I am currently weeding out my severely
over-weight collection of CDs. In so doing, I come across recordings
I had long forgotten, and it gives me a chance to re-rehabilitate
them and to take them out for a hearing. Serendipity decreed that my
hand alighted on a double CD album of the violin playing of Paul
Godwin. He was born Pinchas Goldfein in Poland (1902) and moved
to Germany, becoming an extremely famous dance band leader in the
1920s. In 1933 he fled to Holland, clutching his Stradivarius and
managed to survive the German occupation of Holland. After the end of
the second world war, he re-started his career as a violin soloist
and chamber music player when dance band orchestras fell out of
fashion (cf. Alfredo Campoli in England). He died in Holland in 1982.
My set contains probably the most
passionate performance of Bloch's Nigun on record. Godwin had a
luscious sound, with lots of vibrato, typical of that era in Central
Europe (viz Mischa Elman, Fritz Kreisler, and Toscha Seidel). Right
and left arm technique was rock solid; tempi almost all vivace. He
excels in the Kreisler pieces here and, for a change one can clearly
differentiate between love's joy, and love's sorrow (Liebesfreud, and
Liebesleid).
Paul Godwin reminds us of how much we
have lost with the post- 1945 generation of violinists from the
conservatoires of Europe / America / Asia when playing salon pieces.
Paul Godwin, like Kreisler and Heifetz, should be compulsory
listening for all aspiring violinists who venture into the world of
“encore pieces”. I can listen happily to Godwin playing short
pieces for 90 minutes without wilting or growing bored. They don't
play like that now.
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