Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Violin Concerto in D major, Op.61
Herman Krebbers (violin)
Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra/Paul van Kempen
rec. live radio broadcast, 21 December 1951, Grote Zaal, Concertgebouw, Amsterdam
Forgotten Records FR2140 [46]
I’ve greatly admired Dutch violinist Herman Krebbers over the years and collected several of his recordings. Recently I purchased the 15 CD Eloquence box devoted to him, which includes some recordings that were only targeted for the local market at the time and were completely new to me. In my opinion he’s a marvellous violinist whose profile seems to have unjustly sat below the radar. His recordings of the Beethoven and Brahms Violin Concertos with Bernard Haitink and the Concertgebouw are probably his most well-known and well-circulated, and very fine they are too.
Herman Krebbers (1923-2018) studied violin with Oskar Back in Amsterdam and played his first concert at the young age of ten. At the age of twenty he made his debut with the Concertgebouw, becoming concertmaster of that orchestra twenty years later. He also forged parallel careers as a soloist, chamber musician and teacher. He resigned from his concertmaster post in 1980 due to a shoulder injury. Most of the rest of his life was spent teaching, and he produced a formidable array of outstanding students who went to on make notable careers, including Frank Peter Zimmermann, Peter Tanfield, Jeanne Lamon, Vera Beths, Rudolf Koelman, Szymon Krzeszowiec, Jeroen de Groot, Emmy Verhey and André Rieu.
The Eloquence box features two commercial recordings of the Beethoven Violin Concerto, including the 1974 stereo Haitink collaboration I’ve already mentioned above, and an equally fine mono recording from 1952 with the Residentie Orkest directed by Willem van Otterloo. A year earlier comes this radio broadcast performance of the Beethoven Concerto from the Grote Zaal of the Concertgebouw, dated 21 December 1951. Krebbers is partnered by the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Paul van Kempen.
Van Kempen launches proceedings with a comfortably paced opening movement. Once the violin enters with finely articulated broken octaves, one immediately notices that an ideal balance has been struck with microphone placements between soloist and orchestra. Krebbers playing is both noble and informed by profound musicality. His vibrato is flexible and intonation secure. The slow movement is introspective, almost seraphic and raptly phrased. In the final movement, Krebbers bowing is more biting and crisp than in the two subsequent studio recordings. Van Kempen offers sensitive support throughout. It’s worth mentioning that overall, Krebbers conception and interpretation of the work doesn’t vary that much over the intervening years, but in the finale of the Haitink version the tempo is marginally broader. In all three versions the violinist employs the Kreisler cadenza.
This early radio recording sounds very good for its age, and the low grade background crackle is barely noticeable. There are no notes with the release, but they are hardly essential in such a perennial work as this.
Stephen Greenbank
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