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After reading Art Dudley's praise of Johanna Martzy's Bach violin sonatas & partitas in the current Stereophile, I dipped into the various versions on my ipod at work. One of them made me stop doing anything else, was completely hypnotic and I had to listen to the whole thing - the D minor partita performed by Arturo Delmoni.
Highly recommended.
Regards
13DoW
Follow Ups:
I went through the list of Spotify violinists in the 3rd Sonata, starting with the fugue. Now this is interesting - I'm looking for a performance that dances, that's totally rhythmic, but expressive and played with a smooth and beautiful tone. Well, no well-known names at all for a start, though the list wasn't complete. Some of the best in this work weren't there, like Szeryng, Kagan, Faust and Mullova. Some violinists couldn't play in time, others pulled the music about, others didn't dance, others had ugly tone in the double stopping, and so on. I came to the conclusion that these solo works are a bit special - you either can play them or you can't.Three artists on Spotify I really liked were:
Bronislaw Gimpel
Joanna Madroszkiewicz
Tedi Papavrami – complete sonatas and partitas (Not CD w. Ysaye etc)All three had that "whatever" that makes the music dance and sing. In the slower movements Tedi is clean and more detached and loses some of the emotional heft, so less good. Joanna is the most intense and Bronislaw in between. I particularly like the way Joanna gets into this music, but I like Bronislaw too in a different way. I never heard of Joanna before but I like her Bach a lot.
But I also need to listen to the versions not on Spotify. From what I hear on the Amazon excerpts the best are Mullova, Isabelle Faust and Oleg Kagan's 1989 live concert in Amsterdam on Apex. Hard to choose between these three on the limited excerpts I hear. Can anyone who has heard these in more depth give me an opinion?
Edits: 06/23/13 06/23/13 06/23/13 06/23/13 06/23/13 06/23/13 06/23/13 06/23/13 06/23/13 06/23/13 06/23/13 06/23/13 06/23/13
Martzy's interpretation was available on an EMI CD in the past. Has anyone heard it?
?comments?
Yes - I have her EMI CD's of the Bach unaccompanied Sonatas and Partitas, as well as a couple of her Coup d'archet recordings. (I think the EMI recordings of the S's and P's were also available on Testament too, although I never heard the Testament incarnations.) See my reply to pbarach below for my comments - basically, I'm a fan of her recordings.
How is thE EMI sound?
I just re-listened to the D-minor Partita, and the (mono) sound quality is pretty much what you would expect from a studio recording (Abbey Road) from June 1954 or March 1955, when Martzy recorded these works: a bit on the dry side for my taste, but perfectly fine in general. One thing that I hadn't noticed on previous listenings was that some extraneous studio noise can sometimes be heard in the background - I noticed it particularly in the Sarabande, where a couple of low-level, dull thuds can be heard. Whatever it was, it didn't seem to bother her or affect her playing at all.
(I have the French EMI set - it looks as if it's still available at Berkshire Record Outlet for $30.)
This is a mighty poor, dull performance as far as I am concerned, however well Art Dudley likes the recorded sound. I'm sure there are a dozen versions in the catalog right now with more musical interest (and at least decent sound) than Martzy, e.g., Milstein, Grumiaux, Fischer, Fulkerson (my personal favorite), Szeryng, Ehnes, Perlman, Kremer...
Martzy was a fine violinist, but also perhaps the ultimate example of a musician who would be little-known by classical record collectors (and actually is little-known by everyone else) but for the extreme rarity of her LPs. In today's world of unlimited 99-cent mp3 downloads, I doubt we'll see this phenomenon again.
I respectively disagree with placing Martzy among the pantheon of great performers of the Bach solo violin pieces. She has an unvarying, uninflected tone quality that levels all of the contrasts between phrases of different musical import. There is no phrasing.
Here's Martzy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx5qN_Y92IY
Compare, for example,
Grumiaux: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqpo--lu8yQ
Szeryng: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5YMKK-Typo
Kremer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBJPVnJ8m-Y
All of these are very different, but, unlike Martzy, each seems to have an opinion on how the music gets from phrase to phrase and variation to variation.
Or with me for that matter! ;-)
Anyway, here's Mr. Potter's assessment:
Johanna Martzy's was a deceptive talent: The tone was filigree and silvery. . . The vibrato was quick and applied with a spareness that never allowed room for sentimentality. Tempos were swift and straight-ahead with no lingering. In later years (the 1970’s), the tone grew a bit leathery but the tempos were more elastic, but in her prime, her playing had a coolness bordering on severity. The soul of her art was her coloristic expressiveness, delivered with such precision and discretion that each phrase became a tiny, and rich, world of its own. Once you've zeroed in on that quality, the ear can't help seizing on it. . . Martzy's expressive parameters were narrow, but they couldn't have been more resolutely defined.
