Igor Markevitch and the LSO in vintage Rimsky-Korsakov

I have often praised the Czech Supraphon record label; this time round I am praising the Australian Eloquence label from a company that remasters and reissues important recordings from the 1950s and 60s Universal International back-catalogue. The recordings come mainly from Decca and Philips. This time round I was listening to Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, an original Decca release from 1962, with the LSO conducted by Igor Markevitch.

The sound from nearly 60 years ago is pretty amazing, and well balanced. The LSO was in good form during that period. Altogether, a highly welcome re-incarnation of the original. The Eloquence CD also sees the same forces in Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio espagnol.

Vilde Frang, Vasily Petrenko, and Edward Elgar

It's not often I listen intently to every bar of Elgar's violin concerto from the beginning until the end 50 minutes thereafter. But this evening I did, deeply moved by an August 2019 broadcast from Oslo where Vasily Petrenko conducted the Oslo Philharmonic, with Vilde Frang as the soloist. Elgar's concerto is deeply passionate and romantic, and that is what came over with Frang and Petrenko.

Vilde Frang makes a lovely sound, and one notices here Elgar's love of the lower reaches of the violin (he should have written a viola concerto, as well as those for cello and violin). Frang and Petrenko (who work hand-in-glove in this work) are not afraid of extensive rubato, and the music benefits. The off-air sound is excellent, marred only slightly by a somewhat recessed contribution from the string section during forte moments. I have 22 recordings of this concerto (including another one by Frang in San Francisco earlier this year). But this combination of Frang and Petrenko in Elgar gets my gold medal. It's warm, passionate and loving. It would be good to hear Frang and Petrenko collaborating in Shostakovich and Glazunov.

Diana Tishchenko

I often buy recordings by unknown young violinists, just to take them for a test drive. My shelves are full of past violinists of whom I now have only a hazy memory. The latest serendipitous purchase was a CD by the young Ukrainian violinist, Diana Tishchenko -- her début recording, unless I am mistaken. I was attracted by the CD contents: the sonatas for violin and piano by Ravel, Enescu (number 3) and Prokofiev (number 1), plus the third sonata for solo violin by Ysaÿe. Why does everyone always present Ysaÿe's third sonata? I much prefer the first, second, and fourth.

Ms Tishchenko is my kind of girl, and her playing reminds me of Alina Ibragimova, with a superb range of pianissimos and fortissimos and first-rate sensitivity to the music. Her style of playing smacks more of Franco-Belgian than the Russian bear. All four works on the CD score highly for the violin playing, no mean achievement in four works all from the opening decades of the past century. The pianist, Zoltan Fejervari, is school of Gerald Moore rather than Yuja Wang or Alfred Cortot, but these three violin and piano sonatas are weighted towards the violin part, in any case.

I'm in the market for future recordings by Ms Tishchenko (providing they do not feature yet another rendition of the Mendelssohn, Sibelius, Tchaikovsky or Bruch concertos). It's a tough world out there for violinists and pianists, even for those as supremely talented as Ms Tishchenko. Her début record is issued by Warner, not a company noted for interesting repertoire a little off the beaten path. I'll keep my antennae alert, since Diana Tishchenko's playing impressed me greatly.

Paul Godwin aka Pinchas Goldfein

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.

The Pavel Haas Quartet plays Shostakovich

About 100 years ago, composers of “serious” music stopped worrying about performing musicians, and about audiences. They worried about themselves and their academic reputations. As a result, I for one have little taste for most music written after 1920 -- with some notable exceptions, including the music of Dmitri Shostakovich. Forbidden by the draconian communist régime from writing any form of esoteric or intellectual music, Shostakovich wrote music that could get by the censors of the time. Luckily for his then, and subsequent, audiences.

