Michael Rabin (violin)
On the Bell Telephone Hour
Bell Telephone Orchestra/Donald Voorhees
rec. 1954-62
Parnassus PACD96093-4 [2 CDs: 127]

This second Parnassus twofer concludes its sequence of Michael Rabin’s ‘Bell Telephone Hour’ broadcasts. Most were given at Carnegie Hall before an audience though these restorations have removed such applause as remained on the source material. Rabin was recommended to the Bell Telephone Hour by Zino Francescatti so it’s apt that the disc ends with a mini appendix of the first movement of Bach’s Concerto for two violins, performed in April 1952 by both violinists.  

Due to time constraints, soloists were limited to single movements from concertos and to small genre pieces. Therefore, you’ll find in this twofer the first and last movements of the Tchaikovsky Concerto, performed a couple of years apart, the finales of the Mendelssohn, Brahms and Bruch concertos and a raft of morceaux to surround them. Most, of course, come directly from Rabin’s day-to-day recital repertoire and sit easily under his fingers, charmers and finger-busters alike – and for every Slavonic Dance in E minor we have a Banjo and Fiddle, for every Mendelssohn-Heifetz Sweet Remembrance (or Song without Words, Op.19/1) there’s a spicy Sarasate Habanera.

These were Rabin’s great years, when his instrumental dexterity was matched by his intellectual-expressive control and everything was warmed by his tonal sweetness and clarity. Sometimes one can quibble interpretatively, and I can do without some of the exaggerations of his phrasing in the Kreisler pieces, allied to their occasionally slushy orchestral accompaniment (best not to play the Rachmaninov-Kreisler ‘theme’ from the Paganini Rhapsody, if you’re not sympathetic), but elsewhere Rabin is in gleaming, patrician form. He lends his glistening obbligato to tenor Brian Sullivan – erstwhile star of stage and screen and a probable suicide in Geneva years later – in Massenet’s Élégie. He dazzles in the Wieniawski-Sarasate Caprice in A minor.

Heifetz’s ethos haunts a number of these titles though Rabin retains just enough of his own interpretative stance to stand independent of his model. He must certainly have had the older man in his mind when he recorded the finale of Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy – the preceding section is a very abridged one from the previous movement – as it must have been in the following year’s performance of the Godowsky-Heifetz Alt Wien and Gardner’s From the Canebreak, the latter with a folksy tambourine. The orchestra is a distraction in Sarasate’s Habanera, Op.21/2 but generally Voorhees is a competent director.

Rabin’s ‘Bell Telephone Hour’ discs have all been released before but not, to my knowledge, in the focused way as here – usually they’re presented in the context of other surviving live material. The twofer, as with the one before it, is chronologically presented and finely transferred by Gene Gaudette and comes with a succinct booklet note. 

Jonathan Woolf

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Contents
Disc 1 [65]
[1] Kreisler: Liebesleid
[2] Nováček: Moto perpetuo
August 23, 1954
[3] Rachmaninov-Kreisler: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,
Op 43 – Variation 18
[4] Suk: Burleska, Op 7 No 4
[5] Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto in D, Op 35 – Finale
March 28, 1955
[6] Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op 64 – Finale
[7] Massenet: Elegie, Op 10 No 5 (Brian Sullivan, tenor)
May 16, 1955
[8] Dvořák-Kreisler: Slavonic Dance in E Minor, Op 72 No 2
[9] Kreisler: La chasse
[10] Brahms: Violin Concerto in D, Op 77 – Finale
June 13, 1955
[11] Mendelssohn-Achron: On Wings of Song, Op 34 No 2
[12] Kroll: Banjo and Fiddle
[13] Sarasate: Zigeunerweisen, Op 20
October 24, 1955
[14] Engel-Zimbalist: Sea Shell
[15] Mendelssohn-Heifetz: Song Without Words, Op 19 No 1 (“Sweet Remembrance”)
[16] Prokofiev-Heifetz: Love for Three Oranges, Op 33 – March
June 18, 1956

Disc 2 [64]
[1] Saint-Saens-Ysaye: Caprice d’après “Etude en forme de valse”, Op 52 No 6
June 18, 1956
[2] Brandl-Kreisler: The Old Refrain
[3] Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto in D, Op 35 – 1st movement
[4] Sarasate: Romanza Andaluza, Op 22 No 1
[5] Wieniawski-Sarasate: Caprice in A minor
[6] Bruch: Scottish Fantasy, Op 46 – 3rd movement
[7] Bruch: Scottish Fantasy, Op 46 – 4th movement
June 3, 1957
[8] Godowsky-Heifetz: Alt Wien
[9] Samuel Gardner: From the Canebreak
[10] Sarasate: Habanera, Op 21 No 2
[11] Bruch: Violin Concerto No 1 in G minor, Op 26 – Finale
February 3, 1958
[12] Kreisler: Caprice Viennois
[13] Kreisler: Tambourin Chinois
February 2, 1962
BONUS [not ‘Bell Hour’]
[14] Bach: Double Concerto in D Minor, BWV 1043 – I. Vivace
(Zino Francescatti & Michael Rabin, violins) – April 28, 1952