I like the attractive livery of this
DVD and CD series from BMG’s RCA Red Seal stable but the production
details are skimpy. There’s none of the code-compatible information
one finds on other DVDs. There’s a single sheet insert with the
discographic details and some information on the DVD documentary
itself – but not enough – and if you’re not alert (and you’d need
to be alert) you may well miss that this is a TV documentary made
in 1970 and aired on NBC in 1971. Here are the fuller details
you won’t get from this release. The pretext was Heifetz’s 70th
birthday and the organiser was Francis Robinson, assistant manager
of the Met. It was he who wrote and narrated the hour long documentary
which was produced by Lester Shurr and Paul Louis; John Pfeiffer
was audio director. I note that Kirk Browning, the American music
director, is listed on the box as sole director, that Shurr is
consultant and Louis’s name is not mentioned so maybe responsibilities
were reassigned. Or maybe not. It was Heifetz’s choice to record
the musical segments in Paris. The concerts seem to have been
fraught, the recording of the Scottish Fantasy especially.
With lordly indifference Heifetz dispensed with the services of
a conductor. Before he began playing he then ordered the two upper
circles to be cleared. Satisfied and after a long, restive delay
in front of an audience of seven hundred he started. He then stopped,
scowled and debated some points of interpretation with the orchestra.
The finished product on this DVD is apparently the second performance,
the one where things went right, not the debacle of the first.
The rest of the programme, lightly
and epigrammatically narrated, includes some shots of Heifetz
and his pupil, Pierre Amoyal, going through the last bars of the
Handel-Halvorsen Passacaglia, then playing table tennis, a sport
at which the older man was ferociously competitive. These narrative
shots have the air of almost vacant serendipity; they follow no
narrative drive. Instead we follow Heifetz in Hawaiian shirt as
he walks, alone, by the ocean’s edge near his Californian house
(complete with electric-engined car in the garage – whatever happened
to those?) “I like every sound that is natural” says Heifetz of
the onrushing foam billowing around his ankles, “and when I sit
here it gives me the chance to think.” Intercut with these cinéma
vérité shots are the Parisian studio concerts, the Bruch in the
Théâtre des Champs Elysée and the rest in a small hall. We also
see him warm up and go through the Bach Chaconne in a studio.
All this is in
colour of course. We are so used to seeing him in black and white – and he was
in semi retirement and spending much time teaching at the time – that it still
comes as a surprise to see the noble, imperturbable features in bold relief;
rather like seeing colour cine film of ones youth after a lifetime of black and
white photos. What else does one notice? The insouciant grin at the audience
after the Mozart Rondo, the stiff formality with chauffeur-accompanist, loyal
Brooks Smith; some occasionally ponderous tracking shots, a rough cut edit or
two, a rather formless sense of occasion. Still, this was an occasion
after all and Heifetz was nearing retirement. The legion of admirers of the
great man will be happy to know that this documentary (though it barely
qualifies as such) is available but they should also know it’s thirty years
old, was made for American television, and is more a sketchbook and piece of
reportage-cum-homily than a piece of research.
The CD reprises
the concert footage with the exception that the RCA Malcolm Sargent Scottish
Fantasy (Walthamstow, 1961) is used and that there’s a bonus of a 1950
Dinicu Hora Staccato in Heifetz’s famous arrangement. Note also that
when BMG says the Debussy was arranged by Arthur Friedman they mean Arthur Hartmann,
long-haired American fiddle player. And the playing? Past its best, obviously,
but still lordly. Rather too close to the mike we get quite an abrasive tone,
rather too shrill. His Mozart is flashy, as his Mozart was wont to be. His
Debussy misses entirely Thibaud’s Gallic sensuality, a compound of luxurious
sexuality and languorous intimate longing – and regret. The Rachmaninov is
admirable, if somewhat steely, and the Gershwin is another of his famous
transcriptions, recorded more winningly earlier on in his career, but wonderful
to see the sheer mechanics of the thing. The Bach was recorded the following
day and the set-up in the ORTF studio was very slightly mellower. There are
occasional intonational slippages and there’s something inimical to the
grandeur and cumulative power of it in his playing. He rushes too much toward
the end and I’m afraid it left me feeling quite empty. The Bruch comes from a
decade earlier. I prefer the 1951 recording, once again with Sargent, but
really no one could play this piece as he could. Only Perlman in our time has
approached him, violinistically speaking, though others - I think of Accardo
with Masur - have probing values of their own. So this is a fine recording,
with Osian Ellis the harpist, and Sargent doing a reasonable job on the
rostrum.
Together there’s
just under two hours, audio and video, of Heifetz in this package. Should you
play or should you pass? It depends how badly you want to see Heifetz in
action, how carefully you want to watch left and right hand alignment, the
height at which he held the fiddle, the flatness and length of the bowing, the
stance, the limited though expressive movement, the lateral motion of fingers
on the fingerboard, thumb placement, all that. I can put up with a lot to watch
the Master in action. So, if you’ve read this far, can you.
Jonathan Woolf
Jascha Heifetz (violin) with
[DVD: 63.00 CD: 53.53]