She had a quality of inhabiting a piece from the inside and saw little need to gussy up the surface; to the jaded or inattentive ear, her interpretations can seem to lack incident. Skeptics, however, need only listen to her EMI recordings of the Bach Sonatas and Partitas, music to which her severity couldn't have been better suited. In fact, Bach seems to be the defining composer of her aesthetic. . .
Johanna Martzy’s solo J.S. Bach, which has acquired iconic status, is well played technically and very satisfying. Deploying the sturdy rhythm and glowing tone that are features of all her recordings, she gives balanced, middle-of-theroad interpretations, unhurried and free of self-indulgence. The three original LP’s were well received on both sides of the Atlantic. In America the New York Herald Tribune chose the set as one of its recordings of 1956. In England Edward Greenfield of The Manchester Guardian remarked on Martzy’s ‘luscious vibrato’ but was not bothered by it; and on a later occasion he preferred her set of the Sonatas and Partitas to that of Jascha Heifetz. Desmond Shawe-Taylor of The Observer recommended her recordings ‘for sound musicianship and sustained sweetness of tone’. Interestingly, the question of her vibrato was also brought up by Schonberg after her New York début: ‘Her Bach was anything but purist and “classic” in conception. She approached the music with decisive rhythm and a good deal of vibrato (perhaps a little too much vibrato, in the slow movement; but this is a question of taste).’ Although he was writing about a concerto – and his remarks are borne out by live Martzy recordings of the Bach solo concertos - the points he makes are equally applicable to her unaccompanied Bach. Her interpretations are directly in the tradition of Hungarian fiddlers such as Szigeti, Telmányi and Varga: her native flair and unshowy virtuosity make up for any ‘romantic’ habits in her playing.
I also feel that her vibrato was very distinctive, and I'm not aware of any fiddler around today who has the defining, Hungarian-tinged vibrato which was such a fundamental element in her playing.
I agree completely in Tully Potter's assessment of Martzy's take on the Violin Sonatas and Partitas. Yes, I'm one of the crazies who picked up all three UK Columbia 33CX vinyl issues of her Bach. I have the same recordings on Testament shiny discs as well.That being said, Szeryng's approach to these pieces on his 1954 French Odeon recordings are my all time favorites.......and because of that, my favorite contemporary violinist for these Bach gems is that of Hilary Hahn. On a number of occasions Ms Hahn has made it quite clear that Szeryng's approach to Bach was her major influence. I think the young lady scored BIG with this music lover, because of that singular statement!!
Oh yes, has far as Mr potter is concerned......I read his gigantic two volume biography of the very great Adolph Busch. I'm a fan.
Tom B.
Edits: 06/23/13
Might have to bite the bullet on this one.
I do have one of her recordings on LP: Johanna Martzy - Favorite Short Works
Yeah, I bought it for the cover art!
Just listening to her D-minor Chaconne on YouTube.
The way she sustains the motion of one chord into the next with as little "break" as humanly possible is very reminiscent of they way my own violin teacher at Brown, Henry Kowalski, would play the opening. In the room, it sounded like a small pipe organ. Kowalski's own teacher Maia Bang had been a classmate of the teenaged Heifetz' in Leopold Auer's pre-revolutionary master class in St. Petersburg. So, it's two handshakes from me to Leopold Auer. Too bad I can't play all that well. Not practicing will do that... .
Just as an aside, even on YouTube, I can hear the "breathing" of the Tartini tones, which to me indicates superb pitch accuracy.
So, I am very impressed by Martzy's Bach playing. But, if a young artist played like that today, I think that they would have a hard time of it--unless some critic with a contrary streak decided to champion a new player with retro ideas.
It was probably 25 years ago that I go in for review a CD of the first of what I came to call "neither fish nor fowl" "historically half-assed" performances, a Haydn violin concerto on Philips, IIRC. The player was using a not-quite martelé stroke that was neither authentic nor modern--to my ears. Perhaps the idea was to keep everybody happy, but that often leads to nobody's being happy.
To go out in public today and play solo Bach on the violin I think that you have to make the proper bows (as in bending forward) to the shrines of critical taste, which for the most part don't have room for Glenn-Gould-style approaches to the music. Just play the music as music, and don't try to recreate what Bach's hearers heard, but do try to make today's audiences feel as the audiences in Bach's time might have felt.
