(Maurice Ravel - if you're only going to write one string quartet, make it immortal)
Heading over to more familiar music this week. The String Quartet in F by Maurice Ravel in one of the first recordings of the work (I think the first electrical recording was by the Capet Quartet), by the Krettly Quartet of Paris. Recorded for the French division of His Master's Voice in Paris on March 22, 1929.
Over the years this work has been recorded hundreds of times by a whole range of outfits, and certainly people who are familiar with it have their preferences. But it's always nice to be reminded of when a work was relatively new and its first performance was not that far in the past. And even though the Quartet in F first came about in 1903, "new music" took its time to get public acceptance going and no doubt a lot of people heard this recording for the first time when it was issued in 1929, some 26 years later.
We think of 26 years now as an eternity - but things moved a lot slower when the Ravel Quartet in F was new.
