Beethoven’s Violin Concerto

Thanks George.  I haven't thought of looking back this far for a great Beethoven Vln recording. The Beethoven was my accidental introduction to classical music and violin lessons, back in 1975.  Five years later Radio 3 broadcast a performance from Berlin of Anne-Sophie Mutter (very young) with Karajan.  I still regard it as the best I've heard. I've just bought the LP issue from about the same time.  I'll listen to it when I'm absolutely ready for it.

I don't think there's any room for mannerisms. Or personality.   Have you heard Grumiaux?

The Isabelle Faust recording with Abbado might give you the straightforward unmannered quality you're looking for, coupled with a supreme level of execution (and the Berg concerto).

Yes.  Indeed.  I'm only put off Faust because I heard her playing the sonatas. Very honest but with that 'authentic' style that puts me off.  Endless succession of hairpins on every note and phrase.  I feel sea sick listening to it. But Faust could play the Beethoven well and I might enjoy it. I find this growing style of halfway between full modern and full early music style hard to enjoy.  Abragimova is heading this way too. On the other hand I find many modern violinists sound all the same, from the same East Coast fiddler factor. All big fat sound and all the notes in the right place but no room for humanity. 

Thinking about it, has Augustin Dumay recorded it?

Thanks George.

See Szell can be wonderful.

I need to source this CD. I was just thinking refreshing on Beethoven's Violin Concerto the other day. I only have a few ( including dreadful Barenboim's 'a' version ) and many are Heifetz and Oistrakh. ( and so far noone that I have tried surpassed those two giants ) 

Szigeti also worth also worth a listen.

For straight forward you should look for Isabelle Faust as already was indicated.

kuma posted:

See Szell can be wonderful.

 

And Huberman! Fantastic Tchaikovsky too...

The versions I listen to the most are Heifetz and Hilary Hahn. Hahn's technique is flawless and she gives and inspired interpretation without manneurism.

Claude

Bert Schurink posted:

For straight forward you should look for Isabelle Faust as already was indicated.

Agreed, I bought this recording mainly for the Berg, but the Beethoven is excellent.

Didn't know that Hahn had recorded the Beethoven I like her Bach very much. More polyphonic than virtuoso opportunity. I shall give the Faust recording a listen. 

Just listened to 1st Movement of Faust playing.  Not for me. Too many strange surges in tempo in the figures that the violin has between the orchestra tuttis. Breaks the line and for me doesn't make musical sense.  And there were a few other things that are not in the score. Not in my edition anyway. The orchestra is great though. I know she's done her research but music is for the soul.

Interesting though.  Thanks for prompting me to try it. 

Nice pick, George.  I have just listened to the Concerto.  I couldn't find the exact CD you posted but I did find this same recording coupled with the Tchaikovsky (& William Steinberg).  

My interest though is in Bronislaw Huberman & Ignaz Friedman with the Violin Sonata.  As luck would have it, I just received a Friedman CD last week and this same recording of the Kruetzer is on it.  So I am looking forward to listening to that later this evening.

Regarding the comment about slow performances I think this only boils down to ones own tastes only.  Certainly, you could only be referring to the first movement.  I just couldn't imagine the outcome of the 2nd movement marked Larghetto to be played at the horse races.  Regarding the first movement it is a tad faster than typically played since.  As regards to taste and preferences one has to weigh this against Beethoven's own instructions of Allegro ma non troppo (which means Fast but not too fast).  Simply put, with Beethoven's warning one should ask how much is too fast?  Also, no matter what speed one prefers there are always tradeoffs.  With speed you tend to limit the musicality and too slow can against a musical message.

How can one tell whether a performance is full of mannerisms or not?

Regards, 

Doug

Dear  Doug,

Of course you are correct in observing that the steady [or slow according to view] tempo taken refers to the first movement.  I think it is fascinating how Szell brings a no nonsense approach to the temptation to slow down without really recovering the tempo precedente. Huberman seems quite happy with this quite un-sentimantal approach though he plays like a real Tzigan!  Lovely sliding between slurred notes and all! 

