MAUD POWELL (1867-1920). THE COMPLETE RECORDINGS 1904-1917. VOLUME 2
JS BACH Sonata No3 Movements 1 and
IV
HANDEL Xerxes; largo
MOZART Divertimento K334; Minuet
BOCCHERINI arr POWELL Quintet Op
13 No 5; Tempo di Minuetto
MARTINI arr POWELL Plaisir d’amour
VIEUXTEMPS Bouquet americain Op
33; St Patrick’s Day
Polonaise Op 38
WIENIAWSKI Violin Concerto No2 Op
22; Romance
Capriccio Valse Op 7
SCHUBERT Ave Maria
Rosamunde Op 26; Entr’acte 111
RAFF Cavatina Op 85 No 3
ZARZYCKI Mazurka Op 26
SCHUMANN Kinderszenen; Op15 Traumerei
GRIEG arr
MARCOSSON To Spring
LEYBACH Fifth Nocturne Op 52
OFFENBACH Les Contes d’Hoffmann;
Barcarolle
OGAREW Caprice Op 51 No 2
CHOPIN arr
MacMILLEN The Maiden’s Wish
MASSENET Les Erinnyes; Elegie
POLDINI arr
HARTMANN Poupee-valsante
CADMAN Little firefly
Maud Powell violin
with variously
Arthur Loesser piano
Waldemar Liachowsky piano
George Falkenstein piano
Francis J Lapitino harp
Orchestra conducted by Josef A Pasternack
Recorded between 1904-1917
NAXOS HISTORICAL 8.110962
[76.04]
Crotchet
Pioneer American Violinist was the sub-title of Karen
Shaffer’s 1988 biography of Maud Powell and it was a good one to choose.
She was the first violinist to be signed by Victor, a genuine proselytiser
for American music, an inveterate tourer, quartet leader, musical barnstormer
and one of the finest string players of her time. It was Powell who
gave the American premieres of, amongst others, the concertos by Tchaikovsky,
Dvorak, Sibelius, Aulin, Conus, Coleridge-Taylor and the Lalo F major.
A major figure in American musical life.
She was an artist whose musical training had ended
by 1890. Amongst her teachers had been Joachim but she always considered
her most formative experiences to have been with Dancla, her Parisian
professor. Hers was a turn of the century style of playing with a vibrato
of medium speed, not always consistently applied, a trill that was fast
but not of electric velocity, a sturdy technique, with frequent recourse
to portamenti, tonally often inclined to dryness, but of buoyant musicality
and vivid incisiveness. It is of great interest to consider her recordings
in the light of performance practice and to note the individual characteristics
that informed her playing. In the two movements of the Bach sonata we
can hear her expressive portamenti, a juddering rallentando, and her
rather dry tone in the First Movement whilst the Fourth features a performance
of real fleetness, clean articulation, expressive diminuendos (not an
easy feat on a 1916 Victor) and the characteristically dramatic slowing
down then fashionable in Baroque performance practice. There is even
a temporary loss of synchronicity with her pianist, the estimable Arthur
Loesser, so rapidly is the movement played. She makes no portamenti
in the opening phrase of Handel’s Xerxes, unlike many of her younger
colleagues, and has a sure instinct for musical structure. Her tone
is hardly one of lyric intensity - this is pre-Kreisler playing - and
if her final portamenti seems naively applied its purpose was always
one of intensification of musical feeling – by comparison with a much
younger player, Marie Hall for instance, her playing is decidedly clean
and unaffected.
The Mozart displays her command of a steady tempo,
if with dry sounding lower two strings, whilst the Boccherini is vibrantly
realised, with good pizzicatos, and an admirable melodic impulse. Inconsistent
vibrato usage afflicts the Martini. In Vieuxtemps’ flashy Bouquet americain
we can hear a range of instrumental gimmicks, but admire the fluent
and flexible bowing and the pizzicatos in the Irish passage and the
same composer’s Polonaise is played with real flair, if not always perfect
address. In one of her rare outings in the piano-accompanied concerto
literature she plays the Romance from Wieniawski’s D major Concerto
with lyric intensity if sometimes questionable intonation, whilst the
meretricious but exciting Capriccio Valse tests the violinist’s technical
equipment to Powell’s advantage.
In the ubiquitous Ave Maria surface noise, slow slides
and a slow to medium vibrato tend to sap the piece; this is a performance
that cannot compete in terms of vibrancy and colour with the burgeoning
and opulent tonalists then emerging from Russia or with the established
central European masters. Her Rosamunde is affectionate and nicely lyric
but somewhat dissipated by uneven and inconsistent sound projection.
The Raff Cavatina, stand-by of violinists down the years, shows the
violinist sensitively and imaginatively varying both volume and tempi;
this is a canny piece of playing and a well-rounded performance, never
sentimentalised (she was not that kind of player) with nice double-stopping,
if sounding a little rushed. Zarzycki’s Mazurka is tossed off dashing
skill.
Elsewhere the Grieg transcription features more of
her fast trills, is lyrical, well-paced and, albeit with a couple of
gulped slides, a good performance if not of optimum expressivity. With
Leybach’s rather charming salon piece the orchestra makes an appearance,
reminding us of Powell’s days touring with Sousa’s Band. Her Offenbach
lacks tonal variety, the Ogarew Caprice shows off her glissando and
the Massenet is a neat but somewhat retrogressive performance. By 1917
it was already a dated style of playing with Elman and Heifetz already
on American shores and the young Spalding carving a name for himself,
not to mention others such as Sammons, Busch and Thibaud, and to say
nothing of Kreisler. The Poldini Poupee-valsante is a subtly neat performance
with good work on the lower strings and the final piece Cadman’s uninteresting
Little Firefly receives a suitably uninteresting performance. It is
strangely uninvolved playing, dry in tone and inexpressive and a disappointing
end to the programme though hardly representative of Powell’s playing
as a whole.
With the publication of that 1988 biography, the Maud
Powell Foundation also issued three CDs (and cassettes) of her performances.
This CD exactly replicates Volume 2 of the Foundation’s own issue, also
remastered by Ward Marston who has taken the occasion to work on the
transfers again. The differences are minimal. There is still too much
surface "chuffing" on the Vieuxtemps Bouquet americain, too
much swishing on Massenet’s Elegie and also on the Poldini. I am still
unconvinced by the wisdom of a non-chronological series of discs. A
series of CDs of this significance deserves a chronological release,
session by session, from her first recording session in 1904 to her
last.
That aside I have nothing but praise. Notes by Karen
Shaffer, Powell’s biographer, are admiring and cogent. This is a series
of real discographic and musical interest. A major artist’s entire body
of work will be available at a cheap price in good transfers. If only
such enterprise and largesse were to be shown to other elite violinists
– Albert Sammons, Paul Kochanski, Joan Manen…. the list is long. How
about it, Naxos?
Jonathan Woolf
See review of Volume
1