Sir Edward ELGAR (1857-1934)
Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in B minor,
Op 61 (1910)
Itzhak Perlman (violin)
Chicago Symphony Orchestra/Daniel Barenboim
Rec. 1982
Presto CD
DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 413 312-2 [47:00]
As good as Itzhak Perlman’s recording of Elgar’s Violin Concerto is, Presto might be pushing it by releasing this disc exactly as it was made by DG in March 1981. By today’s standards it is short measure, especially since this recording has been coupled with a startlingly powerful Poéme by Chausson elsewhere. It also divided opinion more sharply than some other performances of this work; Perlman’s own brand of heavy emotion and icy precision isn’t to everyone’s taste in this particular concerto.
Technically, there is no such thing as a bad Perlman performance. Like Jascha Heifetz he can make the violin do anything he wants – although, in my view, he is a considerably cleaner – and certainly more elegant – player than Heifetz often was. In the case of the Elgar Concerto, we have one filmed document of this work with Perlman, made at the Proms in August 1981. Forget for one moment that the orchestra and conductor in the Royal Albert Hall are not quite in the same class as DG lined up for the studio recording and focus instead on Perlman because this is largely why the interpretation is a controversial one. A heavier vibrato, more intrusive portamento, and that Perlman sound that comes close to being heart-on-sleeve can make his recording sound over-emotive at times. Rozhdestvensky, a plainer and more direct kind of conductor, isn’t quite on the same page as his soloist; Barenboim on DG, however, is inclined to indulge this Perlman approach.
Perlman does give a reasonably swift – or perhaps we might say perfectly mainstream – performance of the concerto. As did Menuhin with Adrian Boult in 1965, for that matter, one of my reference performances for this review. More expansive recordings – by Nigel Kennedy, especially – and most recently Renaud Caupçon – can exaggerate some of the flaws you’ll hear in the Perlman. Kennedy has an even wider vibrato, for example, although this might just be a more historically informed choice. Kennedy seems less beholden to Menuhin rather than Sammons in his earliest recording. Capuçon, one of the very rare French players to attempt the Elgar, gives an unusually dark and rich performance, and one that is more muscular than either Perlman or Kennedy gave us. Capuçon is magnificent, by the way.
Of all the great violin concertos, the Elgar is still one of the least recorded. When Jascha Heifetz made his with Malcolm Sargent back in 1949, there were seven recordings of this concerto; today there are around fifty. Besides Kreisler, two great violinists who played the concerto – David Oistrakh and Wolfgang Schneiderhan (who gave the Austrian premiere) – never left a recording of the work. The Heifetz itself may be an accident of history since it was intended to have been made by Albert Sammons who declined to do so – most likely he considered himself too old at this stage of his career. Menuhin would play the concerto well into the 1970s (there are recordings from New York and Tel Aviv, both conducted by Zubin Mehta); they are technically flawed, but still retain immeasurable qualities of musicality almost he alone could bring to this work. Of all of the great violin concertos the Elgar can possibly be singled out in that it has probably had no outright bad performances; Illia Grubert’s is very much an acquired taste – as Russian recordings of this concerto tend to be – and Hilary Hahn’s I enjoy no more now than I did fifteen years ago; but both have their advocates. Perlman’s recording absorbs a great deal from Heifetz, less so Menuhin – even if its level of pristine perfection plays to a style from violinists who never recorded the concerto, notably Kreisler.
Barenboim might be an obvious conductor for this soloist/concerto given his recordings of the composer made in the 1970s but I am not particularly convinced it persuaded Perlman to give one of the great performances, which it had every opportunity to do. Barenboim’s tendencies in Elgar could be surprisingly like Boult’s, though he often lacked his careful art of balancing an orchestra; his CBS recording of the Cello Concerto (with the Philadelphia Orchestra) and Du Pré, for example, is astonishing for its power and weight. This is one of the more symphonic of violin concertos – despite its modest orchestration – and Barenboim lays the foundations of this approach in an opening statement which crosses the line into monumentality. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is one of the beefier American orchestras and Barenboim isn’t overly concerned in toning this down – but then he has a soloist who isn’t shy about expressing that big sound of his instrument either. Both of Perlman’s record labels – EMI and DG – have tended to record him very forward, but this particular performance doesn’t strike me as notably more or less different than most other recordings of this work. If Perlman sounds big it is because he simply plays that way. And were it not for the fact that Perlman is such a clean player, his formidable technique would not allow us to hear double-stopping, bars of semi-quaver passages and arpeggios at the top of his register played with such purity and precision; there is not an ugly sound to be heard in this performance. The close of the first movement is extraordinarily thrilling: a top B of knife-edge sharpness, and finger work of staggering, almost Paganini-like devilry.
Perlman is probably at his most contestable in those passages where we will either warm to or eschew his particular kind of emotive playing. The ‘Windflower’ theme, for example [beginning at 6:20], or the central slow movement which is to all intents and purposes the spiritual heart of the concerto. Barenboim and Perlman give us an Andante that is striking for not being static; indeed, it flows rather beautifully and is often gripping. Perlman’s deep colours are a good blend for those particular Chicagoan tones, although some may not find them especially Edwardian, notably when compared with Menuhin’s altogether more noble performance with Boult, although the New Philharmonia can be equally as weighty as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra – they just have a better hand who knows what to do with it.
When it comes to the Cadenza I have always found something unique about Menuhin’s 1969 performance which I do not hear on other recordings. The relatively mute approach of Perlman – precise to the point of being cool, trills regimentally in place, Nachschlag carefully prepared, the many pauses just a little short of the mystery they should have – make it sound short of its meditative voice. Turn to Menuhin, however, and there is such humanity to the playing, more than a little deference to the richness of Bach – and Menuhin’s tone is just glorious. This is music that is supposed to be a summation of everything that has come before it; when I hear Menuhin in this Cadenza I’m almost reminded of the coda of Bruckner’s Eighth, not just in how he threads the thematic material so wonderfully together but also in how he builds the music towards its ending. Perlman comes up short, I’m afraid.
It’s certainly possible to admire much in Perlman’s Elgar. It’s undeniably one of the best played, as you’d expect from this violinist, but this is not a performance that will be everyone’s taste, and nor is it one that delves as deep as Menuhin, still in many ways the unrivalled master in this concerto.
Marc Bridle
