De Vito recorded the
Brahms in the Kingsway Hall with Legge’s
Philharmonia. It’s a recording that
has been in and out of the international
catalogues – quite popular in Japan
– but more out than in. Japanese Angel/EMI
was dedicated to de Vito and consolidated
her commercial discs in an impressive
boxed LP set in the 1980s, which is
where I caught up with the performance,
in a transfer that has remained for
me something of a benchmark. Now Archipel
has issued its own uncredited transfer
and added a live Tchaikovsky from Turin
given the following year, in 1954.
Admirers of the violinist
and of Furtwängler will know that
the two collaborated on the Brahms,
live, in 1952, a rather subfusc RAI
recording and with a similarly sub standard
performance from the orchestra, one
that gets progressively worse. But it’s
an important document for de Vito adherents
and should be noted. She’s not as dashing
with Schwarz as she was earlier with
Furtwängler; her opening statements
are curiously static and heavy and also
rather brittly bowed. Elsewhere however
she is silvery and pliant though some
of her voicings and tone colours in
the first movement are idiosyncratic:
her intonation too. She enters the slow
movement stealthily though her very
first note is mostly covered by the
winds and the patina of her playing
is very reserved. This is the kind of
playing that avoids all rhetorical show
and expressive gestures. In the finale
we can hear some metrical displacements
with Schwarz marshalling some questionable
slowings down.
As for the transfer
I have to admit, once again, great disappointment
with this company. Artificial boosting
seems to have projected both solo line
and winds and there’s a synthetic quality
to the sound that is not appealing.
Unlike the EMI disc there is no hall
ambience at all and you wouldn’t guess
that this is Kingsway Hall – or anywhere
else for that matter. Sound compression
and lack of air are compounded by a
two second gap between first and second
movements.
The Tchaikovsky is
a rarer affair but the sound is again
problematical – distant and once more
with compressed sonics. The orchestra
is lacklustre, the violin spotlit and
de Vito seems small scale here, as she
was in the Brahms; unadventurous in
her passagework and careful. A climactic
missed note shows the tension of the
moment toward the end of the first movement
but of greater concern is the air of
ponderousness and lack of commitment.
Yet again there’s a two second gap between
first and second movements. She plays
this movement with a degree of lyric
effusion but she ultimately lacks tone
colours here but she at least gives
us some chewy tone in the finale, though
she’s so closely miked that counter
themes are frequently inaudible (which
is probably best, given the orchestra’s
contribution). There are a few coughs
but otherwise the recording is acceptable.
Jonathan Woolf
Gioconda de Vito (violin) 
