Erick Friedman (violin)
Live in Texas
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Violin Sonata No 3 in D minor, Op 108 (1888)
Edvard Grieg (1843-1907)
Violin Sonata No 2 in G major, Op 13 (1867)
Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)
Violin Sonata No 1 in F minor, Op 80 (1938-46)
Anne Epperson (piano: Brahms)
James Dick (piano)
rec. live, June 2001, Concert Hall, Round Top Festival Institute, Texas, USA
Rhine Classics RH-031 [73]

Erick Friedman (1939-2004) was at the Round Top Festival in Texas in June 2001 where he performed concerts and gave master classes. He studied with Ivan Galamian for eight years but remains best-known as a pupil of Heifetz, with whom he was to make a famous recording of the Bach Concerto for two violins. Live Friedman recordings exist and I reviewed a Meloclassic disc from the 1960s in which the Heifetz aura – both the repertoire and the playing – was still unmistakeable.

Both this disc and the Meloclassic share the Brahms Op.108 in common and it’s instructive to hear the differences over a near three-decade period. The visceral intensity conjured by the young Friedman has modified to something more personal but less heated. Some of the tell-tale Heifetz finger position changes are identifiable but the ethos is now less pressing and considerably more mature, if very slightly didactic, something I felt in the opening Allegro. Once settled, however, his phrasing and playing in the slow movement has patrician poise and the finale is quite sinewy but not over-pressed. Pianist Anne Epperson has her own strong ideas.

Grieg’s Sonata No.2 comes from a concert given a fortnight later with James Dick. For those who enjoy the verisimilitude of a live event we hear a sliver of Friedman’s tuning-up. Once again, the violinist, in his maturity – he was 62 when the sonatas were taped – had passed beyond any need to replicate Heifetz’s tempi and could simply perform as he felt. Thus, he is free, not over-speedy and quite playful. The playing is buoyant enough and lively though from time to time I felt a lack of tonal body. It didn’t bother the audience who respond with vigour and quite a number of shouts.

From the same concert comes Prokofiev’s First Sonata. It’s impossible, as you may have noticed, to write about Friedman without invoking Heifetz’s name but Heifetz never recorded this sonata so if some boring critic were to look about to castigate Friedman for too great an adherence to his great model, he would come unstuck. He catches the terse, brooding nature of the music well and there is some subtlety of coloration in his tone. He nails the brusco second movement securely. In fact, it’s a largely convincing performance that plays to his very real strengths.

The fact that these two performances were given only three years before Friedman died of cancer carries a certain poignancy but he clearly maintained his standards to the end. The recording is naturally balanced though obviously not of studio quality.

Jonathan Woolf

Previous review: Stephen Greenbank (September 2024)