Two French Sopranos: Sabine Devieilhe, and Véronique Gens

The French seem to be doing well with top class musicians, at the moment. Not reflected too often in French orchestras, but singers, violinists, cellists, pianists …. Two CDs from France turned up this week to add to my collection: Sabine Devieilhe (soprano) sings Mozart. Véronique Gens (soprano) sings an excellent collection of 24 songs by Reynaldo Hahn, Henri Duparc and Ernest Chausson.

Véronique Gens has a beautiful voice of real character, and she enunciates clearly. Whatever she is singing about – joy, love, sorrow – she always sounds as though she means it. She is expertly accompanied by the ever-talented Susan Manoff, a pianist who always sounds at home in French mélodies. 66 minutes with Gens and Manoff go very quickly. I was particularly happy to meet the songs of Reynaldo Hahn featured here; they are songs I had not come across before.

On to the more controversial CD of Sabine Devieilhe (accompanied very admirably by an instrumental group Pygmalion, directed by Raphaël Pichon; the group also plays some Mozart bits and pieces on the CD). Hers is a fresh, young, agile voice of very considerable dexterity and technical skill. Her voice, however, lacks the sheer character of the soprano voice of Véronique Gens. Character is important. Ms Devieilhe's CD is a bit of a hotch-potch of Mozart bits and pieces. The producers try to give it a “theme” or a “concept” – music written for the various three Weber sisters, one of whom, Constanze, Mozart married – but it does not really work. We have various arias for soprano. We have various pieces for orchestra. We have an eleven minute chunk of the C minor Mass (Et incarnatus est). We have the Queen of the Night aria (expertly sung). The whole 72 minutes of the CD is really a vehicle for Ms Devieilhe but, unlike Véronique Gens or Julia Lezhneva – to mention only two – Sabine does not yet have the ability to hold our interest always in what she is singing. We gasp, we marvel; but we are not moved. A friend of mine listening to Julia Lezhneva singing Handel was at a loss for words to describe the experience. Sabine Devieilhe is not in the same class. We clap and say “brilliantly executed”. Ms Gens goes into my “keep nearby” rack, as does Ms Lezhneva; both have recitals of music of real value. I am less sure about the bits and pieces of Mozart arias from Ms Devieilhe, which rarely seem to me to show Mozart at his best. She will not go into the “keep nearby” rack, and that is a bit unfair. It's just that, sitting in a prison cell, if I heard Maria Callas, or Julia Lezhneva, or Sandrine Piau, or Véronique Gens singing, I would recognise them. But if it were Sabine Devieilhe, I would reflect: “What a lovely voice, and what great singing. I wonder who it is?” Hopefully, in the near future she will come up with 60 minutes of music that make more musical sense than “The Weber Sisters”. Her Pygmalion friends are excellent in Mozart; the forward woodwind would have pleased Mozart (and Otto Klemperer).

Ginette Neveu: Beethoven Violin Concerto

In 1935, the sixteen year old Ginette Neveu won the Wieniawski competition, beating all comers including David Oistrakh, who finished second. She was a wonderful violinist with an inner fire and a stupendous technique. Her career took off; then came the period 1939-45 when, for most of the time, she was confined to cycling round Paris during the German occupation. During the second half of 1945 her career re-started until she died in an air crash 28^th October 1949. What a loss!

A friend and I were somewhat surprised when Gidon Kremer, after a personal analysis of a whole pile of recordings of the Beethoven violin concerto (the analysis lasted 44 pages) declared that, for him, the greatest of all the recordings was by … Ginette Neveu, recorded off-air in September 1949 with Hans Rosbaud conducting a somewhat second class German south-west radio orchestra. My friend and I rushed to unearth our copies of the recording; mine had been untouched for several decades and, with 86 different recordings of this concerto on my shelf, it might well have remained unheard for a few more decades.

