Ruggiero Ricci (violin)
Complete American Decca Recordings
rec. 1961-70
ELOQUENCE 484 1988 [9 CDs: 7 hours 52 mins]
Eloquence has released two Ricci boxes, Decca siblings that span the British and American arms of the label. The 20-CD British Decca box is the better known and largely corrals much reissued material but the American Deccas are more elusive and, possibly because of the very violin-focused nature of some of the albums, tend to be remembered more by specialists. Here, then, is the perfect opportunity to encounter his New York Deccas recorded over a decade between 1961 and 1970. Eloquence devotes a page to the complexities of the two Decca companies, their partner labels and the various byzantine takeovers made over the years, but in essence American Decca now appears under the DG imprint.
These are original jacket releases though the three LPs that made up Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas have been reduced to two CDs. The first disc is The Four Seasons, made in 1964 with Ricci soloing and directing the Stradivarius Chamber Orchestra, a pick-up band called in from New York’s stable of commercial players. The fixer was Ricci’s cellist brother, George, who also plays on the album; the band sported ten Stradivari violins and Ricci was asked to play four himself, one in each concerto. These are superbly virtuosic readings, vibrant and colourful, with well gauged answering phrases and plenty of panache. But the bass line is too heavy, the harpsichord only intermittently audible, and Ricci’s intense vibrato sometimes sounds unrelaxed and with a tendency to turn moments like the opening of Winter into a supercharged etude.
By contrast Ricci sounds very much at home in Paganini’s Concerto No 2 which is on CD 2, a piece he had earlier recorded with Anthony Collins for British Decca. That was a stylish and brilliant reading and this later one matches it and because it’s in stereo it’s even more visceral in its appeal. Max Rudolf directs the Cincinnati Symphony. Ricci takes just a little more time with Rudolf but his energy levels are just as high as they had been in London. If that’s not enough he adds Saint-Saëns’ rarely played Concerto No 1 in A major, a four-movements-in-one pocket concerto here lasting eleven minutes.
Ricci recorded the Sonatas and Partitas several times and live recordings also exist. He remained true to his tonal and expressive precepts throughout his long career. These are big-boned and sometimes tonally abrasive readings, where robust extrovert musicianship can sometimes seem a shade deliberate and where the lures of the dance are often spurned. A recurrent metricality in phrasing and acerbic attacks – even in the Chaconne – mark this out as a very personalised approach.
One of his most galvanizing British Decca albums was an all-Sarasate LP made in his New Jersey home with his erstwhile teacher, Louis Persinger. Fine though it was – and it really was – the resplendent 1961 stereo remake takes its appeal to a higher level. This has never been released on CD before, it would appear. The repertoire is almost exactly the same as the mono, with the focus on the Danzas españolas, which no one but Ricci had then recorded as a set of eight. The pianist is Brooks Smith, Heifetz’s frequent accompanist, who never wanted to re-record anything he had first recorded with Heifetz. These readings are rhythmically buoyant, tonally tangy or sultry and full of Riccian life.
Kreisler had heard and admired the young Ricci when he and Jacques Thibaud went to hear the ten-year-old boy, something we hear about in the scripted (I assume) 25-minute ‘Meet the Masters’ interview contained in CD 6. Recorded in mono in 1962, the year of Kreisler’s death, and here released for the first time on CD, it served as a promotional tool for Ricci’s Kreisler album, conceived in tribute before the great man’s death. Ricci always regarded Heifetz and Kreisler as his major influences, and he went to see Kreisler to play the Recitativo and Scherzo-Caprice for him. It’s one of the pieces in this album, fortunately, and a souvenir of that afternoon that Ricci always cherished. Some pieces suit the boldness of his temperament, such as the Praeludium and Allegro, but whilst he remains admirably himself – there could hardly be more of an aesthetic gulf than between Kreisler and Ricci – his crispness is not ideally suited to the Viennese pieces.
