This miscellaneous Heifetz collection brings together
live performances from the 1940s and 1950s in which he is partnered
either by the dutiful Emanuel Bay or by Donald Voorhees and the Bell
Telephone Hour Orchestra. It also inaugurates the first volume in an
uneven but very worthwhile Heifetz series from the enterprising Mordecai
Shehori and his Cembal d’Amour label. Uneven because there are some
aural problems here as well as arrangement limitations. These discs
are necessary listening experiences, Heifetz, being Heifetz, and offer
some intriguing sidelights on repertoire, commercialism, imperturbable
virtuosity and repetitious encore literature. All of which might be
surmised when one considers that except for the Khachaturian, Hubay,
Rachmaninov and Achron all items are accompanied by orchestral arrangements
of varying shades of bloatedness. This is assuredly not the fault of
either Voorhees, a solid musician, or of Heifetz himself but is reflective
of the material on the Bell Telephone Hour, much of which has thankfully
survived and for which we have cause to be grateful. There are numerous
high spots of course. He is razor sharp intonationally in Sarasate where
for once the orchestra is rather less glutinous than usual; there is
all Heifetz’s accustomed intensity of expression, the trademark "Heifetz
slides" and some swashbuckling virtuosity. He is rather backward
in the balance in Vitali’s Chaconne in stark contradistinction to his
slightly later commercial disc, one of the most close-up, glamorous
and stunning violin records ever made. Here, back in 1948, he is technically
surprisingly suspect, employs a couple of gulped downward portamenti,
and lacks the commanding eloquence of the 1950 organ accompanied disc.
It can’t have helped that he was pursued by a serio-comic band arrangement
that fails to convey stark intensity, substituting instead a remarkable
talent for dissipating momentum just as it’s needed. When the harp appeared
I’m afraid I left and so should Heifetz.
He recorded the Sinding with the Los Angeles Philharmonic
Orchestra and the cellist turned conductor Alfred Wallenstein in 1953
but it’s still good to hear his ravishing way with it. What operatic
intensity he brings to the Adagio, with a battery of slides, shadings
and speeds of vibrato usage employed. Ignore the heavy accompaniment
and feast your ears on Heifetz here and in the classically shaped finale
where he plays with bold, slashing adventure. Maybe the Wieniawski Capriccio-Valse
isn’t immaculate but it’s still chock-full of charm and panache and
he spices the Khachaturian with plenty of pepper. There’s lots of winning
rubato in the Elgar showpiece (he’d already recorded it twice by the
1940s) and succulent tone but once more a fairly horrific orchestration
almost saps it of conviction, as is the case with the Paganini where
there is a problem at the end with a sudden tiny one-channel dropout.
I liked the tempo for Hubay’s Zephyr, a real Heifetz stunner if rather
over emoted here but the Massenet, which I’m not sure he ever set down
commercially, receives a cruelly subterranean recording, a real pity.
In the Wieniawski Scherzo-Tarantelle and the abridged Second Concerto
he is predictably dashing, full of tonal allure and variety.
It’s not quite clear from the documentation as to the
source material used on this disc. Some has appeared on other labels
over the years – LPs on the Masters of the Bow and the obscure Penzance
labels for instance – but it’s fascinating to have it collated here
and if the arrangements are frequently lacklustre and worse, the original
copies worn and occasionally recessed, Heifetz is always the scintillating
centre of attention. So an uneven but still eventful start to the Heifetz
recordings on Cembal d’Amour.
Jonathan Woolf
The Bell Telephone Hour Orchestra/Donald
Voorhees 