The orchestral playing is a bit rustic at times, not too surprising in the Germany of 1949. However, in a perverse way this serves to emphasise the serenity of Ginette Neveu's playing, especially in the first two movements. Neveu was renowned as an often fiery player (witness her famous Ravel Tzigane, and her predilection for the Brahms violin concerto). The Beethoven concerto is not easy to bring off in performance, since the violin rarely challenges the orchestra or indulges in pyrotechnics. To my mind, Neveu's serenity (with character) and flowing tempi achieve a really great performance of this fragile concerto. In the cadenzas we glimpse the fiery Neveu from time to time (but, surely, that is what cadenzas are for). Rosbaud's part is strong and firm, pace the orchestra. This performance is admitted to my pantheon of great recordings of Beethoven's violin concerto. Fortunately, Ginette Neveu was recorded quite often during the period 1945-49, with a batch of recordings of shorter pieces during 1938-39.

A Great Time for Young Artists

The first concert I attended was in the very early 1950s at St. Wilfrid's church at a place near where I grew up, called Rose Green. The evening was devoted to Bach's Mass in B minor. The audience (to my 12 or 13 year old eyes) consisted entirely of very old people, who looked at me gratefully and admiringly as a sign that "youth" liked classical music and that there was hope for the future.

In my year at secondary school, there were around 120 boys, streamed into four classes. I remember, at most only two or three who showed any interest in "classical" music. When I attended music concerts in the evening in the school hall (I remember the Allegri String Quartet) there were few, if any, pupils of the school present. The audiences always consisted of "old" people.

So when I read today (particularly in the press of Britain and America) that young people do not take to "classical" music, and that the future of such music is in doubt, I just shake my head in exasperation. Have they not looked at the age of so many players in so many orchestras? In so many string quartets and vocal groups? At so many soloists? My eyes are now much older, and most practising musicians today seem to me to be "young". When I compiled my list (below) of outstanding musicians who impressed me in 2015, I was surprised to find that all of them were "young" -- (to me, under 30 years old is young). I limited my list to five candidates, on the grounds that just one or two is unfair; 12 or 15 just becomes ridiculous. Of my five choices for 2015, one is Asiatic, four are Russian, four out of the five are women. So much for the rest of us. More importantly, the five musicians are all young. That was quite a surprise, to me.

It goes without saying that my list below is subjective, and represents what I, a veteran listener to musicians, found most impressive in 2015. No offence to "old" musicians, but it is true that I was most impressed this year by performances from "youth". So who are these impressive young people, (in alphabetical order)?

Zlata Chochieva for her Chopin études
Alina Ibragimova for Ysaÿe's six solo sonatas

Igor Levin for Bach and Beethoven

Julia Lezhneva for Handel arias
Yuja Wang for her Ravel concertos.

The incredible Tianwa Yang did not make this year's top five list, since her Ysaÿe solo sonatas came into my hands last year, not this, and this year's release by her of Castelnuovo-Tedesco's Hollywoodiana concertos was a dead duck as far as I was concerned (because of the music, not because of the valiant Miss Yang).

A Tasty Dish

For the record: my culinary creation of a couple of days ago was a real success (though I may have overdosed on the chilli-peppers somewhat). For the record, and for future generations, I give the essential ingredients below.

Normandy chicken meat (shredded). Green, yellow and red bell peppers. Flat field mushrooms. Cayenne pepper. Chilli-peppers. Salt, black pepper, onions, herbes de Provence, bay leaves, olive oil. Cooked, then left to marinade for 24 hours.

The dish goes well with Ravel's spicy piano concerto, played incredibly by the superb Yuja Wang. Even the Zürich orchestra sounds well spiced up with chilli, inspired no doubt by Ms Wang's pianism. To my mind, Yuja beats all-comers, including Michelangeli and Martha Argerich. Some achievement. The girl will go far.

