KREISLER plays Violin Concertos (1915-1945) - PASC737

This release celebrates the 150th anniversary of the birth of Fritz Kreisler (February 2, 1875 –January 29, 1962) by presenting his complete repertoire of violin concertos recorded for release on disc. While he was to remake the Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Brahms works in London during the latter half of the 1930s, the earlier versions offered here are generally considered to be his best.

Kreisler’s first concerto recording, the Bach “Double”, made a month before he turned forty, has the distinction of being the first violin concerto recording ever made. Only slightly cut to fit three 12-inch 78 rpm sides, it was much more complete than the only previous attempt at a concerto recording, Wilhelm Backhaus’ 1909 version of the Grieg, which had been slashed to two sides. Although the work was then hardly known, it seemed a perfect fit for the limitations of the time: it was short, and could be recorded nearly complete with minimal forces. The one-to-a-part string quartet backing even had the advantage, in hindsight, of having rather HIP proportions. Partnering Kreisler here was the 25-year-old Russian-born, Auer-trained Efrem Zimbalist, whose style made for an interesting contrast with Kreisler’s Viennese tradition.

It would be nearly a decade before Kreisler returned to the studio for another concerto recording, which turned out to be two within the course of a month. Sir Landon Ronald’s backing for the Mozart seems overly-romanticized by today’s standards, but matches Kreisler’s portamento-laden solo performance – beautiful, if more than a little anachronistic. The Bruch Concerto fares better from the violinist’s approach, which makes it doubly regrettable that it remained unissued until the 1970s. The only surviving test pressings of the set, given by Kreisler to Elgar, are now housed in Yale University, which was the source used for the present restoration.

Following these recordings are two frustrating “might-have-beens”: movements from the Tchaikovsky Concerto and Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole which were recorded with piano accompaniment and which, like the Bruch Concerto, were never issued, possibly for the same reason. The Lalo was recorded the month after the Bruch, just as electrical recording was beginning to take hold; and the hope might have been that Kreisler would get around to recording the entire works using the new technology, which unfortunately never occurred.

The Beethoven and Mendelssohn concertos were made almost exactly two years later, at the end of 1926 in Berlin. Although electrical recording was now the norm, the practice of reinforcing the timpani and string basses using a tuba to support the lower frequencies on early playback devices continued, as can be heard in the Beethoven, particularly during the opening of the first movement and just after the third movement cadenza.

Nevertheless, and despite the somewhat recessed placement of the orchestra, the new technology captured a great deal of detail and presence. Blech’s accompaniment is leisurely on both concertos; but this pays dividends in Kreisler’s performance, particularly in the first movement section of the Beethoven starting around 12:27, where time seems to stand still during Kreisler’s plaintive, sehnsucht-filled playing. The Brahms from eleven months later was the last recording Kreisler made with Blech. While from a technical standpoint the sound is less clean and clear compared to the 1926 sessions, the performance itself is quite fiery and intense.

Kreisler’s next concerto sessions, delayed due to the ensuing Depression, moved to London, where he remade the Mendelssohn under Ronald in April, 1935, and the Beethoven and Brahms under Barbirolli in June, 1936. In December of the latter year, he was in Philadelphia for Eugene Ormandy’s first recording session with the orchestra to which he had been named co-conductor with Stokowski. On the program was Kreisler’s arrangement of the first movement of Paganini’s First Concerto into a self-contained single movement work. Victor’s relative inexperience at the time with concerto recording was actually an advantage here, as Kreisler was not spotlight-miked, but recorded with the same balance as he would have been heard by an audience in the Academy of Music. Kreisler’s arrangement turns the work into the kind of delightful Viennese confection he might have composed from scratch himself.

Kreisler made one more concerto recording in London (a remake of the Mozart, done with Malcolm Sargent in February, 1938) before focusing the remainder of his recording activities in America. His last concerto set was made in May, 1945 when he was seventy years old, with his frequent collaborator from The Telephone Hour radio program, Donald Voorhees, conducting.

Earlier in his career, Kreisler had become somewhat infamous for his “musical forgeries” of works attributed to then little-known Baroque composers which were in fact his own concoctions, a practice which he had begun in an attempt to avoid filling his recital programs with his own name, and which he had owned up to in 1935 to the amusement of many and the outrage of some (mainly critics). His 1927 concerto originally credited to Vivaldi we now know sounds very little like the Italian composer, although that familiarity postdates even this late recording. Although Kreisler’s technique was beginning to falter at this stage in his career (as can be heard on some of his radio recordings of the time), especially after his injuries due to a 1941 car accident, he acquits himself well in this final concerto performance on disc.

Mark Obert-Thorn