Doremi has chosen to emblazon the fact of Philippe Hirschhorn first prize
at the 1967 Queen Elizabeth of Belgium International Violin
Competition on the front of its booklet and three CD set. Perhaps
it’s a measure of how little biographical material has been
produced that this youthful win becomes the fulcrum of interest.
And yet one knows of several fine players who were his pupils
and whose reminiscences of the tragically short-lived Hirschhorn
might be worth hearing – not least Philippe Graffin. Doremi’s
note is really a short paragraph; born in Riga in 1946, studied
with Mikhail Vainman in Leningrad; the Brussels win; and musical
partnerships with Argerich and Maisky – who’s quoted on the
booklet to the effect that the violinist was “the most unbelievable
musician I ever met…he possessed mystical hypnotic power.” I’ve
never known the nature of the ill health that ended his concert-giving
career but after that breach he taught in Brussels – somewhat strangely called Bruxelles in this English
language release – and died at fifty in 1996.
These are all live performances. He made hardly any commercial discs – I’m
aware of only the Lekeu sonata and participation in Mozart’s
Oboe Quintet. The 1967 competition Paganini is here. After a
little time to settle and one or two stiff sounding pizzicati
Hirschhorn digs in with considerable panache. There’s an especially
fine first movement cadenza, some big fruity tone in the slow
movement and tremendous dexterity in the finale. He receives
tumultuous applause and doubtless the jury was impressed – the
jury by the way consisted of Oistrakh, Menuhin, Francescatti,
Szigeti, Grumiaux, Gertler, Gingold, Rostal and Olof. But the
one thing that seems abundantly evident is his vibrato. It’s
extremely fast and rather unvaried and lends a tense, febrile
quality especially in slower music and particularly on held
notes. It’s going to be the theme of this review that his splendid
playing, musical, thoughtful, not especially showy, is time
and time again mitigated by that endemic flaw.
The Brahms concerto dates from seven years later, 1974. The orchestra sounds
rather blowsy but Hirschhorn plays with masculine eloquence,
occasionally employing deft rubati but not enough really to
impede rhythmic flow. There are passing intonational problems
but the serious-minded direction of the music making means there
are no idiosyncrasies or indulgences. Occasionally one might
feel a want of real personality in the playing but I don’t find
it impersonal as such, or objectified. Tonally he is hampered
by a lack of vibrato variance and it’s this I think that lowers
the immediacy of his playing.
The Brahms Op.108 sonata was resonantly recorded in 1974 and his partner
was Helmuth Barth. The architectural instincts are all there
but the lower strings sound strongly over-vibrated and there’s
a sense of tonal one-dimensionality about the performance. There’s
plenty of vibrancy in Tzigane – and a few technical hurdles
– but colour is once again sapped. His tone sounds rather razory
in the Bach but fortunately this is not one of those marmoreal
Russian performances; it’s sensitively phrased and in the faster
music, and in the Fuga especially, we can hear how powerful
and impressive a player he really was. The Berg was recorded
in London with Uri Segal and the
Philharmonia – undated though presumably around 1974. Cool and
aerial his tone takes on an unwanted bleat that whilst it brings
obvious expression to the Chorale sounds alien to the performance
as a whole.
The Cologne orchestra doesn’t sound much interested in the
Sibelius. Here Hirschhorn is on communing and technically strong
form with the exception of a few understandable and tired-sounding
bow crunches in the finale. The expression is not overdone –
one senses a rather cool, if not quite aloof profile from all
these performances – though once more a fuller range of tone
colours are really needed. The Tchaikovsky was badly taped –
cloudy, veiled. The date of 1977 could easily have been 1950
or much earlier. Leitner is a conductor I always enjoy but this
is a nothing-special performance; it’s conventional, unostentatious,
very musical but not especially distinctive.
Nothing here substantiates Doremi’s well-meant hyperbole that Hirschhorn
was “probably one of the finest violinists of the century.”
It’s a matter of real disappointment that Vaiman couldn’t shape
Hirschhorn’s fast vibrato or that he wasn’t sent to someone
who could have slowed it and allowed the kind of variations
of speed and colour necessary to complement his first class
technical and musical armouries.
Jonathan Woolf
