Beethoven: Violin Concerto. Jascha Heifetz, NBC Symphony Orchestra, Arturo Toscanini 11 March 1940 / Piano Concerto No. 3. Arthur Rubinstein, NBC, Toscanini 29 October 1944. RCA 5756-2-RC / RD 85756 (1987), RCA 60261-2-RG / GD 60261 (1990)

Beethoven: Violin Concerto. Jascha Heifetz, NBC Symphony Orchestra, Arturo Toscanini 11 March 1940, Piano Concerto No. 3. Arthur Rubinstein, NBC, Toscanini 29 October 1944. RCA Red Seal 5756-2-RC (1987) barcode 078635575620 (North-American edition) / RD 85756 (1987) 0035628575623 (European edition)

 

Reissued   “Arturo Toscanini Collection vol. 41” RCA Victor Gold Seal 60261-2-RG (1990) 090266026128 / GD 60261 (1990) 0035626026127

 

 

Compiled in 82-CD/1 DVD set The Arturo Toscanini Collection RCA 09026-60250-2 (1992) 090266025022 / GD 60250 (1992) 0035626025021. Augmented reissue 84 CDs/1 DVD Arturo Toscanini The Complete RCA Collection RCA Red Seal / Sony 886979163126 (2012)

(Violin Concerto only) (2 CDs) “The Heifetz Collection vol. 5 1939-1946” RCA 09026-61736-2 (1994) 090266173624:

 

(Violin Concerto only) Compiled in 65-CD set “The Heifetz Collection” RCA 09026-61778-2 (1994) 090266177820:

(Violin Concerto only) Compiled CD 7 of 103-CD & DVD set RCA Red Seal / Sony “Jascha Heifetz The Complete Album Collection” (2011) 88697700502 complete contents on Discogs.com

(Piano Concerto only) “The Rubinstein Collection” vol. 14 RCA Red Seal 09026-63014-2 (1999) 090266301423 (with Beethoven Piano Sonatas Nos. op. 31-3, op. 57 “Appassionata”)

(Piano Concerto only) Compiled in 94-CD set “The Rubinstein Collection Limited Edition”, RCA Red Seal 09026-63000-2 (1999) 090266300020

(Piano Concerto only) Compiled in 142-CD & 2 DVD set RCA Red Seal / Sony “Arthur Rubinstein The Complete Album Collection” (2012) 0886919369120

Historical, and interpretive lessons still to be remembered and learned from today
Originally posted on Amazon.com, 27 December 2009

When I was younger and knew much less, I thought (an opinion shared by many others it seems) that Heifetz and Toscanini played everything too fast and too relentlessly, all breathless drive no singing and feeling. My ideal in Beethoven’s Violin Concerto was the long breath and sweet lyricism of Oistrakh (my standard was his third and last studio recording, with Cluytens and the French National Orchestra, in 1958 (first CD reissue 1989 on EMI Studio CDM CDM 7 69261 2 barcode 077776926124).

Now that I have heard many more recordings of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, I certainly haven’t reneged on Oistrakh, but, with expectations and habits challenged both by the very early recordings of the 1920s and 1930s and by the “historically-informed” interpretations and the ear-cleansing approaches of Norrington, Gardiner and the likes, I’ve reflected on matters of tempo in interpreting Beethoven, and more generally in the interpretation of 19th Century music by performers from the second half of the 20th Century. As much as I (still) like the long breath and lyrical approach, I came to realize that those broad tempi were – especially in Beethoven – an early-to-mid 20th Century invention rather than anything based on the scores and what can be presumed of the composer’s intentions – Beethoven was always incensed at all the performers who played his works too slow, and it is because he was so intent at giving the true – and breathtakingly fast – tempi of his compositions that he once visited the Viennese manufacturer and inventor Mälzl with the hope of finding an efficient hearing aid and came out having prodded Mälzl into inventing the metronome! Not that these other and more spacious approaches can’t be illuminating and convincing, but sometimes the “commentary”, or the accepted traditions, simply blur the original image, like the patina on Michelangelo’s murals in the Sistine Chapel (painting conservators call it “dirt”). The tendency, especially after World War II, has been to broaden the tempi, in order to bring out the expressivity, the pathos, the grandeur, the weight, the “angst” and anguish, the lyricism, the “hidden layers” and all of that. But something essential and vital has also been lost in the processs: the unrelenting forward momentum, the exuberance, the explosiveness, the youthful joy, the rage (and over a “lost Beethoven” rather than penny) – and simply the score’s tempo indications – all those values that, however shocking they may seem on first hearing to our minds imprinted with later performance traditions, make Beethoven a revolutionary and challenging composer rather than a comfortable one.

