Beethoven, Mendelssohn: Violin Concertos. Yehudi Menuhin, Philharmonia Orchestra April 1953, Berlin Philharmonic May 1952, Wilhelm Furtwängler. EMI Angel CDC 7 47119 2 (1984) barcode 077774711920:
Alternate cover:
Japanese edition (no barcode):
Mendelssohn recorded 25-26 May 1952 at the Jesus Christus Church in Berlin
Beethoven recorded 7-8 April 1953 in Kingsway Hall, London
The following discography lists only the Western reissues and compilations offering the same Beethoven 1953 Mendelssohn 1952 pairing
Reissued EMI References or Great Recordings of the Century, CDH 7 69799 2 (1988) 077776979922:
EMI Great Recordings of the Century European edition (HMV, Nipper logo) 5 66975 2 (1999) 724356697522:
EMI Great Recordings of the Century North American Edition (Angel logo) 5 66990 2 (1999) 724356699021 :
Compiled on CD 33 of 51 CDs EMI 2 64131 2 “Yehudi Menuhin The Great EMI Recordings” (2009) 5099926413129 (for complete contents see listing on Discogs.com):
Reissued Warner Warner 0825646075973 (2015):
Compiled on CD 9 (Concerto) and 11 (Romances) of 18 CDs Warner “The Menuhin Century – The Historic Recordings” (2016) 0825646777051 (best listing of contents is under the Discogs.com entry for the FLAC download edition):
Set compiled in 80 CDs + 11 DVDs Warner “The Menuhin Century” (2016) 0825646782741 (see listing on Discogs.com):
Menuhin-Furtwängler’s best version is the one from Lucerne in August 1947
Originally posted on Amazon.com, 15 August 2014
Menuhin made two studio recordings of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with Furtwängler, and this one, from April 7 & 8, 1953 with the Philharmonia Orchestra, all but eclipsed the earlier one, from 28-29 August 1947 with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra (first CD-reissued by Testament only in 1997, SBT 1109, link will open new tab to my review and listing of CD editions). The Lucerne recording was, politically, an important event and even statement: the post-war ban on Furtwängler’s conducting activities had just been lifted, in May he had been able to conduct his first post-war concert in Berlin 
(Beethoven’s 5th and 6th Symphonies, both on Tahra FURT 1016, barcode 3504129101619, from 1997, and on Audite’s 2009 Furtwängler set, 21.403 “Live in Berlin – The Complete RIAS Recordings”, barcodes 735084493904 and 402143214038
), and Menuhin, anxious to play with a conductor who had been recommended to him by many French friends as the greatest living German one, was ready to brave the hostility of many American Jewish circles.
But a number of reasons explain that the older version was immediately overshadowed by its 1953 successor: the 1947 recording was issued on 78rpm, His Master’s Voice DB 6574/79 and, for reasons that I cannot entirely account for, not even reissued on LP in the early 1950s, as was the case with many significant 78s versions (for instance, Kulenkampff and Schmidt-Isserstedt’s 1936 Telefunken version, Heifetz and Toscanini’s Victor recording from 1940, and Szigeti-Walter’s from 1947 on Columbia): maybe EMI’s Walter Legge had planned all that time for a new recording to be made by the two artists and didn’t want to undercut the new version’s anticipated success by reissuing the older one. Or maybe the reasons were political. The Lucerne recording was also never distributed in the US, even in its 78rpm form. David Hall, in the second, 1950 edition of his encyclopedic book “Records”, complained about it, saying that “if Victor were to issue these records in the U.S.A. they would offer the strongest kind of competition to the near-definitive Szigeti-Bruno Walter reading, regardless of the latter’s availability in LP format”. Little did he know (and I, before reading the liner notes) that RCA, then HMV’s affiliated company in the US, had refused to issue it as it was “not thought politically expedient”, given the controversy surrounding Furtwängler’s attitude during the Nazi era.
So by 1954, with the release of the new recording, hardly anyone had the older version to compare or the equipment to play it on, and even if they had, the 78rpm sonics would have been considered antiquated and non competitive anyway. And how was the pickup Lucerne Festival Orchestra going to compete with the glorious Philharmonia, the orchestra established in London by Walter Legge, the one with which all the luminaries on EMI’s roster, Furtwängler, Karajan, Kubelik, Boult, Cantelli, Galliera, Dobrowen, Sargent, Böhm, Süsskind, Markevitch, recorded? In an era when new LP versions of the Concerto were multiplying fast (Ida Handel-Kubelik, Francescatti-Ormandy, Krebbers-Otterlo, Campoli-Krips, Ricci-Boult, Szeryng-Thibaud) but were still, compared to what we have now, in limited amount, the new version met with immediate and universal success, and it hasn’t abated since.
Yet, the earlier one is better.
First, it has to do with the sonics of the Testament reissue of Lucerne. The original recording was “digitally remastered at Abbey Road Studios by Paul Baily”, and I don’t know how he did it. In transfers from 78s you expect, even in the best transfers, to hear a modicum of surface noise. Not here, it sounds like a taped performance (there is more audible background noise in the hushed beginning of the slow movement). Although the 1999 remastering of Menuhin-Furtwängler’s 1953 Berlin recording for the reissue on EMI’s Great Recording of the Century series (see header) has very marginally improved the impact of EMI’s first reissue and remasterring in 1984 (the same one was used for the 1988 reissue on EMI “Références”), the is no obvious sonic superiority over the 1947 recording in Testament’s reissue. On the contrary, there’s even a touch more transparency and vibrancy on the 1947 violin. In fact, between Testament and the 1984 remastering on References, both the sonics and, for a large part, the interpretations are so similar that, at times, I find myself doubting if I am really listening to two different recordings, rather than two different transfers of the same.
