Otto Goldschmidt (1829-1907)
Two Pieces, Op. 26
a)Evening b)Rondo Caprice
Otto Goldschmidt was born in Hamburg and studied piano and composition at the Leipzig Conservatorium under Bülow and Mendelssohn. He married the great Swedish soprano Jenny Lind in 1852 and settled in London in 1858. A distinguished figure in Victorian music, Goldschmidt was Vice-Principal of the RAM under Sterndale Bennett and founded the Bach Choir in 1875. His Two Pieces for clarinet and piano were published in 1900 with a dedication to ‘my friend Oscar W. Street.’ The first piece is in fact a straight transcription of a song published nearly fifty years earlier as the second of Goldschmidt's Sechs Lieder, Op. 9, a setting of a poem by Hölty entitled Gruss an den Abend. The quotation in the Rondo Caprice is presumably from another early song, as yet unidentified. Oscar Street (1869-1923) studied with George Clinton and combined a career as solicitor and Lloyds underwriter with solo and orchestral clarinet playing. He is joint dedicatee with Charles Draper of Stanford's Clarinet Sonata.
© Oliver Davies
Evening has been recorded by Colin Bradbury and Oliver Davies on The Victorian Clarinet Tradition (CC 0022)