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Track 6 Mozart Clarinet Quintet in A major K.581 Movt 1: Allegro

Charles Draper (clarinet), Spencer Dyke String Quartet

Studio recording: London, c. May to August 1926

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Charles Draper (1869-1952) and Frederick Thurston (1901-1953)
The National Gramophonic Society was an offshoot of The Gramophone, the magazine launched in 1923 by the British novelist Compton Mackenzie (see CRQ 447, 451, 458, 471 & 507). Among several innovations, the Society was funded by subscription; it pledged to issue only premiere, complete recordings; and members could choose the works to be recorded. They did this by voting on proposals drawn up by the Society’s Advisory Committee, which included Gramophone reviewers as well as the quartet leader Edwin Spencer Dyke. What members had no say in was choosing artists to perform the winning works. Little is known of this process, which seems to have been left mainly to Spencer Dyke (and André Mangeot, who never joined the Committee). Spencer Dyke had played both Quintets with Charles Draper, by now the doyen of British clarinettists and a veteran of the gramophone (and cylinder). He in turn perhaps recommended his pupil Frederick Thurston, a newcomer to the recording studio; Thurston’s untimely death would made his three NGS sets all the more precious. Draper’s Mozart Quintet is one of the Society’s loveliest acoustical recordings and one of the most neglected, overshadowed by his electrical remake for Columbia. (Thurston too re-recorded the Brahms, for Decca, but didn’t pass it for issue.) Incidentally, NGS members likewise had no say in choosing the ‘fillers’ needed to make up an even number of 78 sides; again, we surely have Spencer Dyke to thank for these two uncommon selections.

For further information please see:

nickmorgandiscography.org/index.php?title=National_Gramophonic_Society_discography

Transfer from original discs and digital remastering by Jolyon Hudson

Produced by Nick Morgan

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from CRQ 529 National Gramophonic Society world premiere recordings, 1926: Brahms and Mozart clarinet quintets and Gliere: Spencer Dyke Quartet with Frederick Thurston and Charles Draper, clarinets, released September 4, 2022

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