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110977 bk Milstein 19/08/2003 5:03 pm Page 5 ADD GREAT VIOLINISTS · NATHAN MILSTEIN Great Violinists • Milstein 8.110977 Historical Recordings · 1940, 1942 and 1945 Also available in this series: MENDELSSOHN: Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64 MENDELSSOHN • TCHAIKOVSKY 1 Allegro molto appassionato 2 Andante BRUCH 3 Allegretto non troppo - Allegro molto vivace Recorded 16th May, 1945 in Carnegie Hall, New York Violin Concertos Matrices: XCO-34739 through 34745 First issued as Columbia 12142-D – 12145-D in album M-577 Nathan Milstein Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York, Bruno Walter, conductor Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York Bruno Walter • John Barbirolli BRUCH: Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26 Chicago Symphony Orchestra • Frederick Stock 4 Prelude: Allegro moderato Recorded 1940, 1942 and 1945 5 Adagio 6 Finale: Allegro energico Recorded 12th April, 1942 in Carnegie Hall, New York Matrices: XCO-32668 through 32673 First issued as Columbia 11855-D – 11857-D in album M-517 Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York, John Barbirolli, conductor TCHAIKOVSKY: Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35 7 Allegro moderato 8 Canzonetta: Andante 9 Finale: Allegro vivacissimo Recorded 6th March, 1940 in Orchestra Hall, Chicago Matrices: WXCO-26604 through 26611 8.110975 First issued as Columbia 11276-D – 11279-D in album M-413 Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Frederick Stock, conductor Producer and Audio Restoration Engineer: Mark Obert-Thorn 8.110977 5 6 8.110977 110977 bk Milstein 19/08/2003 5:03 pm Page 2 Great Violinists: Nathan Milstein (1904-1992) Szymanowski and Prokofiev, with Horowitz playing the spontaneous, especially when one considers it was taken Mendelssohn • Bruch • Tchaikovsky orchestral parts on the piano. ‘The culmination of my down in short sections. It is one of two best-selling Producer’s Note touring with Horowitz through Russia was our concerto recordings that the great German-born Like all great musicians, Nathan Milstein had firm mentally by his teachers: he was always dismissive of the appearances in [Petrograd] in 1923,’ he wrote. ‘They conductor Bruno Walter made with the New York Beginning in the late 1930s, the American Columbia label began to record on 33 1/3 rpm lacquer master discs. The opinions about the music he played (or did not play, such ‘cult of personality’ and had run-ins with several ‘star’ were enormously successful. [...] We were greeted and Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra (the other was the recordings were still done in three to four minute segments, and the approved takes were then dubbed onto wax 78 as the Sibelius Concerto). Most violinists cite the conductors. The highlight of his time at Stolyarsky’s was treated as rock stars are today.’ The grand finale was an Emperor Concerto with Rudolf Serkin). Milstein first rpm master discs. While the shellac pressings made using this method did not sound nearly as good as those by Beethoven and Brahms Concertos at the top of their list the brilliant performance of Glazunov’s Concerto he orchestral concert at which Milstein again played the worked with Walter in Leipzig, playing the Tchaikovsky rival labels using direct-to-wax 78 mastering, the real pay-off came with the advent of the microgroove LP, of favourites, and in his memoirs Milstein duly described gave in 1915 with the composer on the podium. From Glazunov Concerto with the composer conducting. with him on 27th October 1932. He had such a success introduced by Columbia in 1948. The wider frequency range and quieter surfaces afforded by the lacquer masters the Beethoven as ‘a miracle, something that seems to 1916 to 1917 he was at the St Petersburg Conservatory On Christmas Day 1925, Milstein left Russia for that Walter suggested he play a Bach encore, and to the provided a source for early LP transfers that was superior even to transferring from 78 rpm metal masters, and have come out of thin air, like some sort of divine with Leopold Auer, for whom, true to form, he had more good to tour Europe with Horowitz. An appearance in amazement of the orchestra, led by Carl Münch (Charles yielded sound on a par with early 1950s tape masters. message’. But he clearly preferred all three of the respect than love, and this sojourn gave the final polish to Spain led to his crossing the Atlantic, to give recitals in Munch), who would later, as a conductor, record the The three Milstein concerto recordings presented on this disc were among the earliest to be issued by Columbia concertos on this disc to the Brahms. The Mendelssohn – his lofty style, although he learnt as much from listening Buenos Aires and Montevideo with the harpsichordist Tchaikovsky with Milstein, the violinist proceeded to on LP; indeed, the Mendelssohn was the label’s very first 12-inch microgroove release (ML-4001). Because of ‘a work of genius from the first note to the last’ – was his to fellow students such as Heifetz, Toscha Seidel, Eddy Wanda Landowska, and at a concert in Vienna his small play the entire G minor solo Sonata. Walter did not hold their superior sound, the current transfers have been made from LPs which were in turn transferred from the lacquer second choice. ‘And then, alas, the Brahms Concerto.’ Brown, Miron Polyakin and Cecilia Hansen as from the but select audience included Arnold Schoenberg, Alban it against him. With the Bruch, it is possible to say masters. In the Tchaikovsky, a few pops and swishes are present in the original lacquers, as is the cut in the finale. That ‘alas’ tells one a great deal about his opinion of the great pedagogue. ‘I truly came to love the violin in Berg, Karl Amadeus Hartmann and Julius Korngold. The unequivocally that this is Milstein’s best recording (of work (although his marvellous performances of it never Petersburg,’ he wrote. ‘I liked going to the Conservatory, summer of 1926 was spent in Ysaÿe’s orbit, although the three); it also has excellent sound for its time and the Mark Obert-Thorn gave away an inkling of his doubts). He names the and I liked the atmosphere of competition in Auer’s Belgian told him: ‘Go, there is nothing I can teach you’. soloist’s tone is captured with considerable fidelity. The Tchaikovsky, written in the same year as the Brahms class, talented children playing the violin, one better than He emigrated to the United States in 1928, making his performance comes from the tail end of John Barbirolli’s (1878), as ‘truly a virtuoso concerto’ and there is no the next, inspiring me to try harder’. Milstein’s capacity début with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Stokowski period as chief conductor of the New York Philharmonic- doubt about his feelings. He continues: ‘I feel that Max for hard work impressed Auer, who presented him with a the following year (in the Glazunov Concerto), and with Symphony Orchestra, when the Englishman was under Bruch’s First Concerto is a masterpiece. It has virtues bow. ‘I later learned that the bow was very cheap, but for the New York Philharmonic in 1930. Thereafter he fire from the (mostly rather pompous) New York critics. that cannot be found anywhere else’. And he goes on to the notoriously miserly Auer it was an amazing gesture.’ divided his career between the old world and the new. Bizarrely, he was even criticised for his accompanying of say that he prefers it to the Brahms, despite its less All the same, Milstein was forsaken when Auer Although he became an American citizen in 1942, he was soloists, in which he was an acknowledged master before consistent quality – ‘the finale is not so good’. He says emigrated to the United States in 1917, and from the age based alternately in Paris and London after the Second going to America. When one hears the recordings he nothing about his view of Tchaikovsky’s finale, although of thirteen he was essentially an auto-didact, educating World War. He was still playing to a high standard in his made with the orchestra, it is difficult to imagine what his the fact that he habitually abbreviated it in performance himself into the cultured figure familiar in later years. early eighties – his last recital, which was filmed, was opponents were complaining about – the Schumann speaks volumes. What it all boils down to is that here we Milstein knew considerable poverty in the years given in Stockholm in 1986. In his later years he also Concerto with Menuhin is wonderful and his partnership have one of the greatest violinists of the twentieth after the 1917 Revolution, but gradually built up his taught, both privately and at the Juilliard School and the with Milstein here is inspired. Indeed, although Jascha century playing music he really loves. career and in Kiev in 1921 met a young pianist called Zurich Conservatoire. ‘What I feel I can offer these Heifetz is acknowledged as the foremost Bruch player of Born in Odessa on New Year’s Eve 1904, into a Vladimir Horowitz; their duo grew into a trio with young musicians,’ he said, ‘is simply what I have learned his time, Milstein mounts a serious challenge with this middle-class commercial family, Nathan Mironovich Gregor Piatigorsky. In 1923 Milstein played Glazunov’s myself through experience. I try not to impose my way immaculate interpretation. The Tchaikovsky Concerto, Milstein was encouraged by his mother to take up the Concerto in the newly-named Petrograd with the on them, not to teach them to play, even, but to help teach by contrast, suffers a little from the stolid conducting of violin before going at seven to Pyotr Stolyarsky’s school, conductorless orchestra ‘Persimfans’, and Glazunov, them to think.’ He died in London on 21st December Frederick Stock, who clearly shares the violinist’s from which he graduated just as the next star pupil, drunk as usual, insisted on trying to perform an encore 1992.