This two-disc celebration of the life of Roman Totenberg (1911-2012)
was released well before the violinist’s recent death.
He was teaching and guiding to the very end: a remarkable end
to a remarkable life. Totenberg was Polish and his hero was
Huberman, with whose old teacher he studied in Warsaw. Later,
he studied with Flesch in Berlin, and there are some vivid recollections
in the booklet notes of Totenberg’s time in that city
and beyond.
The recordings are all live. With pianist Dean Sanders he plays
Brahms’s Op.108 Sonata in 1960. His sound had retained
its innate sweetness and intensity, and those expressive devices
of which considerable rubato and judiciously applied portamenti
were just two. He takes the Adagio at a very slow tempo but
it’s full of colour and shape, rising to a crest and subsiding.
The finale is febrile but well controlled. His Debussy Sonata
is slightly under the tempo for my own tastes, which incline
more to the pairings of Dubois and Mass, and Francescatti and
Casadesus. This tends to dissipate the tension a bit but it
is all elegantly coloured, albeit with the firefly element in
the finale somewhat too restrained. It’s particularly
interesting to hear his solo Bach. He plays the solo Sonata
in A, BWV1003. This is playing of grandeur and unashamed intensity,
minor intonation problems notwithstanding. Expressive ritardandi
heighten the work’s power, and Totenberg’s whole-hearted
playing of it. There’s a remarkably teasingly played Paganini
Caprice to finish this recital. The first disc finishes with
a performance of Beethoven’s Op.95 Quartet given back
in July 1943 by the WQXR Quartet, of which Totenberg was first
violin. Daniel Guilet played second, Ralph Hersch was the violist,
and Avron Twerdowsky the cellist. An elite group indeed. Regrettably
the whole of the first movement is missing but the torso preserves
excellent playing. The acetates have a few scratches, but the
sound is less boxy than contemporaneous Library of Congress
recitals.
The second disc was largely taped in April 1961. Totenberg was
accompanied by the first class Soulima Stravinsky in a recital
of serious demeanour. Copland’s 1943 Sonata, though, certainly
gets the required ‘semplice’ treatment in its opening
movement whilst Dallapiccola’s brilliant Due studi,
written four years after the Copland, bring out Totenberg’s
arsenal of communicative asperity, verve and dynamism. Webern’s
Four Pieces are demarcated with great clarity, and Schoenberg’s
thorny Phantasy negotiated with outstanding perception:
not for Totenberg Menuhin’s doggedly romanticised approach.
It’s certainly no hardship to hear Soulima Stravinsky
in his father’s Duo Concertante, where Totenberg
summons up the shade of so perceptive a Stravinskian as Szigeti.
Together Totenberg and Stravinsky recorded the Divertissement
and Suite Italienne in the studio for Allegro. The very
last piece was recorded in April 1996 and it’s Ravel’s
Sonata with Shizue Sano. Intonation wanders somewhat and Totenberg’s
vibrato speed has necessarily lessened, but he still smears
and suavely steers his way through the Blues movement with remarkable
force and conviction. Amazing playing for an 85 year old, to
put it mildly.
I first heard Totenberg on disc in the Bloch Concerto on Vanguard.
It’s still by a long way my favourite recording of the
work, though Hyman Bress is terrific too. How worthwhile it
would be to hear Totenberg’s discs on Musicraft and Allegro
and Eterna and a number of other labels. It would be a valuable
salute to this great musician, whose memory is perpetuated so
lovingly here by Arbiter.
Jonathan Woolf
ARBITER 159 [76:05 + 76:12] 