Devy Erlih (b.1928) is something of a cult violinist. He was
a student of Jules Boucherit at the Paris Conservatoire in 1942.
His debut came after the war, and he has since been widely active
as soloist, leader of chamber orchestras, director, and teacher.
He also composes. He has performed many contemporary works by
French composers and has not neglected those by Milhaud, Sauguet,
Tomasi
and Jolivet.
His recorded legacy is not huge and is generally confined to
smaller labels, though he was an evergreen on Ducretet-Thomson
and Inédits. Among his more interesting recordings are Denisov’s
First Sonata, Loucheur’s Concerto, and the 1907 sonata by Ropartz,
though he left LPs of staples such as the Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn
concertos.
Maybe it’s because of this smallish repertoire on disc, but
also because of his teaching, that fiddle fanciers are so drawn
to him. Certainly I cherish my LP of the Khachaturian on The
Record Society, one of those heavy-duty jobs where you have
to pull the LP out of its sleeve via a thick wood hinge; rather
like the way waiters hang newspapers in Viennese cafes. Nevertheless
I’d be the last to suggest that it offers the kind of sultry
pleasures afforded by such as Louis Kaufman or David Oistrakh;
a different kind of pleasure, certainly, and a very precise,
Gallic one.
Erlih’s vibrato is tight, without undue width; his tone is finely
centred. The playing is precise, pure-toned. Some of the passagework
is unduly slowed down in the first movement, with orchestral
counter-themes unhelpfully and unmusically protracted. But the
echo effects between violin and winds, and then violin and violin,
are accomplished well, and the musing cadenza is technically
adroit, though at his speed the resumption of the initial tempo
is all too bumpy. Erlih takes the slow movement at a dangerously
spun-out legato, but it has melancholy and yearning, though
a lack of oratorical tonal breadth. Ricci is just as slow in
his recording, though he’s by far the more febrile artist. Erlih
retains aristocratic purity. He’s not breakneck in the finale
like Kaufman and Oistrakh, in his preserved performances, or
even Yulian Sitkovetsky, but he doesn’t dawdle like Mischa Elman,
who was too old to take it on when he finally got around to
it. Erlih catches the finale’s wit and also widens his vibrato
appreciably; it’s as sleazy as it ever got with him in this
movement and then it’s not often. So this is a patrician recording,
brashly recorded, averagely played but sympathetically accompanied
by Serge Baudo, whose Honegger symphonic cycle in Prague I’ve
always hugely admired.
The fillers are the two Rhapsodies by Bartók, recorded in Paris
three years earlier. The orchestra is the same—the Orchestre
des Cento Soli—but the conductor is different; Karel Husa. This
may come as a surprise as Husa, who is 90 this year, is admired
as a composer. But in the earlier part of his career he also
conducted; in fact there’s a recording of Brahms’s First Symphony
with this orchestra, as well as the first European recording
of The Miraculous Mandarin, Honegger’s Le Roi David,
Carmina Burana, the Berlioz Grande Messe des Morts
and a slew of his own music. He’s a perceptive conductor of
Bartók and Erlih plays well, though again without the dazzle
and earthiness of other contemporary practitioners. One might
say that he meets Bartok half-way.
It’s good news for Erlih’s admirers that these old LP performances
are now available; I’m not sure if they have been transferred
elsewhere — Japanese compilers are often ahead of the game when
it comes to violinists, so I wouldn’t at all be surprised —
but this French company has done well with their transfers,
which are ungimmicky, direct and free of egocentricity: not
unlike the performances in fact.
Jonathan Woolf
Devy Erlih (violin) 
