HEIFETZ plays Mozart, Prokofiev, Mendelssohn Concertos (1949/47) - PASC558

Andrew Rose’s note explains that when Jascha Heifetz played Mozart’s Fourth Concerto and Prokofiev’s Second with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on April 1, 1947, he had no idea that somebody was recording him. On the other hand, his broadcasts of the first movement, and of the second and third, of Mendelssohn’s concerto on June 26, 1949 and January 20, 1947, respectively appeared on the Bell Telephone Hour broadcasts. Rose claims that he has finally united the two performances on a single recording for the first time. Nobody would need to say more about any of this, except “urgently recommended.’ But I’ll go on a bit.

Heifetz liked Mozart’s Fourth Violin Concerto and he championed Prokofiev’s, so listeners here enjoy the combination of Heifetz unedited in repertoire congenial and very much to his liking. He would record Mozart’s concerto in the studio on November 10 of the same year with Thomas Beecham and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and would do so again with Malcolm Sargent on May 14 and 16, 1962. Of the three readings, then, this “bootleg” represents the earliest. Yet, as Andrew Rose has also pointed out, the recorded sound will strike listeners as surprisingly good for having been captured from behind a grill. That microphone placement sometimes leaves Heifetz sounding somewhat distant and swallowed a bit by the orchestral sound. But perhaps the most striking surprise will be that Heifetz seems to be playing naturally and to indulge fewer individual mannerisms that might be expected. He and Serge Koussevitzky adopt quick tempos in the first movement, but they don’t sound grotesquely accelerated. In the second movement, the microphone placement muffles Heifetz’s cantilena in the lower registers, although passages in both the upper ones and in the middle registers come through clearly, as do details such as Heifetz’s elegant soaring portamentos—even those who decry their use should find these examples highly effective in their own way. Once again in the third movement, the concealed microphone placement takes some of the edge off what seems to be exceptionally fluid passagework. Ruggiero Ricci once identified the passages in this movement that call for rapid multi-string crossings as the most difficult in the literature. Heifetz appears (in so far as we can hear) to take them in stride.

Even the combination of lower register and the concealed microphone can’t irretrievably bury Heifetz’s smoldering opening solo in Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto—nor the searing lyrical passagework with which Heifetz spins out the thematic implications of that opening. He’s incisive in the movement’s swirling middle section; and if his readings sounded progressively desiccated as he grew older—and that’s an arguable proposition—that process obviously hadn’t begun by April 1, 1949. (His other recordings of the work come from December 20, 1937 with the same conductor and orchestra and from February 24, 1959, again with the Boston orchestra, but this time under Charles Munch.) The second movement’s contrasts of the hypnotically melodic and the abrasively bristling prove more effective than they would, at least, in the later issue. Heifetz’s dominant personality surmounts the last movement’s aggressively thumping orchestral interjections. His mastery of the incisive passagework has always given him something of an edge in this work, so it’s a privilege to enjoy it unprocessed. The ending is simply overwhelming.

Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, especially its last movement, served as a calling card for Heifetz (he left it in Let Them Have Music); its first movement sounds urgently alive in this Bell Telephone Hour performance. After hearing the two covertly recorded performances, it’s almost startling to hear Heifetz’s opulent sound emerge again at the orchestra’s fore. This recording took place on June 26, 1949; just about two weeks earlier, Heifetz had made his first recording of the work with Thomas Beecham and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (a second would follow about nine years later with Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony Orchestra on February 23 and 25, 1959). Heifetz’s energy in the broadcast seems much higher than it would later, and the close miking allows listeners to take a front-row seat, hearing with crystal clarity the snap of his bow and of his attack in the cadenza. The last two movements come from January 20, 1947; the recorded sound represents Heifetz at similarly close range, so vibrant that some listeners may wonder why he tolerated what engineers would do to his studio recordings later (consider how warmly commanding Pristine has made him sound in Bach’s Solo Sonatas and Partitas). It’s like the cleaned La Primavera. It’s no surprise that he sounds so dazzling in the finale. The surprise instead lies in how well listeners can hear him in it.

Back to the prematurely rendered judgment, resoundingly reaffirmed: For those who love Heifetz, this must be the kind of thing they’ll love. Again, urgently recommended. Essential.

Robert Maxham