At the time these performances
were issued the Six Pieces and the early
1897 sonata were claimed as first ever
recordings. Assuming that to be true
there have since been others – though
I do seem to remember having seen the
Pieces before the release of this 2001
recording. Whatever the state of play
with regard to prestigious premiere
discs it’s always good to be rewarded
with the 1917 sonata, one of the twentieth
century’s best examples of the genre
but one that has garnered, oddly, fewer
recordings than one would have expected.
There have been the celebrity discs,
Heifetz’s most especially, but I was
surprised to see no more than half a
dozen discs in the current British catalogue.
But let’s start with
that 1897 sonata, full of big, grand
gestures and plying the Schumann-Brahmsian
axis very adeptly, as befits a violinist-composer.
The crest of the first movement, strenuous
and chock full of driving passagework,
still sounds rather unsatisfying and
unconvincing however. A similar lack
(ultimately) of definition afflicts
the lyrical Schumannesque slow movement
though it’s well laid out for the two
instruments; the finale is better -
Brahmsian in cast, certainly, but with
some off-kilter gestures that attract
the ear and almost manage to offset
the gauche gestures and the rather repetitious
writing. Turban and Nemirovitch-Dantchenko
do what they can; maybe too much. Turban
has recorded widely and I know he’s
admired but he employs some rather arch
expressive devices to heat up the romanticised
profile of a work that needs to be taken
rather straighter. His smeary lower
string vibrato sounds out of scale to
me, and the slides forced rather than
felt.
The melodious Six Pieces,
a compound of the salon and the recital
hall, are winning and warm. It’s a shame
that the Melodia, the second
of them, is vibrated to death by Turban
but the players do well by the waltz
and the Leggenda even if they
can’t really salvage the more over ambitious
pages of the over wrought Serenata.
The Sonata receives an uneven performance
with a rather slow opening movement
and a tendency towards diffusion. This
is something that also applies to the
recording throughout; there’s not a
proper balance between instruments with
the piano somewhat veiled. It may contribute
to a feeling of relative shapelessness
in the slow movement; listen to the
classic Suk-Hála recording (not
currently available domestically) and
you can hear how a more thrusting traversal
explores peaks and troughs. Again I
find Turban less than effective when
he juices up his tone with smeary vibrato
in the Passacaglia finale; he sounds
stolid not expressive.
Given these caveats
I would suggest alternative recordings.
The recording level is a basic concern
and the playing never really gets to
the heart of the matter.
Jonathan Woolf
Ingolf Turban (violin) 
