggests that Beethoven may have played it. In 1927 Wolfgang Glaser performed his arrangement for orchestra. This created a sensation similar in kind if not in degree to Mendelssohn’s performance of the “unperformable” St. Matthew Passion nearly 100 years before. In the meantime, Hermann Scherchen had begun work on his arrangement for chamber orchestra which he would continue to revise and perform up to the year of his death. Four years after that Tovey published his edition (OUP) which included a completion of the unfinished final fugue - “The finest thing I have ever done,” he said - on four staves in open score and also on two staves, and declared that the work had always been intended for keyboard performance. It was just four years after that, that this, the first recording of the work, was made.

The Roth quartet was reorganized in 1939 with only Feri Roth continuing, adding musicians from the then former Manhattan Quartet; not to be confused with the present day Manhattan Quartet. Roy Harris is mostly remembered for his Symphony No. 3 which some critics consider the greatest American Symphony ever written - I don’t care much for the work - and for a string of anecdotes documenting his enormous conceit, remarkable even among composers. Mary Norton’s husband founded the Norton company which is still a distinguished name in scholarly publishing.

The original work is written for the traditional vocal ranges so to play it on modern instruments of the violin family some octave transpositions of phrases at the bottom edges of ranges are required. However, as Reinhard Goebel pointed out, the work can be played on instruments of the viol family without transpositions; in his recording with a chest of viols, the work takes on an uncanny resemblance to the Fantasias of Henry Purcell. Robert Simpson then demonstrated that all one really needs to do to adapt the work for modern string quartet is to transpose it to g minor, and, so transposed, including the Tovey conclusion, the work has been beautifully recorded by the Delmé Quartet. But today the work is almost always played on keyboards, and the two piano version [by Alexander and Daykin], a richly dramatic interpretation featuring an astonishing variety of piano sonorities, is widely admired, as is Helmut Walcha’s legendary but now out-of-print recording on the organ. Walcha’s student, Paul Jordan achieves much of his teacher’s clarity and grandeur with a little more passion, and includes a new completion for the final fugue based in part on the research of Erich Bergel.

This performance for string quartet achieves the very even, singing, “nostalgic” sound that many 1930s musicians affected when playing old music, as though such modern concerns as drama, texture and dynamics were simply too vulgar for dear old classics. There are some vibrato and portamento as well. The string sound on this very listenable restoration is rich in tone, remarkably well balanced, and free of distracting noise. Most of the fugues could fit on a single 78 rpm side, but two of them required a side-break. The restorer tells how the performers would slow down as they came near the end of the side; but he was able cleverly to restore the tempo digitally so that the side breaks are inaudible and the music flows convincingly through them.

This is a very listenable and enjoyable recording but somewhat monotonous in tone until the abrupt change from strings to piano at the end. After you have some of the recordings listed at the beginning of this review, this recording would make a fine addition to round out your collection. A unique historical document, lovingly and beautifully restored.
Paul Shoemaker

CLASSIC RECORD COLLECTOR:
With this Divine Art disc, you get both less and more than from [the recent keyboard versions by Scarpino and Leonhardt]; less because the canons are omitted, more because Tovey’s grand performance of his convincing completion of the unfinished fugue is appended, as it was on the 78 rpm set. The effect is slightly spoilt by the 12 secs gap left between the end of the quartet performance and the first note from the piano. Andrew Rose’s transfer seems very clever; he has had to do some digital manipulation to counteract the Roth Quartet’s tendency to slow down at the end of a side, but he has executed it tactfully.

For a normal string quartet to play The Art of Fugue involves compromises – the Juilliard Quartet avoided them by having the second violinist play a viola sometimes and commissioning a tenor viola for the violist that could handle a range lower by a fourth. The Roth Quartet plays an edition prepared by the composer Roy Harris and Mary D. Herter Norton. I have enjoyed this version, mainly for the committed string playing. Occasionally I could do with more light and shade, or greater rigour as to tempo – I keep imagining what Adolf Busch would have made of this music, and the most stirring rendering by a normal quartet remains that by two members of the Quartetto Italiano with two pupils. But even though the Roth was not a great quartet, it was a good one, and it is nice to be reminded of what was probably its most effective line-up. Decent sound and excellent presentation have enhanced my pleasure.
Tully Potter