Evgeny Mravinsky and the Leningrad Philharmonic in Tchaikovsky

There is no cheddar cheese the equal of a good, aged, unpasteurised farmhouse cheddar from Somerset. And there are no performances of Tchaikovsky's last three symphonies equal to those recorded in 1960 by the Leningrad Philharmonic conducted by Evgeny Mravinsky. I took them down off my shelf recently and was once again bowled over by the sheer Russian-ness of these recordings, complete with the old Russian style woodwind and brass. If you are an “authenticity” fanatic, then the sound of the Leningrad orchestra in 1960 is just up your street, since it almost certainly equates to what Tchaikovsky would have heard back in the 1880s. It certainly suits me, and I mourn for the days when Russian orchestras sounded Russian, and French orchestras sounded French. Now, all orchestras have been more or less homogenised, and it is difficult to tell one nationality from another.

I've never much taken to Tchaikovsky's fourth symphony, but I like the fifth very much, and really love the Pathétique. It certainly sounds as if the Leningraders, like all good Russians, really love this music, and they play it from the heart. A top orchestra playing music it knows and loves under a conductor who is supreme in that music, has no equal. There are several dozen real “Recordings of the Century” around; and this is one of them. Over 55 years later, it still sounds superb, a tribute to the DGG engineers of that period, and to the old Leningrad Philharmonic.

Wolfgang Schneiderhan

As a sort-of violinist, since the age of twelve, I've always loved the violin. The first violinist to leave his mark on me was Yehudi Menuhin (probably inevitably in the England of the 1950s). Now, over sixty years later, my preferred listening gravitates increasingly to a handful of violinists of the past, including Wolfgang Schneiderhan, Adolf Busch, and Jozef Suk. These three, to coin a phrase from Tully Potter's biography of Adolf Busch, were all “honest musicians”. They probably never appeared on television; they probably never died particularly rich. But, over sixty years on, it's still a joy to listen to their “old-world” classical style of playing.

This thought was sparked by a (rare) recital disc from the admirable Australian Eloquence label featuring Wolfgang Schneiderhan playing 17 pieces of salon or encore music. All 17 pieces feature different styles of bowing, fingering and attack from Schneiderhan. The six Romanian Folk Dances by Bartok could almost be being played by six different violinists, when one listens to this CD. Schneiderhan is not generally thought of as a player of short pieces, but this recital disc from 1957 makes one regret he did not record much more of such music. Frankly, 17 short pieces of music for violin and piano can end up being somewhat monotonous for the listener. But not when Wolfgang Schneiderhan is playing! A real treat to sit back and listen to the CD, and many thanks to Eloquence. More !

Aimez-vous Brahms?

Mentioned in the current issue of The Gramophone is an interesting remark by Johannes Brahms after hearing Pierre Monteux and the Geloso String Quartet in Vienna play one of his string quartets: "It takes the French to understand my music. The Germans play it too heavily". I thought of this today when re-listening to Leonidas Kavakos and Yuja Wang playing Brahms' three duo sonatas for violin and piano. The first movement of the G major sonata strays into the red in my timing chart (11 minutes and 11 seconds) but it does not sound too slow, because the two players keep the rhythm flowing and the pulse constant. This Greek-Chinese duo may be some way from a “French approach”, but it really works as far as I am concerned. We are a long way from the beefy Brahms of much of the Russian / Israeli / Juilliard school which can invoke images of the Brahms of north Germany and Eisbein mit Sauerkraut und Kartoffeln (a culinary dish, incidentally, that I really like).

Kavakos comes over here as a gentle soul, for most of the time; Wang as mercurial. As a duo, they fulfil my requirement of dividing my interest and admiration between the violin playing and the piano, with neither out-classing the other (a factor that almost always rules out the great Jascha Heifetz as a contender in duo sonatas). They also fulfil my requirement of violinist and pianist being equals (in duo sonatas such as these) and both being first-rate instrumentalists. I have been an admirer of Kavakos for many, many years; an admirer of young Yuja Wang for a much shorter time. But I sincerely hope they do more duo sonatas together. For a start, they so obviously listen to each other when playing. When the music gives the piano the floor, Ms Wang takes it. When the music gives the violin the floor, Leonidas takes it.

