110991 bk Menuhin 8/03/2005 02:15pm Page 4 Producer’s Note ADD The Mendelssohn D minor concerto, recorded two days after Menuhin gave the world première public performance Great Violinists • Menuhin 8.110991 of the work in Carnegie Hall, was apparently only released in the United States. Fourteen months later, EMI re-recorded it in London, this time with Adrian Boult at the podium. The earlier version (which marked Menuhin’s first conducting credit on records) disappeared, and has not been available in any form since the 1950s. It has been transferred here from the best portions of three first edition RCA LPs. Menuhin’s recording of the composer’s more famous E minor concerto with Furtwängler conducting has been more readily available in the succeeding decades; yet the master tape is fraught with problems that can be heard MENDELSSOHN from its first (1952) LP release on RCA Victor through EMI’s CDs. What sounds like a tape tracking or bias problem during the original recording session causes the highs to go in and out during the tuttis. In addition, Violin Concerto in E minor occasional grittiness and electronic clicks can be heard on all editions. EMI waited two years to release it in Europe, perhaps in the hope that Menuhin and Furtwängler would re-record it with better sonic results. This transfer was Violin Concerto in D minor made from a French EMI LP pressing. While this was Menuhin’s second recording of the Mendelssohn E minor, the version of the Bruch concerto presented here was already his third attempt on disc. It was to be his only recording with Munch or the Boston Symphony, and like the Mendelssohn D minor, it has been unavailable in any form for several decades. The present transfer was made from a mid-’50s RCA pressing of the 12-inch reissue (LM-1797) of the original 10-inch LP. BRUCH Mark Obert-Thorn Violin Concerto No. 1 Yehudi Menuhin RCA Victor String Orchestra Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra Wilhelm Furtwängler The Naxos historical label aims to make available the greatest recordings in the history of recorded music, in the best and truest sound that contemporary technology can provide. To achieve this aim, Naxos has engaged a number of Boston Symphony Orchestra respected restorers who have the dedication, skill and experience to produce restorations that have set new standards in the field of historical recordings. Charles Munch Recorded 1951-52 8.110991 4 110991 bk Menuhin 8/03/2005 02:15pm Page 2 Great Violinists • Yehudi Menuhin When Menuhin began his long recording career, he occasion when the embargo was broken was the concert MENDELSSOHN: Violin Concertos • BRUCH: Violin Concerto No. 1 in G Minor could work in studios on both sides of the Atlantic, of 11th March 1935, when Georg Kulenkampff played knowing that his discs would have worldwide the Mendelssohn Concerto with Max Fiedler Yehudi Menuhin might have been born to play Born in New York on 22nd April 1916, Yehudi distribution through the reciprocal agreement between conducting the Berlin Philharmonic; then violinist and Mendelssohn. He always had a soft spot for this Menuhin died in Berlin on 12th March 1999. Between Victor and HMV. By the early 1950s this arrangement orchestra even managed to record the Concerto with composer, which probably had less to do with their those dates he metamorphosed from the child of was breaking down, which explains why we have two another conductor – for export only.) Sadly, the Berlin common Jewish heritage than with the perfection of obscure Russian immigrants into Baron Menuhin of Menuhin performances of the D minor Concerto so Philharmonic is here at its dourest, so this is very much Mendelssohn’s craftsmanship. The E minor Concerto is Stoke d’Abernon, perhaps the best-known musician in close together. The one reissued here was made two Menuhin’s performance and he rescues it with his often seen as a miracle of creation – never mind that its the world and a sort of international statesman. He was days after the Carnegie Hall concert, presumably with appealing but never sentimental lyricism. Of course he composition cost a good deal of sweat and tears. brought up initially in San Francisco and, after two the same fifteen hand-picked string players who also had to play a popular work much influenced by the Menuhin the child prodigy was already whirling years of lessons with Siegmund Anker, began studies appeared there, and for the first time on record, Mendelssohn E minor Concerto, Bruch’s Concerto in G through its three movements by the time he was eight. with Persinger in 1923. Two years later he gave his first Menuhin acted as violinist-director. The performance minor. It was the first piece he recorded with orchestra, Obviously