The next two LPs tend to be marked ‘Fiddlers Only’ in my mind but ‘The Glory of Cremona’ was, in fact, a popular release which took the concept of the Vivaldi – Ricci plays multiple violins – and expanded it yet further. For this album he plays fifteen different pieces on fifteen different violins. The repertoire is largely Baroque and slow romances, with a couple of twists and finger busters thrown in. When Heifetz’s violin was complimented for its tone after a concert by well-meaning admirers he is alleged to have held it to his ear, shrugged, and replied; ‘Funny, I can’t hear a thing.’ Here’s an opportunity to hear Ricci stamp his own self on these famous instruments which, perhaps, allows the listener the chance to speculate on a favourite, though of course with Heifetz’s caveat in his mind. It’s a great game to play if a little skewed by the choice of piece and instrument, though it is clear that a c.1570-80 Gaspara da Sálo can handle Kabalevsky’s Improvisation. Ricci tops this by then playing the first six bars of the opening of the Bruch G minor concerto on the fifteen fiddles, in turn, separately tracked. This was issued as an accompanying disc. Famously, violin demonstrations of this kind prove little but I find I consistently prefer a Guarneri to a Strad and the ‘Gibson’ Guarneri of 1734 most of all.
‘Bravura!’ means precisely what it says. Whether solo or accompanied by Leon Pommers this is Ricci in peak form surmounting one smouldering technical problem after another. Locatelli’s Capriccio is summarily dispatched with incendiary bowing, the Paganini ‘Nel cor più non mi sento’ variations superbly articulated, the fearsome Ernst Variations on ‘The Last Rose of Summer’ equally well played. Few have been able consistently to master so much of the solo virtuoso repertoire as Ricci.
The final disc is ‘Violin Plus 1’ - various duos, in other words. There is a variety of instrumentation here, from Kenneth Cooper’s harpsichord in the Vivaldi sonata – it makes something of a timid sound – to the evocative harp of Gloria Agostini in Saint-Saëns’ frothily delightful Fantaisie. The unusual Villa-Lobos Suite for voice and violin features soprano Lee Venora and the Prokofiev Sonata for two violins is with the erstwhile concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic, David Nadien.
The transfers come direct from the source material and have been well
remastered. The attractive booklet, with the usual Eloquence complement of
photographs and iconography, comes with a fine Tully Potter note.
Jonathan Woolf
Contents
CD 1
ANTONIO VIVALDI (1678–1741)
Concertos for Violin, Strings and Continuo, Op 8 Nos 1–4 ‘Le quattro stagioni’
(The Four Seasons)
Stradivarius Chamber Orchestra
Recording Location: New York, USA, 20–21 July 1964
CD 2
NICCOLÒ PAGANINI (1782–1840)
Violin Concerto No 2 in B minor, Op 7
CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS (1835–1921)
Violin Concerto No 1 in A major, Op 20
Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra/Max Rudolf
Recording Location: Cincinnati Music Hall, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, 13 October 1964
CD 3
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685–1750)
Sonata No 1 in G minor for Solo Violin, BWV 1001
Partita No 1 in B minor for Solo Violin, BWV 1002
Sonata No 2 in A minor for Solo Violin, BWV 1003
Recording Location: USA, 31 January 1967, 6 February 1967 (Sonata No 1, Partita No 1); 2–3 February 1967 (Sonata No 2)
CD 4
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Partita No 2 in D minor for Solo Violin, BWV 1004
Sonata No 3 in C major for Solo Violin, BWV 1005
Partita No 3 in E major for Solo Violin, BWV 1006
Recording Location: USA, 2–3 February 1967 (Partita No 2); 31 July, 2 August 1967 (Sonata No 3, Partita No 3)
CD 5
PABLO DE SARASATE (1844–1908)
8 Danzas españolas
Introduction et Tarantelle, Op 43
Caprice basque, Op 24
Serenata andaluza, Op 28
Brooks Smith, piano
