Perlman is the second
violinist to be given the RCA Red Seal/BMG
Rediscovered treatment; the first was
Heifetz. Only one piece here has been
previously released – the Sarasate –
and everything else has lain in the
vaults since Perlman first recorded
these tracks for what was originally
intended to be his first LP. In the
end he went on to make a more high profile
and glamorous recording of Sibelius
and Prokofiev 2 with Leinsdorf and the
Boston Symphony and his first violin
and piano disc was made with Vladimir
Ashkenazy. Nearly forty years have passed
and it’s high time to savour the product
of that first session, all the items
of which were chosen by the violinist
and in most of which he was accompanied
by David Garvey.
I actually wish BMG
had respected Perlman’s original raison
d’etre – an Old School running order
of Handel and Leclair and then the Hindemith
and the fingerbusters to follow. Instead
we open with the three unaccompanied
Paganini Caprices and relax for the
Ben-Haim, get jolted out of our seats
by the Sarasate, then suffer the Handel,
Hindemith and Leclair sonatas in that
order (come on BMG get a bloody grip
on yourselves) and the rest to follow.
Hopeless programming – and who wants
to programme your CD when you had Perlman
in the first place to tell you what
he wanted.
Spleen vented and what
do we have? Most importantly we have
the three sonatas – all are new to the
Perlman discography and that’s a matter
for rejoicing. The sound is excellent
– little deterioration in the tapes
or expert restorative work or both.
Notes are by violinophile Eric Wen and
the running time is pretty good with
the disc housed in a book type cover.
Perlman was just twenty when he went
into the studio to record these pieces
and was on the threshold of one of the
great careers of the second half of
the twentieth century. His arpeggios
in the first Caprice are frighteningly
good and his huskily toned projection
of the Ben-Haim elevates it far beyond
its otherwise merely pleasant profile.
The Sarasate is terra cognita – buoyant
and cocky with razor sharp harmonics.
As for his Handel and Leclair, Perlman
vests them with romanticised warmth,
subtle changes of vibrato usage and
an unashamedly patrician manner. He
doesn’t stint the wit of the second
movement Allegro of the Handel and doesn’t
downplay the vibrant masculinity of
the "Sarabande and Tambourin"
from the Leclair – a conflation beloved
of violinists before the Second World
War who tended to omit the first two
movements. His Hindemith makes one regret
that he never turned to it in his maturity
– he plays it with idiomatic conviction
and the first movement especially falls
to his confidence of the fanfare like
rhetoric. His Bloch has apposite fervour
and the finale is his Bazzini, driving,
technically without blemish and subtly
metrical (though maybe it could be a
shade wittier).
This has been well
worth the forty-year wait – the first,
reclaimed recordings of the greatest
fiddler of his generation, auspicious
and brilliant.
Jonathan Woolf
Itzhak Perlman (violin)