Just enjoyed a three hour Phillippe Hirschhorn festival, courtesy of Ronald and Doremi. Hirschhorn belonged to that enormous band of supremely talented violinists who, for one reason or another, never recorded for a major company so remained comparatively unknown: one thinks of David Nadien, Oscar Shumsky (before 1980), Joseph Gingold and a horde of Germans, Austrians, Russians, Czechs, Hungarians and Romanians. In the late 1960s and the 1970s, when Hirschhorn was young and ambitious, recording companies were devoting their violin repertoire to the Korean Kyung-Wha Chung, to the Israelis Pinchas Zuckerman and Izhak Perlman, and to the Latvian Gidon Kremer (somewhat ironically). No room for yet more supreme violinists, and not yet the horde of smaller recording labels that would bring hope and exposure to more violinists.

Hirschhorn favours deliberate tempi in pretty well everything he plays; just as Heifetz seemed to have a rapid internal tempo clock, so Hirschhorn has a slow one, which has the advantage of allowing us to hear all the subtle bowings and notes that are usually glossed over in more rapid traversals. We hear intense concentration from this violinist, and a very sharp focus on his violin and the notes he is playing. The playing is highly committed. His vibrato belongs to the "odd" school along with that of Tossy Spivakovsky, Zino Francescatti and Ivry Gitlis. Often, in his intensity, Hirschhorn reminds me of Ginette Neveu. Janine Jansen was a Hirschhorn pupil, and it shows in her intensity.

An excellent way to spend three hours. Hirschhorn made no commercial recordings, and all the recordings we have of him come from radio or festival archives. My guess is he was one of those people who were best heard live, and that in a studio he might have lost much of the élan that permeates these performances.