Recording Location: New York, USA, 5–8 September 1961
FIRST RELEASE ON CD
CD 6
FRITZ KREISLER (1875–1962)
Praeludium and Allegro ‘in the style of Pugnani’
Siciliano and Rigaudon ‘in the Style of Francoeur’
Chanson Louis XIII and Pavane ‘in the style of Couperin’
Rondino on a theme by Beethoven
Variations on a theme by Corelli ‘in the style of Tartini’
Recitativo and Scherzo-Caprice, Op 6 (for solo violin)
Caprice viennois
Tambourin chinois
Liebesfreud
Liebesleid
Schön Rosmarin
La Gitana
The Old Refrain
La Chasse ‘in the style of Cartier’
‘Meet The Masters’ – Ruggiero Ricci interviewed by Victor Alexander*
Brooks Smith, piano
Recording Location: New York, USA, 7–8 September 1961 (Kreisler); 1962 (interview)
*FIRST RELEASE ON CD
CD 7
THE GLORY OF CREMONA
JEAN-ANTOINE DESPLANES (1678–1760)
Intrada
PIETRO NARDINI (1722–1793)
Larghetto [Adagio] (from Violin Sonata No 7 in B-flat major, arr. David)
ANTONIO VIVALDI
Preludio (from Violin Sonata in C minor, Op 2 No 7, RV 8)
NICCOLÒ PAGANINI
Cantabile e Valser, Op 19
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756–1791)
Adagio (from Piano Sonata No 4 in E-flat major, KV 282, arr. Friedberg)
DIMITRY KABALEVSKY (1904–1987)
Improvisation for Violin and Piano, Op 21 No 1
PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY (1840–1893)
Mélodie in E-flat major, Op 42 No 3 (from Souvenir d’un lieu cher)
FRANCESCO MARIA VERACINI (1690–1768)
Largo (from Violin Sonata in A major, Op 2 No 6)
MARIA THERESIA VON PARADIS (1759–1824)
Sicilienne
JENŐ HUBAY (1858–1937)
Violin Solo, Op 40a (from The Violin Maker of Cremona)
GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL (1685–1759)
Andante (from Flute Sonata in B minor, HWV 367b. arr. as ‘Larghetto’ by Hubay)
ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810–1856)
Romance in A major, Op 94 No 2 (arr. Kreisler)
JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833–1897)
Hungarian Dance No 20 in E minor, WoO 1 (arr. Kreisler)
Hungarian Dance No 17 in F-sharp minor WoO 1 (arr. Kreisler)
FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809–1847)
Lied ohne Worte, Op 62 No 1: Andante espressivo ‘May Breezes’ (arr. Kreisler)
MAX BRUCH (1838–1920)
Violin Concerto No 1 in G minor, Op 26 (excerpt) – Played on 15 different violins
Leon Pommers, piano
Recording Location: Decca Studios, New York, USA, 26–28 June 1962
FIRST INTERNATIONAL RELEASE ON CD
CD 8
BRAVURA!
PIETRO LOCATELLI (1695–1764)
Capriccio (from The Harmonic Labyrinth, Op 3 No 12)
NICCOLÒ PAGANINI
Introduction and Variations on ‘Nel cor più non mi sento’ for solo violin
HEINRICH WILHELM ERNST (1812–1865)
Airs Hongrois Variés, Op 22
FRANZ VON VECSEY (1893–1935)
Caprice No 1: Le Vent
HENRYK WIENIAWSKI (1835–1880)
Les Arpèges – Variations sur L’Hymne Autrichien (No 6 of L’École moderne, Op 10)
NICCOLÒ PAGANINI
Variations on a theme of Joseph Weigl
HEINRICH WILHELM ERNST (
Variations on ‘The Last Rose Of Summer’ for solo violin
NICCOLÒ PAGANINI
Variations on ‘God Save the King’ for solo violin, Op 9
Leon Pommers, piano
Recording Location: New York, USA, 11 January 1968 (Locatelli, Ernst: The Last Rose of Summer, Paganini: God Save the King), 18 June 1965 (Paganini: Nel cor più non mi sento, Wieniawski), 27–28 October 1965 (Ernst: Airs Hongrois Variés, Vecsey, Paganini: Variations on a theme of Joseph Weigl)
FIRST RELEASE ON CD
CD 9
VIOLIN PLUS 1
ANTONIO VIVALDI
Sonata in A major for Violin and Continuo, Op 2 No 2, RV 31
Kenneth Cooper, harpsichord
CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS (1835–1921)
Fantaisie for Violin and Harp, Op 124
Gloria Agostini, harp
NICCOLÒ PAGANINI
Sonata No 12 in E minor for Violin and Guitar, Op 3 No 6
Rolando Valdés-Blain, guitar
HEITOR VILLA-LOBOS (1887–1959)
Suite for Voice and Violin
Lee Venora, soprano
SERGEI PROKOFIEV (1891–1953)
Sonata for Two Violins in C major, Op 56
David Nadien, violin II
Recording Location: New York, USA, January–March 1970
FIRST RELEASE ON CD
STEREO RECORDINGS
