You don’t need me to recommend this to you, only to consider matters
of transfer quality. With Ormandy at the tiller for the Strauss
- wherein we find Samuel Lifschey, solo viola, and Alexander Hilsberg
the concertmaster - things were never going to go wrong. The
acerbic, supercilious Feuermann may not have been anyone’s idea
of an ideal dinner guest – any more than Heifetz was – but we’re
here to discuss musicianship, not etiquette, and by any rational
standards Feuermann was technically at least, simply the greatest
cellist of the twentieth century.
The
Strauss dates from 1940 and is a performance of tensile brilliance,
a reading of leonine majesty all round. Lifschey is not to
be overlooked as he often is in this reading. If the mouth
doesn’t salivate at the idea of a Feuermann-Lifschey partnership
quiet as much as the fabled meeting of Casals and Tertis a
little earlier – not recorded so far as I know - that does
nothing to diminish the violist’s artistry; it could hardly
have been easy to stand up to Feuermann and in such matters
the cellist could be somewhat gladiatorial. There is requisite
colour and variety of texture here, and of course the solo
cello playing is simply magnificent.
Maybe
you came to Schelomo through Zara Nelsova, or maybe your entry
point was another cellist altogether. Feuermann was first
in the recorded stakes with this famed Stokowski-directed
recording made a month later than the Strauss. Once again
it was a session held at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. The cellist and conductor conspire in a recording of
great opulence and tonal variety, huge reserves of technical
assurance and a rich sense of characterisation and projection.
It’s a deserved classic.
This
coupling has been out before. Mark Obert-Thorn has revisited his
earlier transfer on Biddulph LAB042 and effected some changes.
Firstly the running order is reversed and this disc starts with
the Bloch. In this transfer these new Bloch transfers are clearer
and cleaner than those used on Biddulph. They lack the surface
clicks that the older transfer preserved. In the Strauss we find
this Pristine Audio has marginally less presence than the Biddulph;
there is now less surface noise but arguably the sonic stage is
less vital. It’s a small matter in any case because on balance
these are preferable transfers.
Jonathan Woolf
Emanuel Feuermann (cello) 