Brahms knew what he was doing when he wrote three first-rate sonatas for violin and piano that would fit comfortably on one CD. There are many, many competing versions of the three on record. But Kavakos and Yuja are certainly easily within my top three or four. With many versions of these works, I sit back and let the music wash over me. With Kavakos and Yuja, however, I find myself listening intently to both instruments as they duet together. Bravo.

Young Handel, Young Lezhneva

One of my best memories was a few years ago visiting Halle in Saxony and wandering round the “Händel-Haus” where Georg Fridiric Händel was born and lived until he was an advanced teenager. I was in the church in the Marktplatz where Handel learned to play the organ (and I attended a midday recital on that same organ). What a man! At 21 years old, already an established composer and musician, he was to be found in Italy, where he stayed for a few years absorbing everything that mattered musically of that period. On a new CD, the wonderful Julia Lezhneva sings music Handel composed during that Italian period when he was in his early 20s. Lezhneva is 25, so it's a meeting of two young musicians of top quality. I love her new Handel disc! The music is exuberant and challenging to perform (the many violin solos were probably written for Arcangelo Corelli, whom Handel met many times). Lezhneva surmounts 99% of the obstacles (no living mortal could score 100% in this show-off music of youth without a Walter Legge demanding 120 re-takes). Her long notes in Per dar pregio all'amor mio are something to be heard; she must have the lungs of a whale. For an hour or so, one has the impression of two young people – composer and singer – revelling in their youthful powers to impress and astound.

Not to forget a mention for Il Giardino Armonico, led by Giovanni Antonini. As a frequent sour critic of many “period” instrument bands, I can at least admire the better ones. A day or so before I had listened to the admirable Lucy Crowe in much of the same Handel in Italy music. Alas, her accompanying band, The English Consort, sounds very much full of Inglesi when compared with Antonini's enthusiastic Italiani. For the “Corelli” violin accompaniment on this disc, we have Dmitry Sinkovsky. A rare treat. Straight into my “keep to hand” rack. I could happily ascend to Heaven (or somewhere lower, in all probability) listening to Julia Lezhneva singing the music of Handel's Italian period.

Loudspeakers, and Headphones

I listened to my new CD of Albéric Magnard's sprawling but enjoyable piano trio. I was annoyed; piano, cello and violin are notoriously difficult to balance, especially in a recording. But here, Magnard was all cello and piano, with poor Geneviève Laurenceau's violin squeaking in the background in a sea of bass-derived mud. I was about to denounce the recording and the CPO recording engineers, but when I switched later to listening to the work via (good) headphones, the sound was fine, and the mud had dissipated.

The problem would seem to be the modern world's obsession with bass sound from loudspeakers. Salesmen and advertisers alike extol the virtues of the “enhanced bass sound” from their speakers. Enhanced bass sound is not good for trios for cello, piano and violin. My loudspeakers are far from cheap models, but I suspect that even buying speakers for £40,000 a pair, or whatever, would only give me … enhanced bass. Why the current population is so fixated on the bass line is something of a mystery. My late father, a professional double-bass player all his life, would be happy. It's a shame since, especially if more than one person is listening to a piece of music, loudspeakers are so much more convenient and user-friendly than sealing off the ears with headphones. For lovers of piano trios, or violin and piano duos, however, headphones are becoming de rigueur

The same CD also sees Geneviève Laurenceau playing Magnard's equally sprawling, but equally enjoyable, 41 minute sonata for violin and piano. Headphones on, again. It's a lovely performance.

Alina Ibragimova in Bach Concertos

Nearly 70 minutes of five Bach violin concertos on one CD is quite a treat, especially when the violinist in Alina Ibragimova, one of today's very finest violinists. Three of the concertos are transcriptions or arrangements or re-arrangements, and nothing wrong with that; Johann Sebastian himself was a dab hand at arrangements for different instruments, which is why the “authentic” fashion is somewhat perplexing with its diktats over no vibrato, gut strings from black cats but not from white, bow hair from horses but not from unicorns, etc. If Bach was not fussed about exact sounds and timbres, why are we (or some of us)? Miss Ibragimova does her best here to sound like a 300 year old violinist; fortunately, she is so good – unlike most “authentic” instrumentalists – that it does not matter too much except, perhaps, in the slow movements where a little warming vibrato would have enhanced the sound. James Ehnes, in his recent recording of Vivaldi's more-or-less contemporaneous Four Seasons, shows that a modern violin played “properly” can fit perfectly well with the music of the eighteenth century.

