DESCRIPTION:
Loeffler: Partita for Violin and Piano (1930)
Jacques Gordon, violin; Lee Pattison, piano

Recorded June 5 and 12, 1935, with possible retakes of three sides on July 30, in Columbia Studios, New York City, on 78-rpm matrices XCO 17593 through XCO 17596 and XCO 17665 through XCO 17667; the sessions took place within a month after the composer's death on May 19, 1935. Issued late in 1936 or early in 1937 as Columbia Masterworks Set No. 275 (records 68820-D through 68823-D). The set had an extraordinarily short catalogue life, being deleted two years later when CBS took over control of Columbia. The Partita takes seven sides; the filler is Jacques Gordon's arrangement of Loeffler's song "Les Paons" (Peacocks), Op. 10, No. 4, published in 1903. This has been uploaded separately.

This masterful and unjustly neglected Partita, which does not appear to have been recorded since, is in four movements:

1. Intrada: Grave; Allegro giocoso e vivo ("A Merry Fugue") (at 3:08)
2. Sarabande (by Johann Mattheson) and Variations I-V (at 8:39)
3. Divertissement: Allegretto vivo ma fantastico (at 14:26)
4. Finale des tendres Adieux: Poco allegro (at 20:42)

The work is dedicated to Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. The first three notes to be heard on the violin are based on her initials E-S-C (German notation, standing for E, E-Flat, C). The Intrada takes the form of a baroque French Overture, the slow section reappearing after the fast one. Of the five variations on Mattheson's sarabande, the fourth is subtitled "Musette." The Divertissement functions as a scherzo, and is influenced by tango and ragtime. The opening of the "Finale des tendres Adieux" reminds me strongly of the last movement of Brahms' First Violin Sonata, both in its pattering piano accompaniment and by the fact that it begins in the minor, although G major is its key signature (as it was for the first movement).