Search the internet for photographs of Gioconda De Vito and you
will turn up plenty of pretty glamorous images of a woman who
was a leading artist of her era. So the fact that Naxos have
chosen a CD cover picture of her looking more like a Home Counties
housewife who’s just realised that she’s left her
purse at the supermarket check-out is, at first, a little puzzling.
Dig a little into De Vito’s life story, however, and you’ll
begin to see why that picture isn’t so inappropriate after
all.
This was a woman who, at the age of 54, decided that she had
entirely fulfilled all her musical ambitions and then actually
retired to a life of cosy domesticity in the Home Counties -
Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, to be precise - even though the
neighbours must have found it more than a little strange that,
over the next 33 years until her death, she seems to have mastered
only a rather rudimentary command of the English language.
While De Vito’s sudden withdrawal from the world of music
may strike us as a little puzzling, it is certainly not unique.
Rossini, after all, famously retired from composing in 1829 and
spent the remaining 39 years of his life largely (an appropriate
word!) cooking and eating. Similarly, Jascha Heifetz would much
rather, in his later years, pick up a hand of cards than a violin.
So why shouldn’t Gioconda De Vito have been equally entitled
to call it a day with her fiddle and indulge her love of the
wild animals to be found in the gardens of Trout Stream Cottage?
As it is, we are fortunate to have a legacy of recordings that
is admittedly relatively small - no.3 presented here is, for
instance, her only recording of any of Mozart’s concertos
- but it is certainly treasurable.
The Brahms concerto was, so Tully Potter tells us in his useful
booklet notes, Gioconda De Vito’s “major war-horse” (can
you have such a thing as a minor war-horse?) This is the first
of her two recordings, made with a German orchestra at the highpoint
of that country’s fortunes in the Second World War. While
no-one was ever to suggest that De Vito herself was politically
suspect, the conductor on this occasion, Paul van Kempen - a
Dutchman who chose to take German citizenship when the Nazis
came to power and who later conducted concerts for the occupying
German forces in the Netherlands - subsequently (and hardly surprisingly)
experienced considerable difficulties in his career (see a
1951
report from
Time magazine on a colourful riot at the
Concertgebouw).
Recorded in a rather dry acoustic, De Vito has been placed well
forward. Hence, though much of the orchestra’s contribution
comes through in a slightly fuzzy and generalised way, the soloist’s
full command of technique - and her beautiful tone (which was
to be enhanced even more after the war when she acquired the
famous Stradivarius
Toscana violin) - can be heard in
fine detail. A surprisingly virile and thrusting approach to
the opening movement drives the music onwards with a sense of
power and urgency, although there is also some exquisitely beautiful
playing in the more discursive and reflective passages during
the (Joachim) coda. The quality of the recording seems to improve
somewhat for the
adagio: more orchestral detail emerges
and a better balance is established with the soloist. De Vito’s
rapt and intensely lyrical performance benefits thereby from
a more flattering setting. The finale is taken at a rather steadier
pace than in many accounts and gains, thereby, a certain unaccustomed
elegance, even if at the cost of a degree of sheer excitement
and drama. It caps an immensely satisfying account of the whole
work.
Recorded eight years later, De Vito’s account of Mozart’s
G major concerto benefits from a more resonant and lively recording
in the acoustics of EMI’s Abbey Road studio no.1. Under
Beecham’s rather emphatic direction, the Royal Philharmonic
Orchestra - less than three years old and, if contemporary sources
are to be believed, still in the process of finding its feet,
let alone establishing a distinctive identity - offers robust,
rather than especially sensitive or subtle, support. De Vito,
by contrast occupies a far more ethereal world and her performance,
full of sensitivity and grace, completely transcends the orchestra’s
limitations. The especially successful
adagio - nearly
eight minutes of some of the most beautiful
legato string
playing that you are likely to hear - offers a particularly memorable
demonstration of both her technique and her artistry and, amid
its apparent simplicity, conveys a degree of emotional depth
rarely encountered in more modern recordings.
While the sonic limitations of these recordings preclude them
from being first choice recommendations, anyone unfamiliar with
Gioconda De Vito’s work will, I suggest, find these eye-opening
and bargain-priced accounts of considerable interest as supplements
to others that they may already have on their shelves.
Rob Maynard
see also review by Jonathan Woolf
Gioconda De Vito (violin) 
