00:00 – I. Allegro ma non troppo
25:33 – II. Larghetto
35:50 – III. Rondo. Allegro
Recorded: 8-10.07.1965
https://www.amazon.com/Beethoven-Concerto-Major-Hans-Schmidt-Isserstedt/dp/B0009N2VP0
Jon Miller (‘Kirk’)
5.0 de 5 estrellas a winner
Calificado en Estados Unidos el 7 de enero de 2013
This is a Japanese CD with wonderful sound, playing, and conducting. I don’t recall is being released in the US and had not known about it until recently. Its tempi are slow but possess more than sufficient forward motion. It is more akin to the Szeryng/Klemperer and Schneiderhan/Jochum versions (see my review) than the quicker and a bit less lyrical Grumiaux/Van Beinum version (see review). These are my four favorites. Szeryng plays as well here as he did in the live Testament disc with Otto Klemperer and with Ingrid Haebler in the Philips Duos of the complete Beethoven Violin Sonatas (he was also a superb chamber musician as his Mozart and Beethoven sonatas with Haebler and Rubinstein testify). He employed a sweet tone, articulated quite cleanly without excess rhapsody but with sufficient poetry-try the coda in the first movement, the entire second movement and the animated opening of the Finale for examples. The underrated Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt is every bit a peer of the Olympian trio of Van Beinum, Jochum, and Klemperer in this concerto.
“His musical civility is the opposite of Jascha Heifetz’s visceral energy, or Joseph Szigeti’s sonic provocation. Mr. Szeryng’s precise intonation, tonal sheen and gracious phrasing, can make the knottiest music elegant.
Mr. Szeryng’s diplomatic ideal matches his musical style: ”I am in favor of conciliation and reconciliation and I am very much against confrontation.” His playing seems to proclaim the universal perfectability of the world, diplomatically conciliating even the most vexing difficulties.
But those musical placations can also be unconvincing. There is another quality to Mr. Szeryng’s music that makes it more provocative and less diplomatic – a suggestion perhaps, that to this violinist, who has had homes all over the world, cosmopolitanism is accompanied by a sense of exile, that his sweet description of his idyllic childhood may hide other feelings as well.
He speaks of World War II as if it were still taking place; he hints at the enormity of difficulties remaining despite diplomacy. In his best playing, in counterpoint to the tone of conciliation, are overtones of melancholic anxiety. Even in the best of all possible worlds – painted in Mr. Szeryng’s conversation and in his playing – there may be disturbing tensions, forces which music can elegantly present but never resolve.”
— Edward Rothstein
https://www.nytimes.com/1983/02/27/arts/he-can-make-the-knottiest-music-elegant.html
“One of the music’s great aristocrats, violinist Henryk Szeryng was a perfectionist in all things. A man of phenomenal intellect, he combined exemplary musical taste with a super-refined technique and ravishing purity of intonation.” Julian Haylock – THE STRAD July 2009
http://www.henrykszeryng.net/
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