Jascha Heifetz’s Recordings Reissued On 65 Cds
Who is the century’s greatest pianist? Get ready for long arguments.
The century’s greatest violinist? Get ready for near-unanimity. It was Jascha Heifetz.
To spur recollection and some argument, RCA has reissued on 65 compact discs the violinist’s total recorded output. The trove includes some performances Heifetz made for EMI and some private ones that his family had.
With an artist who performed so many times on radio, probably no one can count the number of private recordings out there, but this RCA collection is comprehensive. RCA had issued many of these on LP in 1975 and added to that in 1977.
No other violinist defined the instrument and the music of his time the way Heifetz did. Colleagues called him “The King” at a time when Russia was sending forth violin princes with astonishing regularity. He was king in a realm that included Mischa Elman, Efrem Zimbalist, Nathan Milstein, David Oistrakh, Fritz Kreisler, Georges Enesco, Eugene Ysaye and Zino Francescatti.
When Norman Carol retired as Philadelphia Orchestra concertmaster earlier this year, he thought back over the violinists he had admired as a boy. “The King,” he said. “There was only one violinist.”
Even today’s young violinists, disdainful of the past, praise Heifetz’s recordings. Older violinists with substantial careers say they still have his playing in their ears, decades after some profound experience hearing him in concert.
Those who found his playing cold are often surprised when they hear the recordings. Was this powerful romantic the icy violinist they’d thought they remembered?
Of course, he had his critics. Some latter-day writers say he played Heifetz instead of Bach and Beethoven, and some object to his passion for “morceaux” - from “Hora Staccato” to Gershwin’s “It Ain’t Necessarily So.” But he was a musician of his time, and his audiences demanded those brilliant novelties. The four minutes or so that a 78 rpm record allowed him also invited his involvement with short pieces.
Mostly, he answered his critics with the perfection of his playing, the range and color of his sound and his promotion of so many contemporary composers.
The recordings loom in any discussion of Heifetz because he tailored his repertoire to what contemporary recording technology could accommodate.
For the first 30 years of his recording career, technology demanded short pieces. It was only in the late 1940s, when the LP was introduced, that his repertoire began to include concertos, Bach toccatas, and major sonatas for violin and piano.
He recorded for nearly 55 years, from his American debut in 1917 - at age 17 - to the year of his final recital, 1972. His first discs were made in Camden, where he recorded pieces such as Schubert’s “Ave Maria” and Paganini’s “Moto Perpetuo.” He was 34 before he recorded a concerto - Mozart’s “Concerto No. 5,” with John Barbirolli and the London Philharmonic.
Recording techniques advanced in those years from acoustic to electrical to the analog process used on long-playing records. The reengineering on these CDs has revived the sound on the early discs without distorting it, and the later recordings gain from RCA’s careful attention. He recorded for RCA almost exclusively, creating an archive almost unmatched by any other musician of this century.
Heifetz played everything. He played unaccompanied Bach, baroque and Romantic concertos and chamber music. He commissioned concertos from William Walton, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Miklos Rosza and others. He transcribed music for violin, his interests ranging from Cyril Scott’s “The Gentle Maiden” to Handel. Eighty-nine composers are represented on these 65 discs.
He recorded chamber music mainly with cellists Emanuel Feuermann and Gregor Piatigorsky; violists William Primrose and Joseph de Pasquale; and pianists Brooks Smith, Leonard Pennario, William Kappel, Artur Rubinstein, Jacob Lateiner and many others. He recorded with orchestras under contract with RCA the Boston Symphony, London Symphony, London Philharmonic and the RCA Symphony.
Heifetz’s final recital is included. He played with Brooks Smith and included Richard Strauss’ “Sonata,” Bach’s “Partita No. 3,” Cesar Franck’s “Sonata” and a handful of works by Debussy, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Kreisler, Manuel de Falla, Ernest Bloch and Ravel. That program summarized his artistic life. The performance on this disc is resolute, technically about perfect and musically commanding.
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