I needed a corrective to two recent Elgar Violin Concertos that I experienced – the inconsistent (shall we say) approach from Nicola Benedetti (and Vladimir Jurowski) for Decca, and the shambolic Proms account (given during the 2008 season) from Nigel Kennedy, often hectic and messy, that BBC Radio 3 re-broadcast yesterday, Friday August 7 from 2 p.m., and from which I exonerate Paul Daniel (replacing Vernon Handley) and the BBC Concert Orchestra of culpability who had no choice but to join in with Kennedy’s ill-conceived frenzy, the faster music careered through at a rate of knots that sunk it without trace.
No worries about forced-along tempos from Ida Haendel and Sir Adrian. Indeed, at fifty-five minutes, this may be the longest Elgar VC in the catalogue – although timings are a mere statistic, it’s how the space is filled that’s important – for Haendel and Boult bring experience, insight and passion, poise too, to the whole, yet … I heard Haendel live four times in this Concerto – with Bernard Haitink, John Pritchard, and twice with Andrew Davis – and she was consistently around the forty-seven-minute mark, and one wouldn’t expect Boult (who had previously recorded the Elgar with Campoli and then Menuhin) to be quite as expansive as this, so I wonder how he and she, at Abbey Road Studios in April & June 1977 and January 1978, reached this uncharacteristic if intriguing result, produced by Christopher Bishop and engineered by Christopher Parker, released on HMV ASD 3598, the LP’s cover illustrated.
I missed the vinyl and first caught the Elgar on Testament’s CD (SBT 1146, released in 1998), and was taken aback by the performance. Now, I appreciate it the more, partly in relation to those violinists cited above, for there is much that is compelling from (the recently late) Ida Haendel and the consummate conducting of Sir Adrian – there is no sense of them agreeing to disagree – and Boult’s majestic conception of the ultimate coda is overwhelming.
Testament (which also lists another version of Haendel’s Elgar, forty-six minutes, from a 1984 concert with Simon Rattle conducting, ditto the Sibelius coupling, SBT 1444) adds to the Elgar a 1995 Bach Chaconne (D-minor Partita) that finds Haendel equally magnetic.
Hi Colin,
Just a few memories of Ida who was a good friend for many years.
Back in 1975 when I was heading up EMI Records’ UK Classical Division, we had Paavo Berglund under contract. He had completed his first cycle of Sibelius Symphonies with his own Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra earlier and was interested in recording the Violin Concerto. I asked him if he had a violinist in mind and without hesitation, he said Ida Haendel. It is well known that Sibelius himself wrote after hearing Ida’s performance in 1949, ‘You played it masterfully in every respect. I congratulate myself that my concerto has found an interpreter of your rare standards’ and almost to the day 45 years ago in July 1975, Ida recorded the concerto in Southampton’s Guildhall. This also marked her return to EMI after twenty two years being away, her last recordings being with Sergiu Celibidache and Sir Eugene Goosens in 1953. It was critically acclaimed and Ida was once again ‘news’ with collectors. Being Ida, the Sibelius was not going to be a one-off so it was no surprise that shortly after Andre Previn asked her to record the violin solos for Swan Lake which she did without hesitation. This was followed by the highly successful Britten and Walton Concertos in 1977, again with Berglund and Bournemouth, followed a year later by the Elgar with Sir Adrian Boult, the latter, a case of two contrasting styles. My impression was that she was not totally satisfied with it. Ida valued loyalty above all else and as long as she trusted the people she was with, she was very much a team player even after so many years of being in the business. She embraced youth and enjoyed their company and together with her exuberant playing and her flamboyant choice of clothes, she was an unforgettable character. Whenever she came to London, you were ‘commanded’ to have lunch with her where she could catch up with all the industry gossip not forgetting some warmly wicked asides about other colleagues. Her home, with it’s dark interior, was down a small unprepossessing street in Miami which was full of paintings, some by her father, surrounded by all kinds of memorabilia, together with her dog, Decca. Ida liked the telephone but if you wanted to send her a document of some kind, it was via her hairdresser up the road who had a fax machine. And talking of telephones, I once got a call in London from Miami when Ida wanted to re-record the Brahms Concerto and in order to convince me, she picked up her violin and played the whole of the last movement down the line. Alas, nothing came of it but that was Ida Haendel, a unique and lovely personality.
Lovely memoir of a superb artist. Many thanks for this.
Alas, I never heard her in person, though I experienced her personality via a couple of documentaries and loved her comments in “Art of Violin.” I have quite a number of her records and every one is a memorable performance. Blessed with a long, productive life in which she was appreciated and feted, she never in public ever showed the hurt that losing so many family member in the Holocaust. Now to reread her memoir, which I know exactly where to find on my library shelf.
I hope today’s young violinists start to acquaint themselves with her artistry. So much to learn – and love!
The wonderful Ida Haendel is probably my favourite violinist.
Being a Sibelius devotee I am naturally attached to her two recordings. She said “I play it terribly slowly”. Meaning the slow movement.
This week I have been comparing her in Bruch 1 with the earlier versions by Guila Bustabo from wartime Amsterdam under Mengelberg and Gerhard Taschner from wartime Berlin under Herman Abendroth.
These latter two are very emotional with slides and orchestral
portamenti throughout.
Both are marvellous in their way but Madame Haendel in 1948 is a little more proper in these respects and steers a middle course of wonderful feeling with fearless virtuosity at the same level of the now regrettably forgotten Bustabo.
It is now regarded as a scandal that Madame Haendel was not asked to re-record the basic repertoire in stereo.
I am plucking up courage to hear her in Bartok 2 now, not a composer she identified with generally but possibly
producing the most romantically attached version ever recorded ( or indeed played)?
What a wonderful person. Inimitable.