If you for some
reason want to have only one CD with violin music in your
collection this might be the one to choose. It contains some
of the most perfect and brilliant violin playing ever recorded!
“A collection
of ditties? Recorded 60 – 70 years ago? Why?”
I can hear the
objections – and ditties they are, some of these pieces ...
but the way they are played! And it is not only a question
of technique, even if Heifetz’s armoury of technical accomplishment
is unlimited. David Patmore’s interesting text finishes with
a quotation from Carl Flesch who said: “There has hardly been
any other violinist who has come closer to perfection”, and
you can pick any track on this disc to find proof of that:
his perfect intonation, the obvious ease with which he plays
even the trickiest passage, his beautiful tone, his rhythmic
precision (try track 14 – the F minor march by Prokofiev,
where he also gives an ample demonstration of his impeccable
double-stopping), his flageolets (listen to his Korngold),
his superior trill (track 15, the Rachmaninov song which Heifetz
plays in his own arrangement). On every track there is evidence
of his ability to play even the softest nuance without loss
of tonal quality. “OK. Heifetz was a technical wizard” Mr
Grumble mutters, “but he had no heart. Everything is ice-cold!”
Dear Mr Grumble, this is an old myth that has to be done with
once and for all. You need only go to track 12 on this disc,
Achron’s wonderful Hebrew Melody, and who can complain
of lack of warmth there? And the Garden Scene from Korngold’s
Much Ado About Nothing music: no feeling?
These last-mentioned
pieces are actually a lot more than mere ditties and the disc
also contains four substantial works for violin and orchestra
which are definitely highly regarded standard works, and the
way he plays the two Saint-Saens pieces! I have long admired
them, and also the Sarasate Zigeunerweisen in an old
recording with the Argentinian violinist Riccardo Odnoposoff,
too little known I must say, but superlatively as he plays
them he has to yield to Heifetz on almost every point of interpretation.
The Carmen Fantasia by Franz Waxman, written for and
premiered by Heifetz if I remember correctly, is a worthy
finale to this long recital, and there is a great deal of
warmth in his playing here also, besides all the expected
fireworks.
I could write
at length about all the other pieces as well but that would
make this an over-long review and deter you from running to
the nearest record store to acquire this budget-priced disc
before all your neighbours, who have also seen this review,
will have bought the whole stock. Let me just mention two
items:
De Falla’s Spanish
Dance is played in Fritz Kreisler’s arrangement and it
is interesting to compare Heifetz with Kreisler’s own recording.
Kreisler was of course famous for his warm playing an this
is very obvious in his 1938 recording with Franz Rupp. By
then Kreisler was over 60 and had long since stopped practising,
he had never been a true virtuoso but instead cultivated his
very personal Viennese charm and a “sweet” tone with much
vibrato and glissandos. His playing in the Spanish Dance is
indeed sweet and charming but also dangerously close to over-sentimental.
Heifetz, recorded three years before Kreisler, is rhythmically
more precise and avoids sentimentality through his more brilliant
tone and his lightness – and there is no lack of warmth.
Maybe the track
that shows Heifetz in all his glory is that “ditty” Banjo
And Fiddle (the last track but one). “Weightlessness”
is the only appropriate word for his playing here. One gets
the feeling that even Heifetz’s feet are an inch or two above
the floor.
“All right! I
give in!” I can hear Mr Grumble croaking, “But the sound quality?
These are, after all, crackly old shellacs.” And I am afraid
I have to refute Mr Grumble on this point too. These are HMVs
and RCA Victors recorded with the best available technical
equipment available at the time and transferred and restored
with love and care by David Lennick and Graham Newton, making
them come up fresh as paint. Of course they are mono and of
course you hear at once that they were not made yesterday,
not even yesteryear, but there is nothing to detract the listener
from what is most important: the playing. The piano is also
very well reproduced (and very well played, mostly by Heifetz’
long-standing music partner Emanuel Bay). Even the orchestral
items are fully acceptable, even to modern ears and it has
to be said that the Carmen Fantasia is very vividly
recorded. The documentation is exemplary with matrix-numbers
and catalogue-numbers for every item and recording dates.
There we are.
End of review. Now grab your overcoat, Mr Grumble and everybody
else, and run down to the store. There may still be a copy
left.
Göran Forsling
see also Review
by Jonathan Woolf
Jascha Heifetz (violin),
Emanuel Bay (piano) (1, 4, 6, 9, 10, 12 – 17), Arpad Sandor (piano) (3,
11), London Philharmonic Orchestra/John Barbirolli (2), London Symphony
Orchestra/John Barbirolli (5, 8), RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra/Donald
Voorhees
