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Tributes to Menuhin
continue to appear with performances
released from the vaults and from live
recordings that have made only limited
appearances before. Such is the case
with the 1951 Mozart which has seen
service on Frequenz, I Grandi Concerti
and Suite and now crops up again in
this Tahra release which brings together
two of Menuhin’s great and lasting achievements
– performances of Bach and Mozart. I
don’t happen to be of those who sniff
loudly and say "I don’t listen
to Menuhin post 1947" (or 1948
or July 1949 or whatever) – a group
with a wider constituency than you might
think. As he demonstrated categorically
in his 1952 Japanese tour (see Biddulph
for the resultant discs) when the fires
burned, Menuhin was every inch the molten
artist, silencing doubt.
This is a preamble,
I suppose, to registering disappointment.
Bohm’s RIAS orchestra sounds acidic
in the clinical acoustic, as captured
by the microphones anyway, of the Jesus-Christus
Kirche and Menuhin is not on top form.
He starts uncertainly, with some intonational
problems in a Concerto that is far more
taxing to control than it sounds, and
tonally he tends to the metallic. The
slow movement is full of resigned yearning
but isn’t especially affecting – though
the tempo is a sensible one and not
lingering. And so is that taken for
the finale – jaunty and brisk, with
Bohm uncovering some unexpected orchestral
string lines. The unusual cadenzas are
Menuhin’s – he always seems to have
jettisoned, say, Kreisler’s and used
his own. Altogether though this is not
a stellar example of his art in Mozart
– and the Sargent, Pritchard and self-conducted
commercial discs are greatly to be preferred.
I happen to prefer
his later Bach Sonatas and Partitas
recordings to the early meteorically
youthful set, made in the 1930s. There
was a greater and inevitably more mature
sense of shape and linearity in those
1957 and 1976 sets, however much the
tonal lustre had diminished. This Berne
performance of the Partita in D comes
roughly mid way through those later
sets, in 1968. His perception is undeniable
but frailties attend to his playing.
Chording, especially in the Allemande,
is apt to be untidy, bowing can be hit
and miss and the tone is not that of
old. He launches almost immediately,
with a very audible anticipatory sniff,
from the Gigue to the Chaconne, which
he colours with pathos and nobility.
There are several wolf notes along the
way and the tension as he builds to
the climaxes does tell on his technique
with imperfections in both hands. The
carapace however is intact for all that.
This is one for Menuhin
specialists. They will better be able
to "place" these performances
in the continuum of his recorded history;
they are by no means negligible performances
but Menuhin was no longer the Boy Wonder
so graphically displayed on the front
of Tahra’s booklet.
Jonathan Woolf
Yehudi Menuhin (violin)