Title: String Quartet in E minor
Description: The String Quartet was finished in 1931 and introduced at Town Hall by the Musical Art Quartet in February 1932. It left New York Sun critic WJ Henderson with "the impression of a refined, scholarly and generous mind working in a sympathetic medium with musicianly skill and judgment and exquisite taste." He noted too that some of its harmonies went far beyond anything recognized by pre- Debussy masters, almost touching hands with Stravinsky. However, the concert nearly had to be called off: arriving at first violinist Sascha Jacobsen's apartment late at night after their dress rehearsal, the quartet discovered their music missing. They searched high and low to no avail. The parts were handwritten by the composer and the only ones extant. Zimbalist hired two copyists to work through the night preparing new parts from the score; the quartet then rehearsed frantically, trying to reconstruct fingerings and bowings. The Jacques Gordon Quartet subsequently recorded the work. Zimbalist, always a perfectionist, made substantial changes in his 1959 revision. In four movements, the piece is typical in its thoughtful working out of ideas and its unabashedly tender melodies. The first movement is perhaps the most Russian in mood, one moment stark and brooding, the next openly emotional, even frenetic. The inventive scherzo is followed by an Andante con moto filled with the warmth of Zimbalist's personality, especially in the hauntingly beautiful second theme. The last movement, a fiendish moto perpetuo, reminds us that he was one of the violin kingdom's supreme technicians. - Roy Malan at naxos.com

Composer information: Efrem Zimbalist was the first great talent to enter the class of the fabled Leopold Auer, followed a year later by Mischa Elman and seven years after that, by Jascha Heifetz. (Auer considered Zimbalist the intellectual of the group.) In the early decades of the twentieth century, these three, along with Fritz Kreisler, were to become household names to American music-lovers. Zimbalist was born in Rostov, where his father was the conductor for the Ukrainian Opera Company and gave him his first lessons. He was accepted by Auer when he was eleven and spent six years with him at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, where he also studied composition under Anatoly Liadov and became close to Rimsky-Korsakov. Upon graduation he was awarded a gold medal and the prestigious Rubinstein Prize. His Berlin début the following year was a resounding success, and concerts throughout Europe and England confirmed his stature. There were concertos with Hans Richter, Artur Nikisch and Richard Strauss, to whom he introduced the relatively new Tchaikovsky Concerto. (Strauss's comment: "Oh, it's not as bad as I'd expected!") One of Zimbalist's earliest idols, Ysaÿe, attended his Brussels début and invited him home for a late supper. Zimbalist was playing on a 1745 Lorenzo Guadagnini. Ysaÿe, too, owned one and was interested to try it out. Zimbalist recalled his trepidation when Ysaÿe picked it up: "He looked as powerful as a bear, and his fingers were at least one third thicker and longer than mine. I thought he would put one of them right through my little violin." Zimbalist introduced the Glazunov Concerto to American audiences in 1911 and took up American residence a few years later. He married the soprano Alma Gluck in 1914 and they toured together with him playing violin obbligati and sometimes accompanying her on the piano. Their recording of Old Folks At Home was the first Victor release to sell a million copies its first year. Their Park Avenue home became a central hub for New York's high society. - Roy Malan at Naxos.com