Sunday 24 February 2008

Downloaded and listened to Berl Senofsky playing the Brahms violin concerto (1956). A very fine performance, with an especially lyrical slow movement and a fiery finale; for a (pleasant) change, the first movement cadenza was not the usual Joachim one. There are so many cadenzas for the Brahms and Beethoven concertos that it is a pity when performers are so conservative (although I do remember one critic complaining about someone in the Beethoven concerto that "it is a shame he did not play the usual Kreisler cadenza").
Now that recordings are appearing from a plethora of different sources, we are beginning to see that great players who did not, or would not, make the sacrifices involved in becoming media and recording stars were very numerous. Just in Senofsky's generation in America, for example there were Senofsky, David Nadien, Oscar Shumsky and Joseph Gingold -- all first rate violinists who eschewed international careers. Of course, this was compounded for those in America by the fact that the USA during those years only had two main recording companies, RCA and CBS. Both were conservative. RCA had Heifetz as its "house violinist" and did not see any need to dilute its market by recording artists such as Elman and Seidel. And CBS had Isaac Stern, God help them. Europeans were luckier, and companies such as EMI happily recorded Gioconda de Vito, Johanna Martzy, David Oistrakh, Leonid Kogan, Christian Ferras ... all in competition with each other. Much more enlightened.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great to hear a different view. I have not got to the 2nd & 3rd movement yet. But, I still prefer a faster moving 1st mvt (e.g. Milstein with Fistoulari say).