Leon Fleisher, piano; Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell, cond. Epic-CBS-Sony, recorded Mar. 3-4, 1961
Emil Gilels, piano; Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell, cond. EMI, recorded Mar.-Apr. 1968
Emil Gilels, piano; Philharmonia Orchestra, Leopold Ludwig, cond. EMI, recorded Apr. 30-May 1, 1957
by Ken
This was supposed to be a ridiculously easy post, before I let it grow in my head -- as I so often do -- into something larger, and something important enough to me that I despair of being able to get it right.
So just to be clear, while we're on the subject of Beethoven's one and only opera, Fidelio, I interrupted this thread last week to share a piece of music that had come at me from an unexpected direction ("Found Music Dept.: When music that pops into your path grabs hold and won't let go"). It's a piece I know about as well as I know my own name, and yet I don't think I'd ever heard it in quite this way: as a prime example of Beethoven's singular ability to give us a musical glimpse into the sublime.
MAYBE I FELT I HAD TO EXPLAIN WHAT I MEAN
BY "A MUSICAL GLIMPSE INTO THE SUBLIME"
If this is what I felt, it was maybe understandable but ultimately wrong-headed. The one clear opportunity I had there, and possibly the most useful thing I had to offer, was an occasion to listen, to listen with aware ears and a clearish mind. These days, after all, is anybody's mind likely to be really clear? "Clearish," however, seems to me a reasonable goal.
For the time being, at least, I'm pretty much throwing out what I had written as the explanation and amplification of last week's postlet, except for the musical examples. And while our ears and minds are in this open-and-aware position, let's listen to another piece of music, one that's closely related to the first -- only this is one that's always made me aware of its musical glimpse into the sublime.
Jascha Heifetz, violin; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Charles Munch, cond. RCA, recorded Nov. 27-28, 1955
Yehudi Menuhin, violin; Berlin Philharmonic, Wilhelm Furtwängler, cond. Live performance from the Titania Palast, Sept. 30, 1947
Yehudi Menuhin, violin and cond.; Menuhin Festival Orchestra. EMI, recorded Nov. 16 and 18, 1971
Performance notes: The Heifetz-Munch is my first and still-most-loved-of-all recording of this piece. (How is it possible, I still wonder, for people to actually listen and venture that Heifetz's playing lacked emotion? Look at him play and yes, he clearly thought it wasn't anybody's business to see what was going on inside of him. But listen to him . . . .)
Anyone who has seen Marcel Ophuls's staggering 1976 film The Memory of Justice surely has vivid memories of the intimate relationship between Yehudi Menuhin (1916-1999) and this movement from this piece. He made six commercial recordings of the piece, not counting the countless live performances that have circulated, including the first version we hear here,, with a conductor we might not have expected to be an especially good match, with whom he nevertheless enjoyed a close musical relationship. This live performance took place a month after Menuhin and Furtwängler made the first of their pair of studio recordings, the remake coming not long into the now-fully-dawned LP era, in 1953. (Later we're going to hear the 1953 recording in its entirely.) Next we hear Menuhin fiddling with a conductor with whom we'd expect him to feel totally at home: himself. By 1971, fairly well established as a conductor, he felt confident enough to undertake the then-unusual -- and still uncommon -- task of conducting as well as playing the piece. For the record, he never did allow the result to be released, and it wasn't until 2003, after he died.
MOST READERS KNOW WHAT WE'VE BEEN
HEARING, BUT LET'S GET IT ON THE RECORD
Well, no, this part of the post isn't quite ready, but it should be postable really soon. Also: If earlybird readers have noticed that a few performances of the Violin Concerto movement have disappeared, resy assured that they'll turn up now in Part 2 -- which you can now find here.
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