Thursday 20 May 2010
Philippe Hirschhorn's live 1967 recording of Paganini's first violin concerto is one of the classics of the recording corpus. Yes, it's live and, yes, it's a young man's competition bravura performance. But it's not only live; it's also ALIVE! Just like the audience at the end of the first movement and at the end of the concerto. At the 1967 competition Hirschhorn beat Stoika Milanova into second place (and Gidon Kremer into third). With playing like this, you can certainly see why. A tonic in an age of over-careful, edited, polished, studio performances. For a change, Doremi's transfer is exemplary.
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2 comments:
I have the Cypress version. It must be inferior to the DoReMi then. The 2 CD set has the Beethoven, Berg & Paganini VC 1 on it.
Yes, I also have the Cypress version. Trouble with Hirschhorn recordings is that, since he never recorded commercially, all the recordings are from radio broadcasts, festival tapings, or whatever. Difficult to compare like with like (the Berg concerto recordings on Cypress and Doremi are, for example, completely different performances). Despite my ingrained suspicion of Doremi transfers, it has to be said that the current three CD set is a model of its kind (based on my listening so far).
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