I like Shostakovich's music. I like the Pavel Haas Quartet. I like the Supraphon recording engineers, so I snapped up a new recording of the Quartet playing the second (1944) seventh (1960) and eighth (1960) string quartets. Music of my lifetime, and music that speaks to me; most unusual. Shostakovich's music, like that of Sibelius, has bags of personality; one cannot say the same of the semi-contemporary cerebral music of people such as Stockhausen, Nono, Dallapicolla, Boulez, or Ferneyhough. One rejoices with Shostakovich, one weeps with him, one contemplates with him, one trembles with him, one laughs with him, one panics with him.

Shostakovich came to the string quartet medium somewhat later in his career but, once there, he took to the medium like a duck to water, with fifteen string quartets. He appears to have regarded the four voices as equals, and this is good news for the Pavel Haas that integrates its four members without overt favouritism. The playing is exemplary. The recording is truly excellent. The music is of eternal value. I am extremely happy with my purchase and am on my starting blocks for future recordings of Shostakovich by the Pavel Haas Quartet.

Pierre Amoyal, Yuval Yaron, and Virtuosos

Pity today's top virtuosos of the violin or the piano. They will all be able to play faster and louder than their predecessors. They will all have drawers full of gold, silver and bronze medals from various competitions; I read there are currently more than 300 piano competitions handing out medals on a regular basis. They will all make a few recordings, strive for international fame, then end up as violin or piano teachers in some minor college somewhere. It was always thus; in the violin world, think only of the considerable stature of violinists such as Sascha Jacobsen, David Nadien, Oscar Shumsky, Joseph Gingold and many, many others. For many, of course, a high-profile international career entails too many sacrifices – think of Albert Sammons, the superb self-taught British violinist who refused to travel outside Britain. Arthur Grumiaux, after an initial start, also declined to travel, but he still found fame because of his strong links with one of the world's great recording companies of the time, Philips.

But for all their medals and star technique, it is extremely rare that pianists reach the musical level of their illustrious predecessors such as Alfred Cortot, Edwin Fischer, Clara Haskil, Maria Pires, et al., and rare that violinists come anywhere near Kreisler, Heifetz, Grumiaux, Elman, et al. Jascha Heifetz had a number of pupils who found temporary fame at one time or another, including Yuval Yaron, Rudolf Koelman, Pierre Amoyal, and Erick Friedman. I have always had an affection for the playing of Rudolf Koelman (and admiration for someone who recorded the 24 Paganini caprices live). Thanks to a generous friend, I listened today to two ex- Heifetz pupils, Pierre Amoyal in Fauré (1993) and Yuval Yaron in the Sibelius concerto (1978).

I listened first to Heifetz pupil Pierre Amoyal playing Fauré (1993 recording). Fauré's first violin & piano sonata is one of my favourites, though the much later second sonata has always appeared to me as mainly note-spinning. Amoyal was a superb player, with Heifetz's emphasis on beauty of sound and stringent avoidance of any “ugly” sounds, but without the passion and commitment Heifetz brought to his playing. There are better options around for Fauré fans of the first sonata, including Dumay-Collard, Grumiaux-Hajdu, Heifetz-Smith, and Thibaud-Cortot (1927).

Next on the turntable came the Israeli Yuval Yaron. Yaron was mainly a Gingold pupil, though he also attended Heifetz classes. Currently I have 51 recordings of the Sibelius violin concerto and this is definitely one of the better ones. This unknown violinist (to me) gets my rare three stars for his passionate performance (no wonder he won the Sibelius competition a couple of years earlier). His performance does not eclipse the passionate advocacy that Ginette Neveu brought to this much-recorded work, but it does win a place in my Sibelius pantheon. The Bavarian orchestra under Klaus Tennstedt sounds here more Teutonic than Nordic as reproduced on my equipment, and there are a few minor fluffs from Yaron in what is presumably a live recording from a radio studio concert. Yaron sounds more school of Gingold than school of Heifetz, but that is no bad thing, even if the Sibelius was one of Heifetz's favourite concertos for concerts. Those wishing to dip into samples of Yaron's playing will have a hard time; the former echt virtuoso has mainly vanished from view, like so many others, and is now teaching in a college in California. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Haydn, Mozart. And the Eighteenth Century

