One thing leading to another… I’ve been working lately on my discography of EMI’s early mid-price and budget collections (Studio, Studio Plus, Laser, Références, Rouge & Noir, Great Recordings of the Century, Forte and Double Forte, Encore…) that I don’t know if I’ll ever publish it, because, as I also try to list all the subsequent reissues, it is sprawling and apparently never-ending.
Anyway, Studio’s first release in 1987 was CDM 7 69001 2, Beethoven’s Violin Concerto by Menuhin and Klemperer leading the New Philharmonia Orchestra in 1966. So that led me to repost here decade-old reviews of various versions of the Violin Concerto by Menuhin (three with Furtwängler, one with Silvestri and the Vienna Philharmonic in 1960 and the one with Klemperer), those conducted by Furtwängler (five in all, with Erich Röhn in 1944, the three with Menuhin and the last one with Wolfgang Schneiderhan in May 1953. I had a big Beethoven spree ten years ago – can time have flown so fast? It seems like yesterday…
As always, reposting isn’t just a matter of “copy and paste”. It requires completing the discography of reissues, finding suitable front and back images, updating all the links, finding the barcode information… Very time-consuming. Here are the links (ordered by chronology of recording):
Erich Röhn, Berlin Philharmonic, Furtwängler 12 January 1944. Deutsche Grammophon “Dokumente” 427 780-2 (1989) (with Coriolan Overture)
Yehudi Menuhin, Lucerne Festival Orchestra, Furtwängler 26 & 29 August 1947. Testament SBT 1109 (1997) (with Two Romances, Menuhin-Furtwängler 9 April 1953)
Menuhin, Berlin Philharmonic, Furtwängler, live 30 September 1947. Tahra FURT 1020 (1997) (with Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture)
Menuhin, Philharmonia Orchestra, Furtwängler 7-8 April 1953. First CD reissue EMI CDC 7 47119 2 (1984) (with Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, Berlin Philharmonic 25-26 May 1952) and reissues with same pairing
Wolfgang Schneiderhan, Berlin Philharmonic, Furtwängler 18 May 1953. DG 474 728-2 (2003?), DG 477 5030 (2004?) (with Symphony No. 5 from 27 May 1947)
Menuhin, Vienna Philharmonic, Constantin Silvestri 5 & 7 February 1960. First CD reissue on 2 CDs EMI “Rouge & Noir” CMS 7 62536 2 (1988) and subsequent reissues
Menuhin, New Philharmonia Orchestra, Klemperer, 21-22 & 24-25 January 1966. EMI Studio / Angel Studio CDM 7 69001 2 (1987) and subsequent reissues
This is the first Beethoven I post or re-post here: until now I hadn”t created a Beethoven introductory page accessible from the “index of composers reviewed”. I’ve now done so and, by way of introduction (as Beethoven needs none), I’ve recounted the seminal importance that listening to Roger Norrington’s recording of the complete symphonies for EMI Reflexe in the early 1990s had for me, forcing me to challenge my own “instinctive” expectations of how the music should sound, a process from which I learned that “instincts” need to be informed, or even “tamed”, by reason – the old story of Dionysus and Apollo, over and over again…