James Ehnes had another advantage; his accompaniment of a small string band, with a cello continuo and no conductor, allowed the music to flow agreeably. I criticised Jonathan Cohen and his Arcangelo group recently for being over-interventionist, and opined that Vilde Frang's Mozart would have benefited from just a small orchestra, without conductor. In this new CD, the problem for me is the continuo, which consists of plucking harpsichords and lutes that constantly disrupt the flow of the music, particularly in Bach's lovely slow movements. Nothing wrong with harpsichords and lutes, of course, as long as they are relegated to the distant background to just fill in the harmonies. The slow movement of the G minor concerto ends up almost as a duet for violin and lute, and this cannot be right. “Was ist das?” Bach might well have asked, irritably. The lovely ostinato string playing in the slow movements of both the A minor and E major concertos is similarly disrupted by determined continuo plucking. Lucky James Ehnes did not have to fight off wild continuo players.

However, thanks to Johann Sebastian Bach and Alina Ibragimova, the day is saved. Some of the violin writing is pretty tough going (for example, in the faster movements of the D minor concerto) but Alina dazzles us all – and sees off both harpsichord and lute.

James Ehnes Baroque Violin Works

It is good to hear James Ehnes, a violinist of real stature, in a new CD devoted to music of the baroque era. Music of that time is at the moment all too often played by dry, rasping sounding violinists trying to sound 300 years old and “authentic”, even though most of the music of that era was composed simply to delight and impress listeners. I suspect that Antonio Vivaldi, a violinist and music lover, would have been happier listening to Ehnes in his ubiquitous Four Seasons, rather than some “authentic” scraper with thin tone and no vibrato. Ehnes, a very “classical” player is accompanied here by the “Sydney Symphony Orchestra” that turns out to be an efficient and agreeable string band. Also on the CD, as Ehnes re-claims the violin heartland for proper violinists playing proper violins, are Tartini's Devil's Trill (with the Kreisler cadenza, thank goodness) and Jean-Marie Leclair's Tambourin sonata. And, quite properly, in the two sonatas Andrew Armstrong plays a good piano rather than a jangling harpsichord.

Igor Levit in Bach, Beethoven ... and Frederic Rzewski

Igor Levit is on record as saying that variations have always been his favourite musical form, since he loves the constant changes of mood and scenarios. This love certainly shows in his latest CD comprising Bach's Goldberg variations with Beethoven's Diabelli – the two summits of the variation world. Levit seems to have complete empathy with the kaleidoscopic changes of mood in both sets of variations. I greatly admired his Bach partitas, and greatly admired his late Beethoven sonatas. I can now extend my admiration to the sets of variations here. Bach's Goldberg variations I know less well, but from the first few notes I knew that this was going to be my benchmark version from now on.

I know Beethoven's Diabelli variations backwards, forwards, sideways and inside out, having enjoyed an LP by Wilhelm Backhaus since my teenage years. Levit is up against stiff competition, but he comes in first, in my view. This is now my preferred version of these fascinating variations in which Beethoven seems to sum up the musical worlds of the 18^th, 19^th – and even 20^th – centuries.

