George W. Chadwick

String Quartet No. 3in D
Quintet for Piano and Strings in E-flat Major
The Portland String Quartet
Virginia Eskin, Piano

 

Eventually the parts found their way to the New England Conservatory, but Chadwick's score suffered a more mysterious fate, dropping completely out of sight for a century. The manuscipt turned up recently, quite unheralded, in a New York music store and is now in a private collection. The owner made it available to the performers for use in correcting the problematic manuscript parts before making this recording.

from Notes by Steven Ledbetter

 

George Whitefield Chadwick (born Lowell, Massachusetts, 13 November 1854; died Boston, 4 April 1931), renowned in his day as the "dean of American composers," was also a distinguished educator and conductor who played a central role in the development of America's musical life. But his principal claim to fame is as a composer. His large output includes six chamber works in the major forms: five string quartets and a piano quintet. These six works were composed in chronological pairs: the first two string quartets in 1878, while Chadwick was still a student at the Leipzig Conservatory; the Third Quartet and the Piano Quintet in the mid-1880's when he was firmly established as a youthful leading figure in Boston's musical life; and the last two quartets in the late 1890's, about the time he was beginning his position as Director of the New England Conservatory.

 

Contents

String Quartet No. 3 in D
Quintet for Piano and Strings in E-flat Major