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Mischa Elman and Zara Nelsova
CD 1 Max BRUCH (1838-1920)
Violin Concerto No.1in G minor Op.26 (1867) Henryk WIENIAWSKI (1835-1880)
Violin Concerto No.2 in D minor Op.22 (1870)
CD 2 Edouard LALO (1823 - 1892)
Concerto in D minor for cello and orchestra, (1877) Camille SAINT-SAËNS (1835-1921)
Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 33 (1872)
Mischa
Elman (violin)
Zara Nelsova (cello)
London Philharmonic Orchestra/Adrian Boult
rec. Kingsway Hall, London, 1953 (Lalo and Saint-Saëns) and 1956
(Bruch and Wieniawski)
RETROSPECTIVE 93651 [51:57 + 47:16]
Elman and Nelsova used to occupy a collectable cachet in the
LP market and perhaps they still do. So to conjoin the two string
players in this way is not entirely unreasonable, I suppose.
Others things suggest it. All the recordings were made at the
Kingsway Hall with Boult conducting the LPO. The Elman concertos
date from 1953 and the Nelsova brace from 1956. They are all
in mono.
Elman was well past his best by now but could still play with
burnished intensity when the occasion demanded. The Bruch was
a hobbyhorse of his and his playing is on a par with his other
recordings at this period. It's a shame the opening paragraphs
weren't redone because he's terribly flat. His portamenti
are prominent though not extravagant for him, although as he
was very forwardly recorded his playing is in sharp relief and
the LPO is distantly balanced. As ever considerable metrical
freedom is the name of the game for Elman. His first movement
trills hold things up, his rubato being almost vocalised in
its expressive freedom. One can hear Boult chomping at the bit
during all this and when Elman stops the English Knight reasserts
a conventionally fast tempo. Things go better in the slow movement
where breadth and lyricism can flow unimpeded more appropriately.
Curvaceous portamenti fleck a finale that, with some stolid
double stopping, reflects Elman's stoically sedate tempi.
Elman had only recently recorded the D minor Wieniawski concerto
so this new one might have seemed an indulgence. Clearly he
is no match for the incision of Heifetz or the panache of the
young Stern, whose own recording was made almost contemporaneously
with this one, but there are pleasures. Elman's ethos is
one of bel canto lyricism, with succulent finger position
changes and an unhurried legerdemain. His tone is no longer
the opulent lava flow of the first three decades of the century,
his sense of line is once again elastic. Passagework is vested
with a certain strenuous wit and of course he relishes the songful
slow movement.
Three years later Boult teamed with the Canadian cellist Zara
Nelsova. Leonard Rose had earlier made a celebrated recording
of the Saint-Saëns with Mitropoulos in New York and he
was to make another in London with Charles Mackerras in 1967.
Nelsova however, if not quite in Rose's orbit or that of
Janos Starker in this work, proves a most worthy exponent. She
subtly varies her vibrato and plays with great narrative assurance.
Phrasing is natural, her technique entirely unruffled and her
collaboration with Boult sympathetic. In the more exiguous charms
of the Lalo such qualities are reprised, though the work is
more of a display vehicle. Even in its unnecessarily long first
movement she proves adept at piecing together its rhetoric.
She shows here why she was one of the most admired cellists
of her time. I heard her towards the end of her career in the
Elgar, which she played beautifully. She could have made a recording
of it at around the time she made these discs, but the honour
fell to Anthony Pini.
Now a few warnings. Firstly ignore the ambiguous claim of the
packaging that this is the Bruch Concerto No.2 in G minor. It's
No.1. Normally this typo wouldn't matter so much but Elman
was one of the few players of his generation who played Bruch
No.2 and actually recorded it for Decca around this time in
London with Fistoulari. A small warning, then. A bigger one
comes with the claim that these are all First Ever CD Releases.
Obviously ignore that. The Elmans were out in Japan before the
end of the last century - the Bruch was on POCL-3915 and the
Wieniawski on PCOL-4594. More recently you can find them on
the Testament Decca sets devoted to concertos - SBT 4 1343,
a four CD set issued back in 2004. The Nelsovas are also on
a Testament disc, in this case SBT1361. They are also on Decca
Digital Masters 475 6327, a tremendous set of five discs dedicated
to the cellist and also issued back in 2004.
As for the transfers of the Nelsova recordings this Retrospective
is cut higher than the Decca and has tried to bring the sound
forward somewhat. Both the Testament and the Decca are more
detailed. The Testament is kinder to Elman's tone; this
Retrospective makes it sound edgier and terser than it should.
Where does this leave us? The impecunious might want to take
a punt on this. It conjoins two stalwarts of the 1950s catalogues
who were increasingly sidelined in favour of younger players.
The transfers however are not as good as the established labels.
And if you are tempted by this two disc set, you will be far
more tempted by the conspectus sets on Testament (Elman) and
Decca (Nelsova).