David Frühwirth
and Henri Sigfridsson seem to be making
a speciality of seeking out buried treasure
in their recordings for Avie. Recently
we had ‘Trails
of Creativity’, which took in an
electric brew of, inter alia, Adolf
Busch, Wellesz, Walton, Weill, Rathaus
and still less predictably, Gurney and
Frederick Rosse. Their latest disc,
rather innocuously subtitled A collection
of romantic violin pieces, gives
us some more rarities from the obscurer
and mustier corners of the violinists’s
music drawer.
Leavening these rarities
are well-known arrangements or transcriptions
– Ravel, Chopin – but, in keeping with
the probing archaeological leanings
of these two musicians, some rare things
such as the Gershwin arrangement for
example, or the Glazunov. Frühwirth
brings a degree of real aristocratic
finesse to some of these morceaux and
he cements the fine partnership with
Sigfridsson that was so much a feature
of that last disc. They score highly
in Weill with some sensitively withdrawn
and effective playing of the Tango Habanera
and also in Hans Sitt’s Bolero – which
is all charm and no fireworks (and that’s
a compliment). In the Albéniz
we can hear Frühwirth’s occasionally
rather patrician reserve at its fullest
– he’s certainly not one to lavish evocative
tonal reserves on these pieces in the
manner of, say, Kreisler or Thibaud,
but his narrow-bore vibrato and clean
playing brings its own rewards. The
Wieniawski, one of a number marked as
first ever recordings, is a rather generic
piece of Orientalism but does provide
plenty of opportunities for good bowing,
all of which Frühwirth takes with
commendable sang froid. The Gershwin
is in its transcription by Samuel Dushkin;
composer and violinist premiered it
in 1926 and Dushkin went on to record
it in London with the excellent pianist
Max Pirani. I doubt if Frühwirth
and Sigfridsson know that 1928 recording
but they could listen to it with profit.
Dushkin’s lascivious and constant portamenti,
his rhythmic flexibility and capricious
phrasing, all point to a malleable nervousness.
By contrast Frühwirth and Sigfridsson
are pristine, songful, unhurried and
tend to co-opt the piece strongly to
the European salon. If indeed I have
criticisms of their playing generally
it’s of a certain indulgence with these
pieces; they don’t quite stamp and define
them enough, or always lavish necessary
weight of tonal pressure on them.
Regarding the promised
premiere recordings I should add a few
footnotes. The Zimbalist Tango from
his Sarasateana Suite is indeed as far
as I know the first recording by a violinist.
But William Primrose recorded the whole
suite – stupendously - in his viola
arrangement and makes this performance
sound positively sluggish. Vieuxtemps’
Bohemiènne, the third of the
Op.40 Morceaux is certainly not a premiere
recording – Burkhard Godhoff and Kontarsky
recorded it for Koch Schwann back in
1989. And, pernickety though it is –
and it is – I should add that the Musin
isn’t a first recording either. The
violinist-composer himself recorded
it, one of a mere handful of discs he
left behind, in a recording issued by
the Belgian Conservatory of Music, though
as Musin died in 1929 I can’t imagine
that this was other than a promotional,
celebratory or archive disc.
Still, there are some
intriguing nuggets along the way and
I like these two musicians’ willingness
to explore fruitful byways in their
recordings and recital programmes. Their
erudite inquisitiveness is much appreciated.
Jonathan Woolf
David Frühwirth (violin)