As I have remarked previously, there is something eternally appealing about much of the music written during the 18^th century in Europe. I sit here surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of CDs, yet almost all my listening at the moment is to music of the 18^th century (Handel, Bach, Haydn, Mozart). By pure chance, I took down an old CD recorded by Vilde Frang and Michail Lifits (London, December 2013, off-air) in Mozart K 376, K 379 and K 481. Lovely playing by two young people (Frang was 27 at the time) and really superb music, especially 379 and 481.

This listening supplemented my on-going daily bread: the six Haydn Op 76 string quartets, and the three Op 71 quartets, played by the Takacs Quartet. Warm, affectionate playing far removed from “period instrument” playing. In these somewhat troubled times, Haydn and Mozart, supplemented with Bach and Handel from time to time, are really all one needs.

Ning Feng in Paganini

Paganini's first violin concerto is a virtuoso work, but with many lovely themes and many highly lyrical moments. For anyone who loves violin playing, it's a must (when played by a truly expert violinist). My three-star list (out of the 45 recordings I possess) comprises: Leonid Kogan, Francesca Dego, Philippe Hirschhorn, Viktoria Mullova, Michael Rabin, Nemanja Radulovic, Akiko Suwanai (Moscow, July 1990). Kogan, Mullova and Rabin are very full-blooded Russian performances, very macho. Rabin loses points for a too-close recording, and for savage cuts in both the first and final movements (though not as savage as the versions by Kreisler or Wilhelmj both of whom re-orchestrated the orchestral parts and amputated the second and third movements of the concerto). Radulovic has a bit too much Radulovic and not enough Paganini, for my taste.

The latest CD to arrive on my player is one by Ning Feng, with the Asturian Symphony Orchestra. Very well recorded (listened through headphones, since the violinist often plays pianissimo and is not recorded prominently). The Asturian orchestra sounds as if the players are thoroughly enjoying themselves, playing with the kind of gusto of an Italian opera orchestra and brass band that Paganini was obviously expecting. Ning Feng's contribution is remarkable, and he gets my three stars. He is a true virtuoso, but also a highly elegant virtuoso -- much as Paganini may have been (Niccolò was neither German, nor Russian, nor even Israeli). At the end of his traversal of Paganini's concerto, I wanted to cheer. Ning Feng's performance on this CD is now my “if you only have one version” choice.

Ning Feng started in my estimation a couple of years ago as “a good virtuoso violinist”. His recording of the Bach unaccompanied sonatas and partitas then had him soaring high in my estimation, and with this Paganini recording, he soars even higher. One day he may even beat his fellow Chinese violinist, Tianwa Yang, in Sarasate's music. With his elegant and intelligent playing, Feng may well go on to superb Mozart and Beethoven (he lives in Berlin, so is obviously in a good position to also imbibe the German musical tradition).

Julius Röntgen

In my recent round-up of sonatas for violin and piano that are all too rarely heard, I forgot about Julius Röntgen (1855-1932). Born a German, died a Dutchman, Röntgen wrote and wrote and wrote – over 600 compositions. I know of him mainly through his works for violin and piano, being the proud owner of two CDs devoted to his various violin and piano works. One CD features the violinist Christoph Schickedanz. The other Atsuko Sahara. Both offer Röntgen's attractive E major sonata opus 40. Sahara gets the better recording and pianist (John Lenehan). Röntgen was one of the few composers at the end of the 19^th century and beginning of the 20^th who could write memorable themes. I am very fond of my two Röntgen CDs of violin and piano music.