I resent the fact that Sony has departed from its previous double CD packs for Levit to tack on a third CD for Bach and Beethoven – in a giant plastic shelf-filling box – comprising a set of variations by an American, Frederic Rzewski. Possibly Mr Rzewski's legions of admirers will resent having to pay for the two Bach and Beethoven CDs in addition to Mr Rzewski's work, and no doubt the legions of admirers who want the Bach and Beethoven variations played by Igor Levit will resent having to pay for a CD featuring Mr Rzewski's work; I know I do. Mr Rzewski's variations should have been issued on a separate CD, and this forced purchase is reminiscent of concerts where the unpopular contemporary medicine is sandwiched between two popular works, rendering late arrival or early departure somewhat difficult. Allegedly, Mr Rzewski's variations on “The people united will never be defeated” refers to the popular election of Salvador Allende in Chile in the 1970s in which case it's baffling, since the people's choice was murdered by an unholy alliance of the American CIA and a section of the Chilean army headed by the brutal Augusto Pinochet. The people united were defeated by a military junta, and years of bloodshed followed.

Having said all that, Rzewski's variations are worth playing and worth listening to. The theme is jaunty and memorable. Most of the variations are clever and interesting. Being “modern” there are various bangings and shouts (in C minor), reminiscent of elderly conductors during concert performances, and 36 variations are probably too many: 30 were good enough for Bach, and 33 for Beethoven, so it's not too clear why Rzewski needed 36. I would have cut around 10 of them. I meant just to sample the piece, but ended up listening to all of it. Like Count Hermann Carl von Keyserlingk with Bach's variations, I fell asleep towards the end of Rzewski's (but back-tracked and heard the end after a refreshing doze).

Christian Gerhaher singing Schubert Lieder

Once again, thank you Sony Classical (Germany). The CD of Schubert lieder sung by Christian Gerhaher with Gerold Huber is a benchmark as to how such things should be done. The texts of all 24 songs are given in German and English (tough on the French and the Italians, but space is limited). In addition, after each song we have an interesting analysis and commentary (German and English) so we can listen to each song with a little knowledge and, thanks to Gerhaher's excellent diction, we can follow the words. No space is taken up with multiple photos of the two musicians, nor do we have hyperbolic puffs about the artists or the music. This is a CD for serious lovers of German lieder and I enjoyed my evening basking in the gloom, traumas and occasional happiness of the 19^th century Romantics. Gerhaher has a fine voice, and the pianist is expert. As a final pat: the balance and recording are demonstration class. Well done everyone concerned, including Sony Classical.

More Bronislaw Gimpel

I often lament the number of recordings I possess, usually only listened to a couple of times. On occasions when I am overcome by an enthusiasm, however, it is good to have an extensive collection to fall back on. I have some 60 pieces of music recorded by the Polish violinist Bronislaw Gimpel and I have been diving into the archives. Some time ago I jettisoned the Bach unaccompanied sonatas and partitas recorded by Gimpel, since I really have too many recordings of these works, and it never seemed to me that Bach suited Gimpel's style of playing.

His recorded legacy features a roll call of minor conductors and orchestras, mainly German, often echoing the recording career of Aaron Rosand – Pro Musica Orchestra Stuttgart, Sudwestfunk Orchestra Baden-Baden, Hamburg Radio Orchestra, Radio Luxembourg Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, West German Radio Symphony Orchestra, Warsaw Philharmonic, with conductors Arthur Grüber, Franz Paul Decker, Rolf Reinhardt, Curt Cremer, Hakan von Eichwald, Henri Pensis, Martin Walter, Fritz Rieger, Roberto Benzi, Johannes Schüler, Arnold Rezler …

The violin concertos of Tchaikovsky and Lalo (Symphonie Espagnole) seem to suit Gimpel down to the ground, and the grotesque Wilhelmj rewrite of the first movement of Paganini's first violin concerto shows what an immaculate technique Gimpel had. Glazunov's violin concerto suffers from an absurd balance in his recording of it with Hakan von Eichwald; if the violin volume is fine, the orchestra then fades into the middle distance. Brahms violin concerto provides proof of Gimpel's credentials in the Romantic repertoire, but it is Karl Goldmark's lovable concerto from Gimpel's heartland, Jewish Central Europe, that reveals the violinist at his finest. He obviously liked the concerto, since there are at least two recordings of it: a 1951 broadcast in December 1951 with the Luxembourg Radio Symphony Orchestra (never to be mistaken here for the Berlin Philharmonic), and a superior circa 1956 recording for Vox with Rolf Reinhardt in Baden-Baden with whom Gimpel also made studio recordings of the first Bruch concerto, plus the Dvorak and the Paganini-Wilhelmj. And, true to his roots, he also recorded much Wieniawski and Szymanowski, as well as Kreisler. His name has faded from the lists of available recordings but, hopefully, someone one day will resurrect the memory of this genial virtuoso of the 1940s, 50s and 60s. Born in 1911 in Lvov, he died in 1979 in Los Angeles on his return from a tour of South America, still playing, with a concert scheduled with his brother Jakob the week after his death.

