I think this set was made in New York in 1948 and not, as noted
in the jewel case, 1949. In any case it’s very much a specialist
acquisition given two unavoidable realities. Firstly, the recordings
were very poorly engineered and second, Enesco had been in steady
decline technically since the later 1930s. He had also been subject
to serious physical strains, not least a stroke, and was later to
become infirm. In the main, and even among specialists, I suspect
that these recordings are more spoken of than actually listened to.
Many will have been put off by both of the points noted above; few
will have lasted the course even if they ventured into the acquisition
of any of the restorations that have appeared over the last twenty
years.
Philips issued their No-Noise effort in 1989 and it was a resounding
failure. If anything it made the original LPs sound even worse than
they were, which is something of a feat. Since then Japanese Philips
has had a go, though I’ve not heard it, and there’s a
Naxos download to be had - though again I’ve yet to hear it,
and can’t venture a view on the transfer. Green Door is a Japanese
company that has restored quite a number of historically significant
violin material, and in addition to Enesco’s Bach, they’ve
also - I’ll just mention this in passing - released two discs
devoted to the art of Albert Spalding. You’ll probably need
to go to search quite widely to see if they’re still available.
Forgotten Records emerges with its own transfer. The material is derived
from three companies’ LPs; Continental and Remington, but also
Olympic Records and Melodiya - in the last named, transferring just
the opening
Adagio, it seems, from Sonata No.1. Similarly an
Electrecord LP [ECE0166] has been mined for two movements of the Third
Partita and the Fugue (only) from Third Sonata. So source material
varies - presumably because some of the other LPs utilised for transfer
had suffered damage or were to be found in inferior transfers. I can
only infer this, as there are no notes, as is normal for FR re-issues.
The transfers are streets ahead of the No-Noise Philips, as one would
have hoped, but I can’t constructively compare and contrast
any other of the already-cited transfers. Should you want to hear
these lofty, noble, un-romanticised but deeply expressively wrought
performances you can do so with a degree of confidence. You will find
numerous imperfections, and you will find also, as with Enesco’s
friend and colleague Jacques Thibaud’s last recordings and taped
concerts, that intonation is often severely compromised. As with Thibaud,
the wise listener will also hear marvels of phrasing and wisdom, a
concrete conception of the sonatas and partitas which remains both
laudable and fallible. Violinistically - specifically technically
- these recordings represent a deep falling off from the standard
of his pre-war Columbia 78s, but in terms of emotive engagement with
the music, they embody a rich corpus of truths from one of the most
complete musicians of the twentieth-century.
Jonathan Woolf