Medtner, Catoire - and David Oistrakh

Concert programmes by violinists and pianists have become pretty stereotyped, with the same old two dozen or so sonatas being paraded, particularly Beethoven's “Spring” sonata, the Ravel sonata, the César Franck, the Brahms sonatas .... and a small score of other warhorses. Less frequently heard are the admirable violin and piano sonatas by George Enescu, Guillaume Lekeu, Leos Janacek; and the third sonata of Nikolai Medtner who was born in Moscow in 1880 and died in London in 1951. I first met Medtner's genial sonata in a 1996 recording by Vadim Repin, and I went on to collect four other performances of the work. This time round I re-sampled it played by David Oistrakh, with Alexander Goldenweiser playing the piano part.

I have never been too enthusiastic about Oistrakh as a violinist. He had a fantastic technique, but his warm, rich, Russian sound always sounded somewhat foreign to me in the German and, particularly, French repertoire. However, his sound and approach take to Russian music like a duck to water and I greatly enjoyed his playing of the Medtner. The two-CD set is completed with Oistrakh and Goldenweiser tackling sonatas and a couple of short pieces by another Russian, Georgy Catoire who was born in Moscow in 1861 and died there in 1926 and, again, Oistrakh sounds quite at home in the melancholy sonorities of Catoire's music. My CD set also includes an excellent performance of Catoire's trio in F minor, recorded in 1949 by Goldenweiser with Kogan and Rostropovich, another thoroughly Russian occasion and another opportunity to sample Kogan and Rostropovich playing together.

Yuja

I have a great admiration for the Chinese pianist Yuja Wang. She combines an extraordinary piano technique with a variety of touch and expression, playing the music from inside, as it were, and responding to the mood of every bar and phrase. A pianist to whom I can listen even when I am not too keen on the music she is playing.

Her latest CD features her usual repertoire preferences: Rachmaninov, Scriabin, Ligeti and Prokofiev. To these favourites her programmes also frequently embrace Liszt, Scarlatti and Ravel. Rachmaninov, Scarlatti and Ravel wrote my kind of music. Does anyone other than pianists really like the music of Alexander Scriabin? It usually belongs to a musical class that I deem “I ain't going nowhere”. The first movement of Prokofiev's piano sonata no.8 on this CD belongs to the same somewhat shapeless form, though things pick up in the second and third movements. Yuja's pianism is extraordinary here. Scriabin's 10^th sonata wanders on, but only for just under twelve minutes; I know that however many times I listen to it, it will always be totally unfamiliar. The three very short Ligeti pieces on the disc are attractive, and show off Yuja's technique. The four Rachmaninov pieces are familiar territory for me, and the pianist.

Yuja Wang in her chosen repertoire is a real phenomenon; a virtuoso pianist plus. I have no idea as to whether she plays Bach, Mozart, Beethoven or Schubert, but it would be interesting to hear her take on a work such as Bach's Goldberg Variations (just as Beatrice Rana impressed me greatly in the same work). In the meantime: Viva Yuja !

As an addendum: why is the CD called "THE Berlin Recital"? Had she never played there before, and never will again? If not, it should be "A Berlin Recital". And do we really need eight photos of Yuja (though, of course, none of Rachmaninov or Prokofiev).  DG ain't what it used to be.

Music Therapy

“Art thou troubled? Music shall calm thee” said an aria by Handel from Rodelinda, sung in English by Kathleen Ferrier on a 78 rpm record of my long-distant youth.

Well, up to a point. Depends on the music. Feeling a bit troubled of late, I turned to Schubert (fourth symphony) and Brahms (second symphony) and felt even more troubled. Luckily, to calm me, I did not turn to Shostakovich, Prokofiev or Rachmaninov. Instead, I alighted on Handel sung by Véronique Gens and all my troubles and cares vanished. One can generalise; but the music of the 18^th century is usually a lot more calming than the troubled music of much of the 19^th century, not to mention the stress and turmoil of the 20^th. As if Véronique Gens were not enough, I then alighted on the wonderful Simone Kermes singing Handel, with a band conducted by the late highly-lamented Alan Curtis.

“Art thou troubled? Handel shall calm thee”. Handel's (or Mozart's) music should be freely available in any national health therapy programme.