Bronislaw Gimpel, and an Old Friend

In 1956, with money from my 15^th birthday, I bought Vox PL 9340, an LP containing Beethoven's violin concerto and two Romances played by Bronislaw Gimpel with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra conducted by Heinrich Hollreiser. Being an impecunious teenager with few records in my collection, I played the LP almost to death (60 years later I still have it, in whatever the opposite of mint condition may be). The initial attraction of the Vox was the price and the fact that, unlike its competitors, you had the two Romances thrown in for free.

I noticed the recording on Presto Classical (download only). Out of nostalgia, I downloaded the Flac files. I must say, the mono recording of around 1954 now sounds a lot better than it did on my Pye Black Box with Monarch autochanger, and sapphire styli that I could not afford to change too often. In fact, the recording is pretty good, and the performance is a most engaging classical, relaxed performance with perfectly judged tempi. After 60 years, I still enjoy it very much indeed.

Bronislaw Gimpel was another of those unfortunates born at the wrong time and the wrong place. Hurriedly emigrating from Europe in 1937 to the USA, he headed back to Europe after the end of the war, then back to America, then back to Europe. The world was full of talented violinists and pianists and he and his pianist brother, Jakob, had a hard job making a name for themselves. Too much extraordinary talent around, and too few openings. Bronislaw did, however, manage to make a relatively large number of recordings (even of the Britten violin concerto) and they are good to have, if no longer easy to locate. He was a splendid violinist of the old school. Thanks to Cambria for this excellent transfer to digital.

Volker Reinhold Plays Sarasate: Volume 2

When it comes to great works in classical music, the German nations are pre-eminent. The Russians and the Slavonic nations, the Italians, and the French all have rich histories with many important works to their credit. Somehow, the Spanish and the Spanish-speaking nations rarely figure in major works or composers, with just a handful of names such as de Falla or Granados, as well as having few major orchestras or international soloists (not forgetting Casals, however). My favourite Spanish composer by far is Pablo de Sarasate, and I have written often in this blog concerning my love for his music. He wrote his music to play himself, of course, and he was a major virtuoso of the violin. Unlike Paganini or Ernst, however, his music is frequently virtuosic without driving violin technique to its very limits (and sometimes beyond). Sarasate's music reflects his elegant and sophisticated style of playing, and an hour spent listening to Sarasate's music is an hour well spent, so I usually seize upon any new recording of Sarasate's music that comes along; not much use dreaming about hearing his music live in a modern concert hall, alas. My latest seizure is the second volume in Volker Reinhold's traversal of all Sarasate's opera fantasies, a popular formula in the nineteenth century with ten minutes or so spent improvising on the themes from major operas of the time.

Once again, Herr Reinhold is a pleasure to listen to as he plays music he so evidently enjoys and he is well partnered by Ralph Zedler; one can also admire Sarasate's writing in the piano accompaniments which are far from the routine plunking chords so often found in salon musical accompaniments. I passed an enjoyable 77 minutes with Reinhold and Zedler. A cross-reference to Tianwa Yang was interesting, however. Her eight CDs of Sarasate's music also contain all the pieces on Herr Reinhold's two CDs of opera fantasies. In every piece I looked at, Reinhold was appreciably slower than Miss Yang; Tianwa is more mercurial, Reinhold more deliberate. The Chinese has a superb sense of rhythm and of rubato, and beside her and her pianist (Markus Hadulla) the Germans can sound a little four-square at times. And Tianwa's Vuillaume violin sounds better than Reinhold's in the higher registers (as recorded here). No matter with comparisons; Sarasate's evergreen music is always a pleasure to listen to and I will continue to seize every opportunity to hear it played by expert violinists with a sense of style.