I would read “Ma non troppo” as a caution against over speeding the “Allegro." One thinks also in this respect of the first movement of the Great C Major Symphony of Schubert where once again there seems to be a temptation to play at a Quazi Andante pace in some cases! 

With regard to tempo I would call it a mannerism that slowing is not regenerated in a concomitant acceleration to balance things out in what is a true rubato way. Szell and Huberman manage this rather well, and where they do adopt a deviation of tempo they soon bring things back to a musically satisfying Allegro that is far from being so fast as to make musical phrasing and shaping inflexible and low key.  As you say, this performance is only a tad faster than many today, but sometimes a tad is all it takes to get the music to stand up and dances, or sit on its hands, to use Boults description of a just slightly too slow tempo ...

I was so delighted to find this performance, I simply wanted to share it, as I bet most people would assume that a recording from now eighty plus years ago, quite probably would be impossible to enjoy from a technical stand-point.

Ignaz Freidmann has a footnote in my Norwegian grandmother’s life! He was to play a recital in Oslo, and my grandmother took her husband to be to it. I think it was a great disappointment to her that my grandfather did not have any appreciation of the music at all, and that was the last recital she took him to! It will be my great pleasure to listen to a pianist that my grandmother had listened to in a live concert.

ATB from George

George Fredrik Fiske posted:

 

I was so delighted to find this performance, I simply wanted to share it, as I bet most people would assume that a recording from now eighty plus years ago, quite probably would be impossible to enjoy from a technical stand-point.

 

Not me. I was enjoying Caruso recording made from 1906-1917 a few weeks ago!

RCA did a great remastering from whatever!! ( this is pre tape era so not sure where they took the source from other than original wax cylinders! )

Dear Kuma,

I like Jerrold Northrop Moore’s description of old recordings well restored.

The “Time bat radar” of music that allows us to listen to what otherwise would only be myth or legend. 

No doubt that recording technology has transformed for the better, but so often these old recordings let us glimse the old style with a technical quality that does all it needs to to convey the musicality of the old music making at its best!

Sometimes these old recordings can offer a powerful corrective. The notion that early twentieth century performances were full of false sentimentality or were played less well than today is disproved by the chance to actually listen to it! 

Of course we can also observe that certain types of music are better understood today. Not the least being the performance practice in the music of JS Bach, but for composers whose music was either new or not old at the time of recording in the early 20th. Century, they often have great insight to show ...

ATB from George

George,

For me, it's always about the performance regardless of when it was recorded.

I used to purchase many classical audiophile recordings hoping I would like them but alas, they sat on the shelf and not being played for years and years. 

Turning point was a 60 cents find at a resale store of Toscanini's Beethoven Nine Symphonies box set. I knew nothing of his music making but was familar with his name ( he was a household name in the 50s thanks to his radio broadcast in prime time America )

Old mono recording with a high hiss tape noise yet I ended up listening to the whole box ! Those familiar 5th and 6th sounded so fresh as I have never heard before. The music sounded so different from de factor Karajan or Stokowski et all... Right there and then I realised the way these music are played I could connect to Beethoven's music for the first time!

I've a friend who collects 78s and thought he was nuts. But I sort of get it when I listen to these ultra old prehistoric music, tho, there is a tremendous immediacy and dynamics that come through with strong in room presence of a performer. ( not dissimilar from current Music Matters Blue Note reissues ) It is like a time machine even just for a moment.

As far as performance is concerned the criticism amongst those who studied the score seems to be that technical facility of older performers are less than good compared to today's professionals. I can certainly tell if they fudge a note but I more or less go along with Schnabel telling an  EMI engineer when asked for another take to correct a wrong note he played  'he's happy to play it again but it won't be as good'.

Editing is not always a route to a better presentation in a recording, though sometimes a great performance may be rescued with a small amount of judicious editing. In 78 days that meant a whole new take, but what I think is staggering is how often we get “Take One” in the issued album!

