Albert Sammons (violin) - Salut d'Amour (Elgar) (1940)

This time, a later Albert Sammons recording: 'Salut d'Amour,' with piano by Gerald Moore, was recorded on 5 April 1940 at Decca's West Hampstead Studios.

From WIkipedia: Albert Edward Sammons CBE (23 February 1886 – 24 August 1957) was an English violinist, composer and later violin teacher...

[He] was born in Fulham, the second eldest of four children. His father was a shoemaker and good amateur violinist. Sammons started to receive some lessons from his father around the age of seven. Apart from these lessons, he was virtually self-taught. His first professional engagement was in the band at the Earls Court Exhibition in 1898; the conductor was so impressed by the 12-year-old that he made him leader. He left school at this time and became a professional musician – partly to bring extra income to the household, as his father was a compulsive gambler...

Sammons...began to gain a reputation for his reliability and was engaged by many London musical establishments, as well as in the 'Hungarian' and 'White Viennese' bands popular at the time...At 16, relations with his father reached a point where Albert and his brother left home to stay with friends, only returning when his father walked out to join the band on an ocean liner and the two brothers were therefore obliged to provide for the rest of the family...

He married Laura Tomkins in Middlesbrough on 31 October 1907 (divorced 1920). Around this time Sammons was recruited to play at musical parties for the upper classes at their country houses.

He was the leader of the British Symphony Orchestra in a series of Amalgamated Musicians' Union Sunday concerts at the London Coliseum in 1908–1909... He was also engaged by Ernesto Bucalossi at the Waldorf Hotel and Wyndham's Theatre. It was at the Waldorf that Thomas Beecham heard him and in August 1909 offered him the position of sub-leader (soon to be leader) of his orchestra... The conductor Adrian Boult commented on his rise in British violin-playing, 'he had had no special preparations, no training abroad, no scholarship luxuries.'

In 1910, with [others] he formed the London String Quartet, with whom he remained until 1917...

Sammons, William Murdoch (piano), Lionel Tertis (viola) and Lauri Kennedy (cello), founded The Chamber Music Players in 1921, giving their first private performance on 6 January of that year, and first public concert at Haverstock Hill, London on 13 January, going on to give many concerts at the Wigmore Hall and around the UK...

Sammons was particularly associated with Edward Elgar's Violin Concerto in B minor, which he first played on 23 November 1914... He estimated that he played the concerto over a hundred times, including at The Proms...He also made the first recording of Elgar's Violin Sonata in E minor in 1935.

In May 1915 a chance encounter in London with Frederick Delius led directly to the composition of a violin concerto in which Sammons probably assisted considerably even to the point of writing some link passages...

After the end of the First World War, Sammons all but gave up string quartet and orchestral playing to concentrate on a large, regular programme of solo work and chamber music recitals throughout Britain and Ireland, and later, broadcasts...Between May and the autumn of 1929 Sammons and Tertis carried out around 1,000 string auditions for the formation of the new BBC Symphony Orchestra.

He married Olive Hobday (the daughter of one of his accompanists) on 5 December 1921. Shortly after, they moved to Bognor Regis (in the same road as William Murdoch), where he lived for the rest of his life.

During the Second World War, he continued his busy concert schedule around the UK, travelling by train, as well as appearing at the National Gallery concerts.

From 1946 Sammons spent less time playing and more teaching...From 1939, he taught privately and at the Royal College of Music...He became a Fellow (FRCM) in 1944.

He composed many short pieces for violin and piano, which he included in his recital programmes and recorded...He also made editions of others' works and published books of studies and exercises.

The onset of Parkinson's disease forced his retirement from public performance in June 1948...

He died in Middleton-on-Sea in 1957, aged 71. Boult said of him after his death that he was distinguished by 'his selfless interest in music-making of all kinds, whether in Queen's Hall or in some humble mission hall in far-off Wales or Scotland. He was a great musician in every sense of the word.'


I made this transfer from a laminated Australian pressing of Decca Y 5637.