Otto Klemperer, and Mozart

I've mentioned my musical “phases” before. At the moment I seem to have entered a new Mozart phase, and he is the composer whose music is played often chez moi. My favourite Mozart symphony is the 40^th in G minor, and Mozart symphonies on disc pose a bit of a problem for me: I don't like orchestral music in less than good sound (unless there are very special reasons). I don't like big-band Mozart, 19^th century style. I don't like “authentic” Mozart played by augmented “period” chamber groups conducted by faceless figures, and all this limits my choices somewhat. So I have fallen back happily on an eight CD box of Mozart's symphonies, overtures and serenades with Otto Klemperer conducting the Philharmonia, the box being part of EMI's swan song before it was taken over by the Americans.

As I've mentioned before, Klemperer is my kind of conductor, particularly in Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Wagner and Mahler; and Mozart. He was keen on lean choirs and orchestras in 18^th century music even before they became fashionable. His predilection for forward woodwind suits Mozart's music down the ground, as does his insistence on clarity of texture, divided first and second violins, and overall musical structure. And, as always with Klemperer, there is an avoidance of personal interpretive interjections. I am happy with Klemperer's Mozart, and happy he left us so many first class recordings post the early 1950s. Especially good are the three CDs re-mastered in "Hybrid SACD" sound of the last six symphonies, another swan song from EMI.

I only saw him once in person conducting in London. A tall, gaunt somewhat forbidding figure, conducting while seated (at that late stage of his tempestuous career). But if ever there were a survivor, it was Otto Klemperer. Suffering all his life from bi-polar moods, his story and fate were like that of so many in Europe in the first half of the 20^th century. Born in 1885 in the German city of Breslau, his birth city was given permanently to the Poles after 1945. Building a highly successful career in Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s – with good help from Gustav Mahler – Klemperer as a Jew had to flee Germany in the mid- 1930s. He ended up in America, like many others at the same time, but there he had a difficult life given his uncompromising character (and difficult medical history, including a botched brain operation that left him partly paralysed thereafter). His American period ended with the US authorities refusing to renew his passport since, during the McCarthy era, he was regarded as being far too far left wing to be safe. Ironically, the Germans then came to the rescue and gave Otto a new German passport. Returning to Europe in the early 1950s, he found life hard until he was “discovered” by Walter Legge and given a whole new career as a star conductor and conductor of the Philharmonia orchestra of the time. “Remarkable, since Legge was not a German, nor even Jewish”, Klemperer remarked caustically. He died in Zürich in 1973 at the grand old age of 88, still conducting right until the end. Happily, for us, his recorded legacy is enormous and much of it is in perfectly acceptable sound since the EMI recording team of that era was top-notch. For me, the two greatest conductors of the 20^th century in the mainstream German repertoire were Wilhelm Furtwängler and Otto Klemperer. There is no one the equal of those two around at the moment.

Mozart's Gran Partita

Vienna in November 1947 was probably not the best of places to be. The city, with much still destroyed, was under post-war Russian military occupation and money, morale and comfort must have been low. Nevertheless, the indefatigable Walter Legge was there, with the superb balance engineer Douglas Larter and they met up with Wilhelm Furtwängler and the wind players of the Vienna Philharmonic to record Mozart's Gran Partita for 13 wind instruments, K 361. The result, to my ears, has always been one of the golden classics of recording. Mozart played in the style of old Vienna with much love and affection from players and from Furtwängler, whom they had requested to direct them. Expertly recorded back in 1947 and well transferred to CD by the highly talented Keith Hardwick, it remains one of the jewels of my collection of recordings. They don't play this music like that any more!