Having just wrestled with EMI’s huge retrospective
box
set devoted to Menuhin, it’s something of a more considered
pleasure to listen to Naxos’s more limited focus on his
association with Bartók. The fact that Menuhin commissioned
and gave the premiere of the Solo Sonata is one of the most notable
acts of enlightened generosity he undertook in a career and life
full of them. But on a more prosaic note, perhaps, he recorded
a great deal of the composer’s works over the years. In
his notes Colin Anderson mentions that there are seven surviving
recordings of the Second Concerto, some naturally deriving from
concert tapes. Three were with Doráti, dating from 1946
(Dallas), 1957 (Minneapolis) and 1965 (New Philharmonia), one
is with Reiner, two with Ansermet and this 1953 account with
Furtwängler with the Philharmonia in 1953.
As Anderson also points out Furtwängler had conducted for
the composer in the world premiere of Bartók’s First
Piano Concerto. He doesn’t go on to point out that he also
performed the Concerto for Orchestra post-War, amongst other
works, nor does he explore - why should he, but others can -
the remark that Furtwängler made in his published Notebooks
that Bartók possessed ‘an over abstract mind’.
Whether this accurately summarises the conductor’s succinct
if reductionist attitude it’s hard to say, but it probably
relates more to his well known antipathy to much music of his
time as to anything specifically ‘abstract’ about
Bartók.
In any case I’ve never found this recording much use in
uncoiling such matters. I much prefer Menuhin’s collaborations
with Doráti who knew what was going on in the fabric of
this score - and knew how to get it out. Too much here is too
malleable and measured, too sanguine and reserved orchestrally.
And Menuhin is on intermittently good form, far less tensile
and tonally congruent than in that 1947 shellac set made in Dallas.
The worst thing, though, is the actual recording. Menuhin was
grossly over-recorded and the orchestra is deferential to such
a degree that it really can be difficult to make out orchestral
strands. Quite why such a miscalculation was sanctioned it’s
difficult to say but the question of relative balance is not
one that restoration engineers can do much about. It sounds as
good as we can expect, which is not great.
The sonata however was recorded back in ’47 in New York
with Adolf Baller, who often worked with Menuhin. Surviving examples
of Menuhin’s way with this work have largely been with
sister Hephzibah - 1957, a BBC recital from 1961, Moscow the
following year; there’s a recording with Jeremy Menuhin
from 1981 - but this early example is as fine as any. Here we
feel the full force of the Menuhin tone and the estimable Baller
keeps him fervent company; the whole recording and performance
stand as eloquent rebukes to the later concerto recording. Everything
that is wrong there was right in New York. This is the place
to go to appreciate Menuhin’s understanding of Bartók’s
grammar.
Jonathan Woolf
Yehudi Menuhin (violin) 
