HEIFETZ & HOROWITZ Mozart, Korngold and Mussorgsky (1947) - PASC513

‘The concert of the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra, Efrem Kurtz, guest conductor, last night in Carnegie Hall was not replete with excitement or with memorable feats of performance, interpretation or creative originality. This holds true in spite of the fact that Jascha Heifetz played, and the further fact that he gave the first performance in New York of the Concerto for Violin, Op. 35, by Erich Korngold.

This is a Hollywood concerto, with vibra phone effects and like devices; fully orchestrated in the Straussian manner; commonplace in its thoughts; liveliest in the final movement, which Mr. Heifetz played in top virtuoso style. Other pages of the concerto are in more lyrical vein, but the melodies are ordinary and sentimental in character; the facility of the writing is matched by the mediocrity of the ideas.

Mr. Heifetz had his best moments in Mozart, when the transparency and the fine continence of his style matched the classicism of the composer, and in the sparkle he gave to pages of the finale...’

Olin Downes, New York Times, 28 March 1947

Discussion in Gramophone magazine:

"Jeremy Nicholas For some reason I have always been fiercely defensive about this work and, despite his less than agreeable personality, the violinist who made the first recording of it. There was a time as late as the 1990s when some critics and broadcasters of a certain hue loved to look down their noses at Korngold in general and his Violin Concerto in particular. Why? Because he wrote film music (horror!) and the concerto uses four themes that Korngold had dreamt up originally for the silver screen (beyond the pale!).

How clever they were, these arbiters of musical taste, each time Korngold’s music came up for discussion, to repeat that stale old canard ‘More corn than gold’ coined by critic Irving Kolodin in the New York Sun after the work’s East Coast premiere. But to the case: for me, this recording of Korngold’s Violin Concerto from January 10, 1953, made, appropriately, on Sound Stage 9 at Hollywood’s Republic Studios, has never been surpassed.

Rob Cowan Well, with your last three words you’ve just about rendered my contribution redundant, Jeremy. Anyone who has heard the teenage Korngold’s Sinfonietta, which was keenly promoted by some of the greatest German maestros of the pre-war period (and here I’m talking both world wars), will know that Korngold’s luscious style was well and truly in place a good 20 to 30 years before this – or the film music – was composed. I’ve never understood why critics have hurled verbal detritus at this wonderful music.

I remember years ago talking to the great violinist Louis Kaufman (the eloquent fiddle in classic scores for Gone with the Wind, Wuthering Heights and so on) and he seemed quite defensive about his ‘weepy work’. Heifetz was of a like heart, and everyone after him who has played the Korngold, no matter how competent and ‘silver-toned’, sounds patronising. They take a ‘naughty-but-nice’ approach, guiltily pushing the calories, whereas Heifetz indulges that inimitable, lean but intense bitter-sweetness, that ‘speaking tone’ with its infinitely varied vibrato, toying with our emotions like some hot-breathed Lolita. He’s ‘the bizz’ as they say. Korngold, like Steiner and Waxman, knew the sort of fiddle sound he wanted (Kaufman, Seidel and Slatkin provided it), so there can’t be any doubt that Heifetz is ‘authentic’.

JN Absolutely, though of course Heifetz wasn’t in the picture (if you’ll pardon the pun) when Korngold began writing the concerto. Bronislav Huberman, a violinist of a very different type and temperament, provided the initial impetus, and the first two movements were written with him in mind. Also, Bronislav Gimpel claimed to have played the work before Heifetz (though this must have been in private and before it was complete, as Heifetz definitely had some influence on the technically demanding finale). The sound world of the whole score seems so empathetic with Heifetz’s, I wonder if Korngold revisited what he had previously written once Heifetz was on board?

It’s quite an exotic line-up for a violin concerto: apart from the inclusion of a bass clarinet, contrabassoon and celesta, there’s a glockenspiel, xylophone, vibraphone, tubular bells, gong and bass drum. And here’s the thing: though you’d be hard pressed to hear all these individually on this recording, does it matter?

RC I know, of course, that Heifetz wasn’t ‘in the picture’, it’s just that when it came to prompting a lump in the throat for the movies, his style was prototypical. Virtually every movie concertmaster followed his stylistic lead. It’s worth noting too that there’s a concert recording by Heifetz under Efrem Kurtz from March 1947 (out on Music & Arts), a performance given just six weeks after the premiere in February with Vladimir Golschmann in St Louis. Interesting that the balance there is rather more natural than it is on this famous version under Wallenstein – and the performance itself is, if anything, even more exciting.

You allude to the exotic scoring but for those of us brought up on that wonderful old vinyl album Heifetz’s all-pervading presence sidelined the orchestra’s contribution to a mere ‘accompaniment’ (as was quite often the case with Heifetz’s orchestral records). Later recordings by the likes of Shaham, Mutter, Perlman, Schmid, Znaider and Juillet – all exceedingly fine players – admit more in the way of subsidiary orchestral detail (Shaham and Previn being perhaps the most revealing in that respect). They all act as essential supplements to this classic. I suppose the most overwhelming aspect of Heifetz’s performance – whether under Wallenstein or under Kurtz – is the intensity of those leaps into the instrument’s upper regions, and the accuracy of his intonation. It’s fearless playing..."

From Classics Reconsidered (full discussion here), considering the 1953 Heifetz studio recording and referencing the present live recording