Telemann 12 Fantasias for Violin Solo played by Maurice Clare: Nimbus Rediscovered Recordings

The session notes for the 1974 recording show that Fantasias Nos. 1-5 were recorded on Monday 26 August, Fantasias 7-12 on Tuesday 27 August followed by a day without recording. Fantasia No.6 was recorded on Thursday 29 August 1974. In these early days it was Nimbus’ practice to assemble masters quickly after recording and given the founders fierce commitment to ‘unedited’ takes it is a reasonable bet that the master was assembled from the best whole takes of each movement. Scribbled words on the last page of the session notes suggests future possibilities: Tartini 24 Sonatas, Boccherini Quartets and Quintets with a ‘very, very good pupil’ for 2nd violin and ‘Amo’ (Fleming) on cello. Alas it never happened. Apart from the Recording Agreement itself there is no general correspondence in the Nimbus archive to explain how Maurice Clare found himself at Nimbus’ Birmingham studio, nor why Telemann was the chosen repertoire. It is intriguing that Maurice’s signature on the Agreement dated 24 April 1975 (interestingly eight months after the recording session) is witnessed by Ida G. Carroll – the celebrated principal of Manchester’s Northern School of Music. In 1973 she was a key player in the amalgamation of Manchester’s two music schools into the Royal Northern College of Music and served as its first Dean of Management until 1976. © Adrian Farmer

Nimbus ‘Rediscovered Recordings’

Nimbus is pleased to present the first two titles of a short series of recordings sitting on the shelves of the Nimbus archive that were ‘rediscovered’ during the 2020 COVID shutdowns. In those quiet days idle hands and minds posed the question: ‘So, do we have anything unissued that we can use to construct a release programme?’ This casual enquiry initiated a full investigation that has continued for five years and revealed more than fifty recording projects that, for one reason or another, never made it into the world. Some of these recordings go back to the founding of Nimbus in the late 1960s. There is no single reason to account for their neglect, and in every case we have found no justification for holding them back any longer.

The original analogue tapes, typically one-inch, four track, 30ips, transferred to a digital medium with no problem. We decided to archive them at 192k, thus preserving them for next generation use. Early digital tapes, from 1981/82, using U-matic cassettes, sometimes required surgical intervention to repair passages of lost signal, but having been stored in the same warm, dark room for their entire lives also transferred reliably for the most part.