Beethoven’s Violin Concerto is a good case in point. It is generally viewed, along with the 4th Piano Concerto, the Triple Concerto and the Pastorale, as one of the composer’s most uniformly lyrical works, and that approach dates all the way back to Kreisler’s own recordings, from 1926 with Leo Blech in Berlin (on Music & Arts “Fritz Kreisler Early Recordings”, CD 290(2) barcode 017685029028) and ten years later with Barbirolli in London (Biddulph LAB 001-3  “The Art of Fritz Kreisler” barcode 0744718000326) – although Barbirolli’s orchestra was more muscular and animated than Blech’s. Granted, the tempo indication for the first movement does allow for a wide margin of, well, interpretation: “allegro ma non troppo” (Beethoven never provided metronome marks for the Violin Concerto, seldom played during his lifetime). How much the “allegro” is going to be watered down by the “non troppo” is up to the interpreters. Still, the tendency since Kreisler has been to turn the movement into a “moderato” or a “maestoso” rather than anything close to an allegro, even with the “non troppo” gear clinched. And, of course, the Larghetto has been taken as a Largo ever since Kreisler, an approach brought to extremes by the German tradition, Böhm with Max Strub in 1939 (faultily called “Straub” in the appalling transfer released or pirated by Iron Needle, barcode 0723723790521, link to my review on Amazon.com pending repost) and Furtwängler with Röhn in bombed Berlin in 1944. And there is also a tradition for turning the Finale (Rondo allegro) into a stately and elegant aristocratic ballet, if not a trudging peasant dance – mind you, why should peasants in the time of Beethoven dance trudgingly?

Yet there is more to the Violin Concerto than just all-out lyricism, and in fact there existed, in the 1920s and early 1930s, another interpretive tradition, one that was in fact dominant, as illustrated by the early recordings of Isolde Menges and the Royal Albert Hall Orchestra conducted by Landon Ronald (the work’s premiere recording, from 1923, not available commercially to the best of my knowledge but made available on streaming by the British Library, search sounds.co.uk), Josef Wolfsthal’s two recordings from 1925 and 1928 (with Hans Thierfelder, Biddulph LAB 095 barcode 0744718009527, and Manfred Gurlitt, Symposium 1141 “Great Violinists vol. 6”, barcode 760411141029), Huberman with Szell conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in 1936 (I have it on APR/Appian, APR 5506 barcode 5024709155064 with Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole) and even Szigeti and Walter in 1932 with an unnamed British Orchestra (on Dante Lys 518-519 barcode 3421710425186 “Bruno Walter vol. 7 1932-19338 Londres Vienne”). While there are much fewer early recordings of the Triple Concerto to judge from, the same observations apply also to the 4th Piano Concerto: the majority of recordings made before the early 1950s were brisk and ebullient, turning it into a close kin of the Emperor. The view of the 4th as an essentially lyrical work is not one that his embedded, so to speak, into the music and score: it is an interpretation.

It is surprising that Heifetz should have waited as late as 1940 to record Beethoven’s VC. I don’t know if it had to do with the public’s tastes in those days or his own. He made a famous remake early on in 1955 (and stereo) with Munch and Boston (first CD reissue in 1985 on RCA RCD1-5402 barcode 07863554022 and RD85402 barcode 0035628540225). As for Toscanini, this is a significant testimony, as it is the only recording he made of a piece he often conducted in concert (and this occasion was the last time he performed it as well).

So, Heifetz and Toscanini are swift. Toscanini is also, as can be expected of him, powerful and muscular in the outer movements’ tutti, making them sound almost like military music and establishing an unexpected and ear-catching kinship with the Eroica, written three years earlier – although the orchestra’s articulation could be crisper. In the first movement Heifetz doesn’t linger and grind to a near-halt to let you enjoy the view, and his runs certainly run rather than muse – but with none of the sense of virtuosic rushing imparted by Huberman, and it is interesting to note that, up to the first movement cadenza, Huberman-Szell were in fact faster than Heifetz-Toscanini, if only by a few seconds (and Wolfsthal-Gurlitt 1928 only a few seconds slower). Yet Heifetz is far from inflexible, although his rubato is minimal, discreet and tasteful. Heifetz’ tone is not big and plush but it is beautifully pure, crystalline and razor-sharp – and, what Heifetz bashers who don’t listen carefully enough tend to disregard, here’s a man who, even at those fast tempos, knew how to sing. As a result, his approach by no means lacks lyricism – in fact I find the lyrical passages, played with Heifetz’ crystalline tone, wonderfully songful -, but the pulse is by the bar rather than by the beat, and you always have the sense that they know where the phrase is leading to when they board it.

