Enescu:Bartok:Violin & Piano W [Original recording remastered]

I just got this CD yesterday and am still listening and absorbing, but it has to be said that the bonus CD is truly remarkable, while the Haendel/Ashkenazy coupling in Szymanovsi's "Mythes" is stunning...very heroic and convincing music making done by both artists.

Nearly a generation before Glenn Gould's towering 1955 recording of the Goldberg variations, Ida Haendel had recorded Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Kreisler and others on Decca. About a generation after Gould's 1982 swansong reprise of the Goldbergs, Ida Haendel was still firing on all eight cylinders (or was it four? Her birth year is variously reported as 1928 and 1924). This 2-CD set captures important fragments from both the early and more recent stages of this remarkable career.

Ida Haendel was wisked out of Poland by her parents in 1939, landed in London, studied with Carl Flesch and Henryk Szering and others, and by Henry Roth's count produced 83 phonograph records. On the first disk here, Ms. Haendel is graciously accompanied by superstar Vladimir Ashkenazy, who is especially exuberant and in top form technically as well. The two quite obviously had a fine old time frolicking together through Eastern European music by Enescu, Bartok and Szymanowski. The second disk, an extraordinary bonus, is a bit scratchy at times, but Haendel's youthful virtuousity is clearly revealed through the haze.

As the liner notes reminisce, Ida Haendel can claim a special legitimacy in Enescu's Sonata, as she was a student of the composer in Paris and played the composition for him. As partnered here by Ashkenazy in 1996, her timings in the first two movements are within average, sitting comfortably between the composer himself or his pupils Ferras (Les Introuvables de Christian Ferras) and Menuhin (in 1936, Menuhin Plays Enescu, Szymanowski, Prokofiev, Ravel and 1966, West Meets East: The Historic Shankar/Menuhin Sessions) on the one hand (although in his first recording Menuhin does take a broader approach of the slow movement), and André Gertler (Andre Gertler performs Milhaud Violin Concert No 2, Violin Sonata No 2; Enescu Violin Sonata No 3 (Supraphon)) or the more recent Sherban Lupu (Enescu: Violin Sonata No.3; Bartok: Sonata for Solo Violin; Ysaye: Violin Sonatas Nos. 3 & 6), Mihaela Martin (Enescu: Impressions), Leonidas Kavakos (Ravel: Sonate posthume; Tzigane; Enescu: Impressions d'enfance; Sonata No. 3) or Laurent Korcia (Tzigane: Musique d' Europe Central). Only in the finale is she overall among the broadest versions. But what jumps immediately to the ear is that Ashkenazy is given a rather too forward placement and sounds so assertive as to be somewhat overbearing, and a little heavy-handed as well, lacking the rhapsodic freedom that the music calls for. Ashkenazy has contributed superb recordings of Bartok's and Prokofiev's Piano Concertos, but the problem is that he seems to be approaching the piano writing of Enescu as if it were the Hungarian's or the Russian's: muscular, percussive, savage. Maybe Enescu requires less percussive glare and more subtle colors. Or maybe it would have taken a fiddler with a more ample sound than Haendel. Her phrasings are idiomatic enough, but as recorded by Decca, her tone sounds wirier and more pinched than on her 1980 live concert released by Doremi (Ida Haendel Vol. 3). The recording also picks up her heavy breathing. The Doremi recording also has its sonic and interpretive problem, but overall it offers a better representation of the violinist in this work.

Although I have a number of recordings I do not have the score to Szymanowski's mesmerizing quasi-Sonata, Mythes, so my comments will be more tentative, but I was shocked by Ashkenazy's racing into the first piece, "the Fountain of Arethusa", as if trying to beat some speed record. A sense of suffocating urgency is created, but subtlety, sensuousness and mystery are lost. The two next pieces of the triptych seemed less objectionable, but I'll come back and complete this review as soon as I receive the score, which I've ordered.

This set includes a welcome bonus disc with a bunch of early recordings made by Haendel for Decca between 1940 to 1947. Besides the customary "encores" and other such short trifles, which Haendel plays with chic and zest (including a dazzling Zapateado), the substantial pieces are Beethoven's 3rd Sonata (op. 30/3), performed in a very lively and jaunty manner, Schubert's Sonatina D. 408 (both with (with Noel Mewton-Wood) and Szymanowski's Notturno and Tarantella op. 28 (Adela Kotowska - the original record sounds pretty worn, unfortunately). It is also nice to have Haendel's early take (from 1947) on the same Romanian Folkdances of Bartok/Szekely (with pianist Ivor Newton) which she has re-recorded here with Askhenazy. The comparison is not always favorable to the new recording. Haendel's tone is coarser, and while the two last pieces do benefit from the boisterousness conveyed by Ashkenazy's pounding approach (the same is true in the first Rhapsody, despite Haendel's unseductively pinched tone), overall the earlier version flows more naturally. There is something to be said in favor of the intensity with which the later Haendel charges the 4th piece, Danse of Buchumi - at 2:04, compared to the 1:35 of the first version, not so much a Dance as a desperate lament. But the nostalgic hues the younger Haendel finds to the second piece, Sash Dance, are quite unique. And while the later Haendel brings an eerie atmosphere to the whistling harmonics of the 3rd piece (In One Spot), the earlier recording also shows the advantage for the piano NOT to assert itself as such but to try and pass off for a cimbalom - and young Haendel's harmonics are purer, too. Too bad Bloch's Abodah, recorded in that era and mentioned in the liner notes, hasn't been added, as well as its original discmate, Dinicu's famous Hora Staccato - apparently they've never been reissued from their 78rmp form, if Claude Torres' highly creditable discography (available online) is to be believed. But beware, the transfers are not up to the best standards of today, and on most of the pieces there is quite a lot of surface noise.

Fine liner notes, with presentation of the works included in the modern recital, and two informative essays on Haendel and Enescu and the history of these early Decca recordings. But the 1996 recital is disappointing. Is that why it wasn't released until 2000?