Cembal d’amour deserves the gratitude of all violin lovers for
its especial devotion to the art of David Nadien, about whom I’ve
written extensively on this site (see links below). This is now
the fourth volume in its exploration of his commercial and off-air
legacy and long may it continue. This latest entrant though is
special.
It
starts with his fervent, fervid Ravel Tzigane. His finger tip
vibrato vests this with a dramatic, almost occult drama. And
he’s no revisionist when it comes to the work; it’s full-blooded,
passionate, and tonally broad with a springy warmth that proves
compelling. The NYPO and André Kostelanetz are the willing,
urgent partners and the date was February 1967. Nadien was concertmaster
of the orchestra; for other concerto outings he sometimes turned
to the Great Neck Symphony Orchestra under its well-known conductor
Sylvan Schulman.
Firstly
there is the 1965 Glazunov performance. Nadien is full of bewitching
colour here, his tonal variety and broadly conventional-fast
tempi ensuring a performance of tremendous vitality and generosity,
as well as digital assurance. In stylistic ethos his playing
is roughly aligned with that of Heifetz, though both Heifetz
and Milstein tended to adopt pretty much the same tempi for
this work. Nadien is febrile, dashing, gives us a superb cadenza,
an ebullient finale and much else. It’s interesting perhaps
to note that Nadien’s almost exact contemporary, the American
violinist Camilla Wicks, recorded this concerto twenty years
later in 1985 (now on Simax). Their performances could not be
more different – Nadien is hyper romantic and fleet, Wicks withdrawn
and slow. The other Great Neck performance is Saint-Saëns’ Havanise,
which is full of luscious eloquence and control.
The
other work is the celebrated performance of the Tchaikovsky
concerto given with Bernstein in October 1966. Here Nadien doesn’t
follow Heifetz tempo-wise – it would be unwise to do so in any
case – preferring a standard eighteen minutes for the first
movement. His playing is once again full of tonal breadth and
colour, his vibrato characteristically fast and full of character.
The slow movement is fully communicative and masculine, once
again given with the widest tonal resources; it’s not played,
as so often today, as a rather chaste chanson. The finale is
thrilling. The audience goes wild after the opening and closing
movements.
As
if this is not enough we have a DVD interview between Nadien
and Mordecai Shehori. We can’t always quite hear the full questions
that Shehori poses but we can certainly infer them. The camera
set up and sound is much improved since the interview conducted
with Boris Barere on a similar CD-plus-DVD release from Cembal
d’amour. Nadien was born in 1922; his mother was Dutch, his
father Russian. His father boxed under the fancy moniker of
George Vanderbilt in Massachusetts and was an
amateur fiddler – his son says very amateur. Nadien talks
about his time at the Mannes
School
and of his time with Betti of the Flonzaley Quartet to whom
he owed so much. Betti had “no method” as such but allowed Nadien
to progress in his own way. He learned from Betti how not to
be “cheap” musically; he talks warmly of a man he clearly reveres.
I didn’t know that Nadien also studied for a year or so with
Adolf Busch in New York. Busch was “good not great” in his estimation – though it’s
fair to point out that Busch’s best days were well behind him
by then and illness consumed him. Then he spent a year and
a half with Galamian until Nadien was eighteen and the army
beckoned. A period with Dounis followed. When pressed he says
he learned from this still controversial teacher matters of
phrasing and “breathing” and remembers Dounis’ instruction that,
as a general point, “sometimes you can play too much”.
Nadien
won the Leventritt competition despite the presence on the panel
of Isaac Stern, adding that “Stern couldn’t do anything about
it.” Stern’s charming hospitality to fellow American violinists
is well known. Nadien however is not the kind of man to gossip
and tell tales and he doesn’t expand on this or one or two other
points where one is itching for him to be indiscreet. Over the
feud between Bernstein and Heifetz for instance – the conductor
never invited the violinist to share a performance. Nadien knows
the details but he’s not telling. The nearest he gets to outright
denigration is to note that Ozawa “is not too learned.” Szell
wanted Nadien to lead the second violins in Cleveland - though if
you’ve read Robert Gerle’s memoirs you’ll know that Szell was
forever on the lookout for someone to match Gingold in the concertmaster’s
chair. He later became leader of the NYPO then went back to
the kind of commercial work he’d undertaken before – and he’s
one of the elite in the tough commercial scene.
One
of the most poignant and yet admirable things is a Menuhin story.
After Menuhin had rehearsed with the orchestra he sought out
Nadien to ask about the latter’s bow arm. Menuhin’s own was
famously problematic. But Nadien refused to divulge his own
technique. One might put this down to closely guarded professional
secrets but Nadien was actually not interfering; he was discreet
and sensitive enough to know that the accumulated years of faulty
teaching would not be remedied over a few minutes’ chat. And
with a concert coming up the potential for disaster would have
been even greater.
We
learn of Nadien’s preferences among conductors – Szell as an
accompanist, Toscanini’s precision and genius. Also about Nadien’s
pessimism about the current classical music scene, and concert
going and giving in particular. He plays a little on his copy
of the Lord Wilton Guarneri – he plays some unaccompanied Kreisler. His charming wife
is seen briefly, ragging him about the amount of practising
he did – she contradicts the claimed number of hours with charm
(she says he practised more than he lets on).
Nadien’s
admirers will relish this treasurable set. The manifold musical
virtues of the CD are augmented by the interview giving us a
portrait of the artist in its fullest sense.
Jonathan
Woolf
Links
to previous reviews of this series:
Volume
1
Volume
2
Volume
3
David Nadien
(violin)
[72:28 + DVD: 68:00] 