Heifetz and Toscanini play the Larghetto as a true Larghetto: compare their timing of 8:08 (up to the final cadenza point) to Kreisler’s 9:53 (with Blech) and 10:05 (with Barbirolli), Böhm’s 10:33 and Furtwängler’s 10:35. Certainly, there is none of the beautiful brooding meditativeness of the slower approaches, but I find Heifetz’ more passionate take valid in its own right, and not just because it is presumably closer to what Beethoven had in mind. The Finale is brisk, lively and explosive in the orchestral tutti; but note that Isolde Menges took it even faster in her premiere recording. An additional interest is that Heifetz plays his own reworking of Auer’s cadenza in the first movement: it is great and deserves more currency, every fiddler these days seems to think that the ubiquitous Kreisler’s was written by the composer himself and an “Urtext” obligation. As the name implies, Auer’s should be everybody’s cadenza. And, played late at night and after class, it becomes after Auers (OK, I couldn’t help unleashing the silliness in me for five seconds). Auer wrote a cadenza only for the first movement: Heifetz plays Joachim’s in the other movements, even the rarely excercised one at the end of the Larghetto, and his own abridged concoction of it in the Finale.

Ultimately then, heard in the context of the times and the interpretive models then prevalent, Heifetz-Toscanini don’t sound as far out as they might have later, although what belongs uniquely to them is the military explosiveness brought to the Concerto, its closeness to the Eroica or the Emperor Concerto. It is after World War II that the more spacious approach announced by Kreisler became dominant, so much so that the Heifetz approach appeared almost freakish – and, with Heifetz radicalizing it in his remake with Munch in 1955, to an extent it was. Sonics (on the 1990 reissue in the mammoth 82-CD Toscanini Collection) are 1940 78 rmp, with a little bit of surface noise and occasional clicks (it doesn’t bother me), a touch of saturation in the Finale’s tutti, and you can hear the side joint at 8:09 in the first movement – the sound of the orchestral tutti suddenly jumps at you. But the instruments are well defined and Heifetz’ tone is stellar. The 1955 remake with Munch came in stupendous sonics that sound, I don’t know by what technical miracle, as stereo as anything recorded ten years later, but I find that Heifetz’ marginally more high-strung approach in the first movement went one step too much over the top, and changed breath into suffocation. So this earlier effort is, sonic warts and all, my prefered version of the two.

The liner notes, by the eminent Toscanini specialist Mortimer H. Frank, mention Rubinstein’s recollection of the rehearsal of this live concert and NBC broadcast of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 from October 29, 1944, the only collaboration between the two and the maestro’s first performance of the Concerto in the US (there is available, but not part of the official RCA Toscanini edition, another recording of it, made two years later with Myra Hess and published on Naxos’ Toscanini Concert Edition 8.110804 barcode 636943180426). The first run-through had not gone well, apparently because of the significant differences of conception between conductor and soloist, but then Toscanini asked a sceptical Rubinstein if he would play the first movement again, and suddenly all was in place, “the tempo was right… and the tutti sounded with all the nuances required… Toscanini… respected all my dynamics, held up the orchestra where I made the tiniest rubato…”.

If this leads you to think that Toscanini significantly changed his conception to fit the soloist’s, it is not what I hear; the two approaches must not have been so wide apart. It is a reading of considerable dynamism, urgency, crisp articulation and bubbling energy, with an imperative and dramatic finale that brings the “Emperor” to mind. Only in the middle Largo do Rubinstein and Toscanini lack the kind of hushed and dreamy atmosphere that makes the most beautiful readings. The Rubinstein-Heifetz-Piatigorsky collaboration of the 1940s is often presented as a purely financial affair from soloists who shared little in common musically, but based on the Rubinstein recordings from those years (including his first studio recording of a Beethoven Concerto, the 4th, from 1947, and his sole recorded collaboration with Thomas Beecham, on RCA’s Rubinstein Collection Vol. 9, 090266300921, as well as his recordings with Heifetz, documented on EMI References CHS 7 64929 2 barcode 077776492926 “Jascha Heifetz Recital”, see my reviews on Amazon.com pending repost here), I don’t hear that at all. Rubinstein was not in those years a “mellow” pianist, as this Beethoven 3rd amply proves.

There are small patches of sonic distortion in the finale and a constant, underground grating from the shellac surfaces – nothing significant in view of these two recordings’ historical importance and musical value.