Testament has reissued Johanna Martzy’s studio inscriptions of these two
concertos, recorded with Paul Kletzki and the Philharmonia in London. She
was a most impressive interpreter of both works as these and surviving
broadcast documents continue to show. These German examples amplify the
virtues.
The Mendelssohn was given with the SWR Orchestra under the experienced
baton of Hans Müller-Kray in February 1959. This was a work she had first
tried to record with Sawallisch and the Philharmonia in 1954 but for some
reason it remained unissued, thus necessitating Kletzki to take the reins
the following year. Tahra has released (TAH553) a broadcast performance she
gave with Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt from January 1954, around the time of that
abortive attempt with Sawallisch. It’s clear from the aural evidence that
she responded avidly to the stresses and excitements of a live broadcast, as
both with Schmidt-Isserstedt and, here, Müller-Kray, she plays with greater
vitality and flexibility than with Kletzki, where she is that much more
cautious. This is especially true of the finale, where she is significantly
slower with Kletzki, but also in the slow movement where she is more emotive
live.
Her flexible rubati with the SWR are very noticeable, but they never sound
imposed, always sounding – to the contrary – part of a feature of her
performances of this concerto: mature and convincing. Her pellucid tone
quality is most apparent in the slow movement but throughout her playing is
tasteful, sometimes free, and always communicative.
It is Günter Wand who directs her in the Brahms with the same orchestra in
1964. Once again, those who know only the Kletzki-directed LP traversal may
be surprised - not necessarily by the particular differences in
interpretative stance, but by the tightening of tempo relationships. Her
approach in the studio with Kletzki is relatively broad, but with Wand it
has become more malleably flexible, and the results are just as convincing
albeit more intense. She doesn’t dig into the string excessively in this
concerto and in the central movement that lends her performance a sense of
gliding with refined elegance across the music. It is a very personal sense
of refinement, very much at odds with the Russian school in this work. Thus
in the finale, as with Kletzki, she doesn’t make an especially big thing of
the Hungarian gypsy rhythms – she could had she wanted; she had studied in
Budapest – preferring instead subtlety, elegance and purity propelled by
fine rhythm and discreet slides. A performance of this concerto with Eugen
Jochum in 1951 – shorn of its opening movement, alas – has survived and is
on the Tahra disc noted above. It conforms to the approach taken well over a
decade later with Wand.
The sound quality throughout is excellent and the documentation is
helpful.
Discs that amplify or in some way qualify established studio recordings
are always valuable. This one, because of the light it sheds on Martzy’s
live performances, is particularly welcome, and valuable.
Jonathan Woolf
Previous review:
Stephen Greenbank
Masterwork Index:
Brahms violin
concerto ~~
Mendelssohn violin
concerto