Beethoven Re-visited

In my young years, I somewhat overdosed on Beethoven symphonies, particularly the 3^rd, 5^th, 6^th and 7^th. As a result, I rarely turn to them now, though yesterday I took out the 7^th symphony for an airing. The conductor was Otto Klemperer, and the orchestra in 1960 the Philharmonia. The sound is still excellent for its time. Klemperer is my Beethoven conductor; his somewhat grim character seems to chime well with the temperamental Beethoven. With Klemperer you get a first-rate sense of form and balance, you hear all the parts of the music, you get a conductor immersed in the music rather than in self-promotion. With the Philharmonia in 1960 you get fine orchestral playing, though without the distinctive sound of that era in Berlin, Vienna, Paris, Leningrad or Philadelphia.

In my peak Beethoven years in the 1950s, it was Karajan, Furtwängler and Toscanini who led the field. Furtwängler and Toscanini never made it into the stereo era, when recorded orchestral sound really became a lot better. Karajan was always a bit too concerned with Karajan and beautiful sound for my liking, and frantic Italian Toscanini much too concerned with being Toscanini, the fastest conductor on Earth. So for the Beethoven symphonies I am happy with my EMI Klemperer box, apart from the 9^th symphony for which one needs Furtwängler.

Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien in Brahms

Alina Ibragimova. Arabella Steinbacher. Tianwa Yang. Vilde Frang. Ning Feng. Janine Jansen. Sueye Park. Nazrin Rashidova. Renaud Capuçon. Simone Lamsma. Julia Fischer. Patricia Kopatchinskaja. Lisa Batiashvili. James Ehnes. Akiko Suwanai. Katrin Scholz . . . . The list of eminent violinists of the younger generation goes on and on, heavily oriented nowadays to young women.

For very many works with violin, Alina Ibragimova and Lisa Batiashvili are usually among my top three, four or five for choice of recording. I have been faithful to both for going on a couple of decades now, and they have rarely disappointed (apart from Ibragimova in Bach's works for violin and orchestra, where she has always been let down in recordings by the choice of accompanying band). A gift from a friend of Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien playing the three violin and piano sonatas of Brahms gives me an opportunity for a quick re-appraisal of Ibragimova, and her favourite duo partner.

She reminds me of Arthur Grumiaux who, for his recordings of 50 or 60 years ago, is always an excellent choice for any of the German classics, or the Franco-Belgian repertoire. Like Grumiaux, Ibragimova is a sensitive musician who sees the artist as a medium for the music, rather than the music as a vehicle to showcase the player. Her violin, a Bellosio of circa 1775, suits her playing like a glove. Her partnership with Tiberghien is as sympathetic as was the partnership of Grumiaux and Clara Haskil. The tempi adopted by Ibragimova and Tiberghien in the Brahms sonatas are entirely uncontroversial. We sit back and enjoy the music, and the playing. Like Grumiaux, Ibragimova appears to play almost everything but, like Grumiaux, I note her especially for her playing of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and the Franco-Belgian repertoire. I have scores of recordings of the three Brahms violin and piano sonatas, but this new one from Ibragimova and Tiberghien goes straight into the top four or five.

David Fray plays Bach

I first heard the piano playing of David Fray a couple of months ago when he played the keyboard part to Renaud Capuçon's rendition of some of Bach's sonatas for violin and keyboard. I loved the CD, but also remarked highly favourably on Fray's playing of the keyboard parts. I therefore snapped up a new (recorded 2012) CD where Fray plays Bach's second and sixth keyboard partitas, plus the C minor Toccata BWV 911.

This is my kind of Bach playing. Fray brings out Bach's counterpoint and part-writing with real professional talent. The sound is bright; the rhythms are pointed, the tempi are well chosen. More !

