From the Archives: Katrin Scholz

Raiding my archives of recordings, it is tempting to imagine that those who become really famous are always la crème de la crème, but it's not always so. Country of birth, financial supporters, powerful agents, international recording contracts, racial or nationalist supporter groups and critics, confidence in performing in public ... all can count for even more than sheer top talent at playing the violin. I have a large number of recordings featuring Vilde Frang, Katrin Scholz, Antje Weithaas, Wolfgang Schneiderhan, Adolf Busch, Gerhardt Taschner, Erich Röhn, Georg Kulenkampff, and many, many others that are hardly household names. Then there are good violinists who achieve media fame through eccentricities – such as Gilles Apap, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Nigel Kennedy, Nemanja Radulovic. And meteorites such as Ginette Neveu and Josef Hassid.

Katrin Scholz was born in Berlin in 1969 (the same year as the youngest of my three children, as it happens). Her Berlin Classics recordings mainly date from the period 1997-2006 when she would have been in her late twenties and early thirties. She recorded for the German company, Berlin Classics. One of the company's most welcome features is listing the composers for the cadenzas used; few companies do this, and it's vaguely annoying when they do not. In the Beethoven concerto, Scholz plays the cadenza by Joachim (with Kreisler's in the third movement). In Mozart's 4^th and 5^th violin concertos, she also uses Joachim's cadenzas. For the Beethoven concerto first movement, I prefer Kreisler's to all the other many contenders.

Scholz appears to have remained Berlin-based for much of her career, and I have five CDs from Berlin Classics, many of them with the Kammerorchester Berlin. They include superb, classical recordings of the Beethoven violin concerto, plus three Mozart concertos, and the Brahms concerto. She also recorded the Sibelius concerto, Saint-Saëns' third concerto, and Martinu's second (why bother?) In addition there is a Spanish Dance CD where she plays miscellaneous pieces by de Falla, Sarasate, Ravel, et al. Katrin Scholz playing “Spanish” is an unexpected success; pigeon-holing her as a superb player of the German classics, one does not expect her to play the 21 tracks of Spanish dances as to the manor born. But she does, with a real sense of style and rhythm. Bravo, Katrin. Her five CDs will never go in my throw-out bin.

In praise of skimming and skipping

Although I'll be 80 years old next year, I am no technophobe: to prove it, I have three PCs (why?), two laptop computers (why?) and two mobile phones. Plus a CD player with all the peripherals, and a portable DVD player. I listen to CDs. I play my violin (occasionally), I read paper books of which I have hundreds, I read books on my Kindle (wherein lie probably another hundred). All alone in the civilised world: I do not have a television, and have not had one for over 30 years now.

Music CDs are fine: you insert them in the player, push “start” and listen to Kreisler playing Kreisler, or whatever. If you are interested in the names of the recording engineers and the transfer artist, you can read it later in the booklet. Books are fine, either on a Kindle or on paper. You can skip over the boring bits of text (“get on with the plot!”). If you are really interested in the names of the editors, sub-editors and typesetters, you can usually look this up later. But DVDs of films are another planet. You have to endure endless lists of those who did the make-up and the hair styling, and whatever else, and there is no skipping. (At least, there probably is, but every time I touch a DVD player button I find myself back at the beginning of the film, with all the stuff about hair stylists, or whatever). From family visits, I have gathered that television is far worse: no “fast forward” button so one has to endure endless adverts for sanitary products, or news bulletins where the only thing of real interest comes at the end of the bulletin after twenty minutes of trivia. One good reason I don't have a television (I get my news from the Web, where I can skim and skip). I like skimming and skipping. No one under the age of 60 will understand my aversion to video programmes. I am currently watching (on my portable DVD player) a Swedish television adaption of Henning Mankell's Wallender books. Well done, but I have to watch all the stuff that is of no interest to me. If I go back to the books on my shelves, I can skim ! Different planets.

Exploring the Archives: Sigiswald Kuijken, and Wilhelm Backhaus

As I have remarked before in this blog, recording quality and balance are often highly influenced by one's playback equipment. What sounds unsatisfactory via speakers, can often sound a lot better through headphones. I once drove a salesman to despair when I wanted to replace my speakers around a decade ago. I played my test CD through speaker after proposed speaker, with the salesman exclaiming “just listen to that bass!” But I wasn't too concerned about the bass sound, since so much of my listening is to violin music, and I was more interested in the feeble treble that came over. After many changes, I left without buying anything at that establishment.

I am currently diving back into my CD archives. Having gone through innumerable Bach cantatas as recorded by Suzuki and by Herreweghe, I am now on to innumerable Bach cantatas as recorded by Sigiswald Kuijken and his La Petite Bande. Balancing Bach cantatas is a problem, with the small orchestra, soloists and a choir all vying for attention. Too often — most noticeably with Suzuki — the recording emphasis favours the solo voices, with the orchestra in the background. Not so with Kuijken, and I am sure Bach would be happy to hear the band playing loud and clear, since Bach's vocal soloists are said often to have been a mixed bag, and Bach devoted much of his compositional skills to making sure the band was doing interesting things. The Kuijken recordings date from the period 2006-11. Unlike Suzuki and Herreweghe, he does not use a choir, but gives the choral work to the four soloists. I don't mind this in Bach cantatas, since I am not a fan of choirs and choral music. Kuijken also favours female altos, rather than males, and I nod approvingly. Male altos usually get up my nose. Suzuki, Herreweghe and Kuijken recorded dozens of Bach cantatas over more than a decade, with changing soloists. There is no "best buy", as so often, but I am grateful to have so many Bach cantatas recorded by all three men.

Also from my archives, I am re-listening with great pleasure to Wilhelm Backhaus playing five Beethoven piano sonatas. This is the kind of piano playing I enjoy; Backhaus was a formidable technician, but his playing draws attention to the music, and not to the star pianist. In this, Igor Levit somewhat resembles Backhaus; my kind of piano playing. I am not a great fan of the Beethoven piano sonatas, and listen to them rarely. When I do listen, I like them played by no-nonsense Backhaus or Levit.

Next off on my archive re-listening will be the violinist Katrin Scholz; not a household name, but a superb violinist.