1 January
No. 1
1939
McBride: Quintet for Oboe and Strings (1937)
5 min
Robert McBride: Quintet for Oboe and Strings (1937) Robert McBride, oboe, and the Coolidge Quartet Recorded October 27, 1939, in RCA Victor's Studio No. 2, New York City, on matrices BS-043320-2 and BS-043321-1. Issued in July, 1941, as Victor 2159, a ten-inch record. This appears to have been the record's only form of issue, and it was deleted during 1943-44 along with most of the Coolidge Quartet's other Victor recordings. James Lyons, in his liner notes to the only subsequent recording of this piece that I can trace (by Bert Schuster and the Classic String Quartet, on Classic Editions CE-1030, c. 1955), says the following about McBride's Oboe Quintet: "The Oboe Quintet, written in 1937, is in one movement only. Its marking is simply 'With kick' - like a mule or a Saturday night strutter, the designation does not specify. The signature is C major but the work begins in G with a tail-lashing theme, heavily syncopated. Dotted eighth-sixteenth sequences predominate, and there is frequent modulation. The end comes quickly, unexpectedly, in D, having left little unsaid about what little there was to do with and having done so, indeed, with charm and wit, if those qualiti