Louis Victor Saar (1868-1937)

[febnyc]

Received from a good friend on a CD he recorded for me (from live radio broadcasts) is a Piano Quartet Op.39 of Louis Victor Saar.  It is a beautifully lyrical work with all the elements of a great chamber piece.

Saar, born in Holland, settled in the USA at age 26, worked with Dvorak and held a number of academic positions.  I cannot find mention of any commercially-done recordings of Saar's music.

Any suggestions from the learned crew aboard this site?

PS - Also on this CD is a mighty and almost overwhelmingly powerful orchestral work by Peteris Vasks called "Credo" (2010).  It could be my favorite work of this interesting Latvian composer.  Highly recommended.

[eschiss1]

hrm. depends on whether CDs produced by the Maud Powell Foundation count, but only one work of Saar's appears on them (Gondoliera) anycase.

[edurban]

It's great to see Saar mentioned here.  I have a copy of this quartet (made at the Library of Congress in the old days when you could just take scores-even manuscript ones-to the xerox machine in the back of the reading room and copy as many pages as you wanted) and it is indeed lovely.

Saar was often spoken of in his life as a 'pupil of Brahms.'  The 1940 edition of Baker's Biographical Dictionary says only that he 'spent one winter with Brahms in Vienna.'  He came to New York in 1894 to work as accompanist at the Metropolitan Opera house.  I have a little memento of his ocean voyage to America in my oceanliner files-a ship's concert programme for the Cunarder Etruria dated Thursday, May 3rd, 1894, presented 'Under the direction of Sigs. Mancinelli and Bovignani (Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.)  Saar was the accompanist, and also played solo pieces by Grieg as well as his own Romance.  Two solos were sung by Mr. Lionel S. Mapleson, later famous as the first man to make live recordings (ca. 1900) from the stage of the Met.

Saar went on to have a distinguished academic career here, mostly in the mid-west: Cincinati, Chicago, and finally St. Louis.  He wrote a lot of choral music including a Hallowe'en Night, and orchestral music with nifty titles like From the Mountain Kingdom of the Great North West (1922), and Along the Columbia River(1924).  I'd love to hear them...

David

[edurban]

Not sure how this will work, but here's a link to a 1900 New York Times article with some Hanslick comments about Saar (the beginning of the item is down at the bottom of the page:

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F10913F63F5911738DDDAF0994DA415B808CF1D3

A number (what number I can't tell) of Saar mss & papers are in the Newberry Library, Chicago.

David

[JimL]

Now THIS is intriguing!  Does he have any more conventional works (symphonies, concertos) in his output?

[edurban]

Jim, I really don't know.  I don't think I've ever seen a worklist.  There are mentions here and there of a cello sonata, a piano trio, and a piano quartet with winds (maybe an arrangement of the quartet that started this thread?)

Btw, the Mountain Kingdom of the Great North West is a five movement suite written for Frederick Stock and the Chicago Symphony and premiered by that fine band.

Yep, intriguing composer.  Described later in his life as the Dean of American Choral Conductors.

David

[febnyc]

Thanks, all, for the comments.  I, too, would love to hear works such as From the Mountain Kingdom of the Great Northwest or Along the Columbia River.  Gosh!  What evocative titles.  An earlier-day Ferde Grofé?

This page offers a little info - but not enough, obviously.

http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Lib/Saar-Louis-Victor.htm

Nevertheless I fear we are no closer to hearing any of Saar. Naxos, where are you?