Guillaume Lekeu

Hunting in vain for the identity of an annoying 2-3 bar phrase that will not leave my head, I decided it was either from something by Rachmaninov, or by Guillaume Lekeu. This has led me so far into listening to three hours of chamber music by Lekeu. In vain; I still have not found the identity of the musical phrase. It must be Rachmaninov, but there are so many pieces of music by Sergei Rachmaninov! Anyway, there are worse ways of spending three hours than listening to the chamber music of Lekeu, especially the complete music for string quartet (Quatuor Debussy) or the quartet for piano and string quartet. There is an appealing chromatic melancholy in much of the music (well, anyone would be melancholy if they died just one day after their 24^th birthday.) It is astonishing that so much high quality music was left by someone who died so young. Nowadays it is mainly his sonata for violin and piano that is aired occasionally; it was commissioned by Eugène Ysaÿe; I got to know it first from a 1938 recording by Yehudi and Hephzibah Menuhin. Latterly the work received an excellent performance by Alina Ibragimova, with Cédric Tiberghien.

Guillaume Lekeu was born in Verviers, Belgium in 1870 and died in 1894 in Angers, France after catching typhoid fever from a contaminated sorbet. He joins a long list of eminent composers who died too young: Purcell (36), Pergolesi (26), Mozart (35), Schubert (31), Chausson (44), Bizet (37), George Butterworth (31).

Bruckner's Ninth with Carl Schuricht

When I was fifteen or sixteen years old and staying in Paris, I walked to the Théâtre du Châtelet one evening to attend a concert of the music of Wagner and Bruckner (seventh symphony). Carl Schuricht conducted the Orchestre des Concerts Colonne. It must have been an Easter period, since the concert featured the Good Friday music from Parsifal. This was the very start of my love of the music of Wagner and Bruckner. My Bruckner repertoire centres on the seventh, eighth and ninth symphonies, and today I listened once again to the ninth, conducted in 1961 by the same Carl Schuricht of my youth, but this time with the Vienna Philharmonic.

I first made the acquaintance of Bruckner's ninth in the 1950s with a Vox LP recorded in 1953 with Jascha Horenstein conducting the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. Schuricht's VPO in 1961 was probably the same orchestra, and there is nothing quite like the old Vienna Philharmonic playing Bruckner. The music positively glows, with wonderful strings, brass and woodwind. The re-furbished sound by the EMI engineering team for this Schuricht re-issue captures the VPO sound perfectly. The combination of Bruckner's music, the VPO's playing and the sure-footed conducting of Schuricht, an old Bruckner hand, make listening to this performance a golden classic. The 1944 Berlin Philharmonic recording under Furtwängler (Pristine Audio) is another golden classic but, in the last resort, the VPO playing and the wonderfully re-furbished sound make Schuricht my first listening choice.

Alexander Melnikov and Dmitri Shostakovich

Around seven years ago, I wrote of my pleasure in listening to Alexander Melnikov playing the 24 Preludes & Fugues of Dmitri Shostakovich. Well, I am still listening, and still with great pleasure. Like some gnarled old priest who always keeps a copy of the Bible close to hand, the 2-CD set of Shostakovich is usually near my hand, since the music lends itself admirably to frequent listening in short bursts. My one gripe is that the preludes and the fugues are banded separately, which means one cannot shuffle-play the works; it is too easy with 24 pieces on two CDs to play the same half dozen works each time, only rarely reaching numbers 20-24.

Be that as it may; these preludes & fugues are most enjoyable listening, and are beautifully played by Melnikov. For me, Shostakovich was the most significant composer of the 20th century, a century that probably did not produce any great composers of the ilk of Bach, Mozart or Beethoven. Unlike so many 20th century composers, Shostakovich put real emotions into his music; his music is rarely dull or routine. "The 24" is a long work — fully two and a half hours — but the musical inspiration is high, and the craftsmanship superb; it is intriguing to imagine Bach and Shostakovich getting together and playing their respective preludes and fugues to each other. I suspect Bach would have been intrigued and impressed by the Russian's oeuvre.