Ida Haendel (violin)
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Violin Concerto in D, Op.77 (1878)
Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
Violin Concerto in D minor, Op 47 (1903 rev. 1905)
Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
Violin Concerto in B minor, Op 61 (1910)
Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
Violin Concerto in D minor, op.15 (1938/1940 revised 1951)
BBC Symphony Orchestra/Gennady Rozhdestvensky (Brahms), Adrian Boult (Elgar), Andrew Davis (Britten)
London Symphony Orchestra/Paavo Berglund (Sibelius)
rec. 1971-94
ICA Classics ICAC5185 [153]
This twofer preserves BBC broadcasts of concertos made by Ida Haendel between 1971 (Elgar) and 1994 (Britten). The other works performed are the Sibelius and the Brahms, the last-named being especially valuable as there aren’t many examples of her way with the work currently available – the Celibidache/LSO is on a Testament LP and there’s a performance directed by Müller-Kray in Stuttgart on SWR.
In 1978 – the same year that Haendel signed to join EMI – she made her notorious recording of the Elgar with the LPO and Adrian Boult, which crawled to more than 55 interminable minutes. Back in 1971 she gave the Maida Vale broadcast preserved here, this time with the BBC Symphony and again with Boult with much more palatable results. Though she’d played the concerto since 1942, her approach to it remained malleable – witness the Boult LP and the 1986 Prom with John Pritchard which is very similar in outline to this 1971 reading but the Boult broadcast is much better played and offers a more sympathetic view of the work. Haendel never gushed sentimentally and retains a natural reserve and dignity, bringing lyric intimacy to the central movement though the recording inflates her sound so that she is too loud sometimes. Other demerits include the fact that the orchestral sonority is a bit ‘massy’ and undelineated and the final bars are absurdly protracted. Boult should have put his foot down but, as with The Dream of Gerontius, he was equivocal about the Concerto, complaining about its length and fretting about its ‘padding’.
The other three concertos come from performances at the Royal Albert Hall. In the Sibelius she’s accompanied by the LSO and Paavo Berglund, the conductor with whom she made a very fine recording of the work in Bournemouth in 1975. It was a concerto with which she became identified and Sibelius praised her playing of it though he was given to praising anyone who played his music. Still, this is another excellent account to join the commercial Berglund, the Czech Philharmonic-Karel Ančerl, which is a touch more ‘extreme’ and the Israel Philharmonic in 1982. A fierier, younger Haendel can be heard back in 1955 in a broadcast with Basil Cameron and the RPO (it’s also on ICA) where the tempo in the slow movement is unlike the more leisurely one she adopted in later years. I should also mention that her Sibelius and Elgar were captured in concert with Simon Rattle in concerts given in 1983-84. She’s back to 46 minutes in the Elgar.
Gennady Rozhdestvensky accompanies the Brahms in 1982. This is probably the least effective of the four though not necessarily because of Haendel. The acoustic emphasises and exaggerates the winds to an appreciable degree and Haendel isn’t in perfect acoustical focus. One can hear her fighting to be heard in the first movement and though her passagework is fluidly conceived, I find elements of her performance in this work ponderous.
Mark Lubotsky’s recording with the composer pretty much put the Britten Concerto on the map after a period of neglect, though it had been played by Theo Olof, Thomas Matthews, Antonio Brosa and others. And before Haendel recorded it commercially with Berglund in Bournemouth, the excellent Czech player Nora Grumlíková had done so in Prague in the 1960s and Rodney Friend had also recorded it in 1974. Still, Haendel’s fearless commitment to the score is evident in this 1994 broadcast as is the similarity of each movement to that Bournemouth conception. Andrew Davis accompanies with great perception.
Paul Baily is one of the best remastering engineers around and has done a great job, though he faced a real obstacle in the Brahms. There are helpful notes though I don’t agree that Haendel was the ‘champion female player’ after the death of Ginette Neveu. Johanna Martzy? Erica Morini? Giaconda De Vito? Kyung Wha Chung? There can be more than one champion.
Haendel remained an honest, direct and admirable exponent, and one free of frivolous gestures in her playing. This two-CD set remind us of her status as a top-flight concerto performer.
Jonathan Woolf
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Recording details
12 November 1971, Maida Vale, London (Elgar): 28 August 1981, (Sibelius), 23 July 1982 (Brahms) and 19 July 1994 (Britten), Royal Albert Hall, London
