The thirteen-year-old
Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in D minor
remained unknown until a dealer in rare
musical scores and books showed the
manuscript to Yehudi Menuhin in 1951.
The violinist bought it, edited the
first published edition, gave the first
modern performance in New York on 4th
February 1952 and made the first record
two days later. This was also his first
appearance on disc as violinist-conductor.
In the United States the recording was
issued on LP coupled with the present
version of the E minor Violin Concerto
under Furtwängler, but the reciprocal
arrangement between RCA Victor and HMV
was breaking down and so, rather than
wrestle with contractual problems, HMV
simply set down the work again in London
for the British market, on 2nd
April 1953, with Sir Adrian Boult conducting.
Towards the end of his career Menuhin
made a further coupling of the two Mendelssohn
Concertos under Rafael Frühbeck
de Burgos. Tully Potter points out that
the New York recording has remained
virtually unknown in the UK; not that
the version under Boult has suffered
from over-exposure over the last few
decades and I, personally, was unaware
of it.
Some of Mendelssohn’s
early works already bear the stamp of
genius and contain many of the hallmarks
of the mature composer. Not, I think,
this one, which after several hearings
only engages me in the jolly if slightly
trite finale. The performance has all
Menuhin’s classical virtues though I
did wonder, in the slow movement, if
a conductor better able to obtain long-term
phrasing (such as Boult) might have
helped present the music in stronger
light.
The Furtwängler
collaboration has already been reviewed
by me in EMI’s own transfer in the Great
Recordings of the Century series (coupled
with the Beethoven/Philharmonia/Furtwängler).
Indeed, the information I have given
in this review comes partly from Tully
Potter’s notes for Naxos but also from
those by Alan Sanders for the EMI issue.
It is interesting to
find that the same performance lasts
six seconds longer in the Naxos transfer.
While recognizing that this may also
stem from certain production decisions
such as how much space to leave at the
beginning and end of the work, the Naxos
appears to play at a very marginally
lower pitch than the EMI. Having crossed
swords with Mark Obert-Thorn over the
correct pitch of the Callas/De Sabata
Tosca I must say that I haven’t tested
either recording with pitch-detecting
equipment and even if I had I could
not be sure of the exact pitch used
in Berlin in 1952. What is more significant
is that the performance has a slightly
different effect in the two versions.
There is certainly more space around
the orchestra in the EMI transfer, which
would have had access to the original
tapes, while the Naxos is more contained
between the two speakers. Furthermore,
Menuhin’s tone chez EMI has a
silvery quality, and is a touch fierce
at times, while as heard on Naxos it
is richer in lower harmonics. It’s a
bit like the difference between a pure
soprano and a soprano with a touch of
the mezzo in her timbre.
Well, here’s a pretty
kettle of fish. We know that the same
artist tends to sound different as he
passes from one recording company to
another (e.g. Karajan with EMI, Decca
and DG). But here we have the same performance
in which the artist is made to sound
different. It is as though a man is
placed in the middle of a hall of mirrors,
each very slightly concave or very slightly
convex, not to the extent that the distortion
is obvious or even instantly detectible,
yet each image contains its own mixture
of truth and falsity. As one who heard
Menuhin live only in the 1970s when
he was past his best, how can I know
which of the sound-images is true, which
is false? The answer is, I can’t. I
can say that the performance as heard
on EMI seems to take wing rather more,
while as presented by Naxos it is impressively
serious. But on the other hand, even
before I got out the comparisons I found
myself disagreeing with Tully Potter’s
comment that "the Berlin Philharmonic
is here at its dourest" and the
"Furtwängler did not have
what it took to be a great accompanist",
for this type of rich-toned, fervent
performance is just what Mendelssohn
needs if his music is to be rescued
from the suggestion of spick-and-span
superficiality which has dogged it over
the years.
Still, I suppose the
general recommendation for a Menuhin
recording of the Mendelssohn will be
the 1958 version under Efrem Kurtz,
where the violinist’s tone could be
caught by early stereo techniques and
the later failings of his own playing
were not yet evident. And, if the present
recording is not Menuhin’s best Mendelssohn,
it is not Furtwängler’s either,
for the following month he directed
it again in Turin with a violinist whose
passionate spontaneity invariably threw
off sparks in him – Gioconda De Vito.
This performance lasts about three minutes
longer, which is all the more remarkable
when the last movement is faster
– after a slightly portentous opening
De Vito takes Furtwängler for a
ride in which he is apparently happy
to partake. Above all, however, her
romantic temperament results in a long-drawn
slow movement replete with all that
twilight glow of which Furtwängler
was the supreme master. I only know
this through a crumbly off-the-air tape
– I don’t know whether it can be made
to sound any better.
Maybe, though, the
difference is not so much between Furtwängler/Menuhin
and Furtwängler/De Vito as between
Furtwängler in the studio and Furtwängler
live. As we well know, his live performances
took wing in a way that even the best
of his studio performances did not,
and it is curious to recollect that
we know his collaboration with De Vito
only through live performances, while
we know his collaboration with Menuhin
only through studio recordings. When
so much has fortuitously survived, does
anything remain of the two Mendelssohn
performances in Berlin which preceded
this recording? Or the Beethoven performance
given that same evening? Or any other
live performance with Menuhin?
The performance of
the Bruch presented here was Menuhin’s
only collaboration on disc with Charles
Munch. A big-boned performance might
have been expected with Munch at the
helm and so it proves, too much so for
Tully Potter, who feels there is "a
certain amount of straining after effect".
Since Munch’s performances of Mendelssohn
were not of the airy-fairy kind it is
not surprising that he treated the Bruch
as a full-scale romantic, with a passionate
climax towards the end of the first
movement and a finale which, though
buoyant, is sufficiently steady for
the big romantic tune to emerge naturally.
Later, in his first stereo recording
under Walter Susskind, Menuhin extended
the slow movement by some 45 seconds
while the conductor teased out the inner
parts; the music is made to sound like
Elgar, movingly introvert while Munch
goes in for longer paragraphs. It would
be interesting to know if American listeners
have always shared the British preference
for the Süsskind version (which
of course benefits from a stereo recording)
over that under Munch. Menuhin’s last
version, under Boult, was coupled with
Bruch’s rare Second Concerto but perhaps
found both artists past their peak.
For Menuhin aficionados
these long-unavailable recordings of
the Mendelssohn D minor and the Bruch
will be self-recommending; less specialized
collectors should perhaps go for the
EMI transfer of the Mendelssohn, coupled
with a sublime version of the Beethoven,
and the Mendelssohn/Bruch pairing under
Kurtz and Süsskind.
Christopher Howell
see aslo reviews
by Em
Marshall and Jonathan
Woolf
Yehudi Menuhin (violin), RCA Victor String Orchestra
(1), Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra/Wilhelm Furtwängler
(2), Boston Symphony Orchestra/Charles Munch
(3) 