The trouble is that editing has got out of hand is now virtually the basis for producing a finished commercial issue. 

Not of violin note can be adjusted with a tiny slide. It has to be edited out ... And the music looses all sense of coherent forward motion and inevitability ...

ATB from George

George Fredrik Fiske posted:

The trouble is that editing has got out of hand is now virtually the basis for producing a finished commercial issue. 

 

Talking about Gould?

He seems to be using endless editing as the way he refines his final product.

Here, Gould again 20 years earlier in the Columbia Studio agonising over one wrong note at a recording sessions. ( about 15 min. in )

It would be better to record it again as a complete take!

But seriously the absolute “apparent" technical perfection found in heavily edited recordings can give a false impression of the performer! Klemperer thought that if the player[s] are not technically proficient enough to record a complete “take" that is fine then it would be better to get players who were, and then make a different recording. Klemperer would be very surprised by the use of "auto-tuning” for singers with less than stelar intonation in the modern scenario!

ATB from George

Like k90tour2, Beethoven’s Violin Concerto was the first classical piece I really listened to - my introduction was back in the 80's on a friends LP12/Quad303/405/Electrostatics in a very big room in a Victorian house overlooking the bay at Grange-over-Sands. It was one of those moments you remember your whole life (and incidentally why I got into quality hifi). I too like the early Karajan/Mutter DG edition and I am on my 3rd copy now. I listened to it again last week while auditioning some new speakers and it still moves me (sounded great on my CDX/XPS/82/2xhicap/180 and some PMC Twenty23's)

Another piece I got into soon after that was Vaughan Williams Thomas Tallis Fantasia - a wifes relation played solo violin on the William Boughton English String Orchestra Nimbus version and gave me it as a signed LP (she had been a Menuhin School pupil!). For me it is the definative version and is wonderful (IMO) - so much passion and amazing virtuoso technique. 

I will give this EMI References version a go - it certainly sounds different!

Kevin 

Dear Kevin,

Another useless gobbit of information is that William Boughton taught me piano for a fairly short while in the 1970s.

I was useless at the piano and he seemed rather un-interested in an apparently talentless pupil!

The first recording of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto I listened to was the second by Menuhin, with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted [perhaps surprisingly] by Wilhelm Furtwangler. I soon got myself my own LP of this, but with Menuhin and the Philharmonia conducted by Otto Klemperer. This was a strange performance with many good things and some oddities about it. Klemperer certainly give a straight forward “copybook” account of the orchestral support, and Menuhin seemed to have lost ground in his playing since the Furtwangler recording more than ten years earlier. Eventually I also purchased the Oistrakh performance with Cluytens [also on EMI] , and was left wishing that Klemperer had been conducting as Oistrakh himself was superb! 

Up till now my favourite performance does date from the dark days of early 78 recording:

Fritz Kreisler, Berliner Staatsoper, Doctor Leo Blech

which has an aweful lot going for it except for the recording ... more than passable for 1927, but hardly easy listening!

It will be interesting to me to find out if the 1934 Huberman recording is far in advance [recording technique-wise] from seven years later and using EMI’s by then superb Blumlein recording system rather than the crumbly Western Electric system used in the Kreisler recording. As performances they are quite different of course, but sharing tremendous style!

ATB from George

Hi George

How amazing is that association! Only 4 degrees of the six degrees of separation.

Unfortunately we are no longer in contact with Sue but she did have some amazing (and funny) anecdotes about life in the School and on the various tours she subsequently did. 

I too have the Menuhin/Furtwangler recording (the EMI Classics CD reissue) and it is indeed excellent. I have yet to play it through the new speakers, but that's part of the joy of rediscovering your collection after a beneficial upgrade! 

Kevin

The Huberman recording has come!

Sublime!

You cannot believe how badly the youtube presentation is beside the official EMI CD!

ATB from George