And the interpretations, then. The two are so similar in the outer movements as to be nearly and startlingly identical – so much so that, listening to the opening Allegro ma non troppo, I started wondering if the very slight differences that I thought I heard (beyond the slight difference of sonic perspective) weren’t the product of my imagination, and if Testament hadn’t in fact reissued the Philharmonia recording, passing it off for Lucerne. So here I was, jumping from one to the other, trying to detect those minuscule and almost undistinguishable performance glitches or stage noises that allow to conclude that a recording is not the same as another one. Well, there weren’t many glitches or stage noises in either to be absolutely conclusive, but I did detect some, really minuscule. Anyway, in both cases, both outer movements unfold in typical Furtwängler fashion, large, expansive, unhurried, but it seemed to me that, more vivid orchestral presence helping, there is a touch of added muscularity and bite in the orchestral tutti of the 1947 recording: 1953 sounds more mellow. The Philharmonia, infinitely superior to the pickup Lucerne Festival Orchestra, as some reviewers have claimed? Let’s have facts, not just vague generalities: where, how, what? As for the soloist, Menuhin plays the first movement with incomparable tonal purity and luminosity and great emotional involvement, but again the tonal purity is better highlighted, it seemed to me, in the 1947 recording.
But if ever there was the shadow of a doubt hovering over the first movement, the two remaining ones are sufficiently different from one performance to the other to dissipate it, and here the advantage definitely goes to 1947. In all of Furtwängler’s recordings of the Beethoven Concerto – his wartime performance with Berlin Philharmonic Concertmaster Erich Röhn (released to CD in 1989), his final live performance of the Concerto with Wolfgang Schneiderhan in May 1953 (Deutsche Grammophon Dokumente 474 728-2 or 477 5030), the one from Lucerne and the one given again with Menuhin and the Berlin Philarmonic a month after the Lucerne recording (on the Audite set mentioned above; previously released, in a more problematic transfer, on Tahra FURT 1020) -, he always conducted a spacious and held-back Larghetto. With the January 1944 performance with Röhn, the one from Lucerne with Menuhin is the most spacious and held back of all, and the effect, together with Menuhin’s tonal luminosity and emotive delivery, is beautiful. The solo line is not just played, but delicately and plangently sung, with Menuhin’s top notes boasting a moving frailty, almost whistle-like, like the ethereal pianissimos of a great soprano. By comparison the 1953 remake, as beautiful as it is, strays a bit from Furtwängler’s norm by being somewhat more flowing (9:23 TT to Lucerne’s 10:37), and the impression is overall, I find, plainer and less deeply felt. Menuhin approached the level of Lucerne’s emotional intensity in his later stereo recordings with Silvestri in 1960 and Klemperer in 1966 (links to my reviews) – but never equaled it.
Differences are more subtle between both versions of the Finale, and again, jumping from one to the other, they often sound eerily identical. As was Furtwängler’s custom, tempo is again unhurried (although there is much more of a tradition for that in the Finale, then and now, than in the Larghetto), but, either by interpretive choice or due to some technical difficulties Menuhin in 1953 tends to over-legatoize the phrasings of this dance-like rondo, robbing it of some of its bounce. That, added to the mellow orchestral outbursts, tends to make the movement sound squarer than it might and even, in some spots, dangerously verging on the plodding, eliciting a vague feeling of boredom halfway through. Not so in 1947, and although tempo is the same, the bounce in Menuhin’s phrasings and the added muscularity and impact of the orchestral tutti always keep attention awake. There is also a touch of wiriness to Menuhin’s tone in the runs and double stops in 1954 that is absent in 1947, and in 1947 they sound more effortlessly played.
Without hesitation, if I were to keep only one version of the Violin Concerto by Menuhin-Furtwängler, or by Furtwängler, or possibly by Menuhin (he made three more in the studio, those already mentioned with Silvestri in 1960 and Klemperer in 1966, and one with Masur in 1981, reissued in 1995 on EMI Voix de son Maître 4 83497 2 barcode 724348349729; there’s also a live performance with himself playing and conducting the Menuhin Festival Orchestra in 1971, which EMI posthumously released on 5 62523 2 barcode 724356252325 or 5 62607 2 barcode 724356260726, and there are various other lives on other labels), it would be 1947. At least one undisputable authority agrees with me. The liner notes of EMI’s reissue on References, by Hans-Hubert Schönzeler, recounted that Menuhin had been so enraptured by his Lucerne encounter with Furtwängler in the Beethoven Concerto that for a while he said that he’d never play the Concerto again under any other conductor, later adding: “of course this is impossible, and I have often played it again under others and also with joy But at the time I was so impressed that I never wanted this precious, this unique moment in time to become obliterated – I just wanted the sound to fade away in my ears – the way in which Furwängler had conducted this Concerto” . Later, there’s a famous anecdote, recounted in the Testament liner notes, in which Menuhin is hearing a broadcast of the 1947 recording without knowing who is playing, and doesn’t recognize that it is his earlier version. “As the work was played he reflected that he would dearly love to be able to realize the Beethoven Concerto so such a fashion, only to be informed in an announcement at the end of the performance that he himself was the soloist”.
I’ll return later to Mendelssohn’s Concerto. I have the Reference edition and the 1999 reissue on Great Recording of the Century European edition, 5 66975 2. Good liner notes there by Alan Sanders, TT 71:04, no complaint on this front.