his interpretation deepened as the years went full solo recital. Then, in 1926, came his New York has a delightful freshness, reflecting his joy in a musical back in 1931, and he returned to it four more times in by, but it is no coincidence that his first recording of the début, his concerto début in San Francisco and his first discovery and a new avocation. On 2nd April 1953 he the studio. Here we have his third recording, with the concerto, made in 1938, was one of the peaks of his trip to Europe, where he studied in Paris with Enescu recorded the work again in London, with Boult cultured Boston Symphony conducted by a former somewhat overrated 1930s studio output. He was to apart from two summers in Basel with Adolf Busch. conducting, and the two performances were restricted violinist, Charles Munch. The chemistry is not quite as make four recordings altogether, of which the second is From 1931 the family, who lived off Yehudi’s earnings, to their own spheres of trade. When it came to the E fizzy as it would be in 1956 with Walter Susskind: the presented here. He played the concerto around the established their home near Paris, and the following minor Concerto, Menuhin was always able to make musicians seem determined to make something massive world, his most emotional performance being given in year the boy recorded Elgar’s Violin Concerto under the room for expression and persuasive phrasing without of the outer movements and there is a certain amount of 1950 to an all-black audience in apartheid South Africa, composer’s direction. He started playing sonatas with holding up the impetus of the performance. Inevitably straining after effect. The recording is also one of RCA but he also made his own contribution to Mendelssohn his sister Hephzibah in 1933, recorded a Mozart work there are fine moments in the 1952 performance Victor’s less luminous efforts, but, as if in appreciation by exhuming two forgotten early works, with her that September and – having made further reissued here, although the public has never taken this compensation, the soloist is at his easeful best in the the F major Sonata and the D minor Concerto for violin visits to the studios in the meantime – first appeared recording to its heart, as it has the 1958 version with central movement, and it is always worthwhile hearing and strings. In 1951 Albi Rosenthal, a dealer in rare with her in public at the Salle Pleyel, Paris, on 13th Efrem Kurtz. The fault lies with the German conductor artists of the calibre of Menuhin and Munch getting books and musical scores, showed Menuhin the October 1934. After a world tour in 1935 he took an Wilhelm Furtwängler, whom Menuhin admired but together. Indeed, all three of these performances have manuscript of this endearing little work which eighteen-month sabbatical and then entered on a who did not have what it took to be a great their places in the Menuhin tapestry: they are important Mendelssohn wrote at the age of thirteen for his friend disastrous first marriage: his parents had not prepared accompanist. Nor did he ever conduct more than a for our full understanding of this great-hearted Eduard Rietz and the family orchestra. Menuhin was him for real life. Many war-time concerts and a 1945 token amount of Mendelssohn. (During the Third musician. captivated, bought the manuscript, edited it, had it tour of the German death camps with Benjamin Britten Reich, this composer’s music was even banned: a rare Tully Potter published, gave the first modern performance in New were followed by a successful second marriage and a York on 4th February 1952 and went on to make three career lived in the limelight. In due course he took up recordings of it. He and his sister Hephzibah also took conducting, making numerous recordings in that rôle, up the other D minor Concerto, for violin, piano and and although he never had much time available for strings, composed by Mendelssohn a year after the teaching, he founded schools in England and Violin Concerto. In his conversations with David Switzerland. The public, nevertheless, continued to Dubal, Menuhin described Mendelssohn as ‘the lucid associate him with the violin, even when he had given romantic’ and mounted a spirited defence of him up playing it, and much of Menuhin’s later life was against those unable to appreciate a man who wrote ‘so spent trying to reconcile his increasing musical mastery perfectly, so sunnily’. with his diminishing control over his instrument. 8.110991 2 3 8.110991 110991 bk Menuhin 8/03/2005 02:15pm Page 2 Great Violinists • Yehudi Menuhin When Menuhin began his long recording career, he occasion when the embargo was broken was the concert MENDELSSOHN: Violin Concertos • BRUCH: Violin Concerto No.