One thing that tears me up is when people say, "Oh, these are dance movements, they have to be dance-like." As Nathaniel Rosen is fond of pointing out, by Bach's time nobody had danced those dances in generations. Bach's music for solo strings was not written as hoedown music. Feel free to quote me on that! People did not get up and start Sarabandeing and Gavotteing when this music was first played.
Not to pick on anyone unfairly, but just to take at random one of today's violinists who has made a name in Bach, please listen to the Martzy clip linked to below, and then to this modern recording of a violinist who is before the public today:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssXHWY9rG0g
While I have a preference, it is only a personal preference; my point is that to me at least, Martzy's performance is the result of looking at the music from a rather different perspective. Perhaps more as absolute, Platonic-Ideal music, rather than a historical event to be re-enacted a la Plimouth Plantation.
FWIW & YMMW.
JM
PS: My favorite old-school Bach is Szigeti's.
Yes - I know just what you mean about the Baroque dance movements! When I was in graduate school, I would wince when some of the faculty members would solemnly repeat the line you quoted about the movements in Bach's suites having to be dance-like. In fact, they took it to such an extreme that all students in the program were REQUIRED to take a Baroque Dance lab every week. It was interesting in a way: the steps themselves weren't so hard, but what tripped me up (no pun intended!) was having to remember the often elaborate floor patterns!
Actually, I have both the St. John and Martzy performances on CD, so I'll try to set up a listening session later today to see who can out-Bach whom (unless your link is to St. John's later recording? - which I haven't heard).
I had heard such things about enforced Baroque Dance lessons, but, really now. I think that it is one thing for a teacher to say, "OK, I require that every one of you audit one class meeting of Baroque Dance, and get a signed slip from the instructor proving you were there." To require what seems to me to be basically a waste of time I can only chalk up to a teacher who wants to get out of really teaching, or, is "logrolling" course attendance with a colleague.Do jazz performance educators require their students to take a full course in 20th-c. Ballroom Dancing? Don't tell me if the answer is "Yes."
Anyway.
The absolute best Chaconne I have heard in years is Helene Grimaud's live performance of the Busoni transcription. For my perverse or at least nearly unique prejudices, she makes NEARLY enough of the fact that the first two chords are off the beat, and then comes the bar line, and the downbeat comes on the third chord.
How many times have you heard a violin Chaconne start with a thunderous chord that implies that that is where the beat is? (Or some times even, that implies that the piece is in 2/4 ?) Then you have to slip things around a bit to make the beat fall in the right place when the variations get going.
IIRC, one of the things that Yehudi Menuhin mentioned in one of his books was that when he was older he regretted not staying to hear the Capet Quartet play when he was young (10 years old?); he did not want to stay after they started, because the Capet Quartet played the Beethoven Quartets (according to Mehuhin) non-vibrato (I assume non-vibrato for the most part, and that they used vibrato sparingly for emphasis.)
What I do know from another source (it could be Bachmann's Encyclopedia of the Violin) is that Capet played the D-minor Chaconne with opening chords played UP-BOW. Which I think is an inspired choice, that lets the piece develop organically, instead of there being a subliminal letdown after the big declamatory start. Whether Capet played the final chords down-bow, that source did not state.
BTW, one of the many vanities Heifetz committed (such as adding notes to the end of the Franck Sonata in order to keep the pianist in his shadow) was to play the final trill of the Chaconne as a double trill.
Well, what a nice thread on a slow summer Saturday.
JM
Edits: 06/22/13
I'll have to check out the Wolf Lady's Busoni transcription - my wife actually prefers that transcription to Bach's original!
You make such a good point about the beginning of the piece - I can't count how many times I'd listened to it without even being aware of the differences in stress that can make all the difference in the world. Of course, with the Sarabande rhythm, there's going to be some perceived stress on the second beat no matter what - the performer has to find that point of equipoise between the normal stress of the downbeat and that of the often elongated second beat. (The first time I heard the Chaconne was via television - with Isaac Stern as part of his "Save Carnegie Hall" broadcast. I don't remember much about it except that I was thinking, "Wow! What an incredible piece!" - probably the mark of a successful performance.)
Actually, Lara St. John recorded the Chaconne twice. I'm pretty sure that the youtube video was from her second recording, which is on a CD/SACD set from Ancalagon. I found it very disappointing compared to her first (out of print?) recording of the piece, which is one of my favorites:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000003Y32
It has excellent sound, and Amazon is selling it for $5. Yes, I know the cover pic was controversial.
Yes - I'm familiar only with her first recording (the one with the "fun" cover pic!). And I agree it's an excellent recording too! (I still have it.) I know that her second recording (the one on SACD) has its fans too, but I've never been in a hurry to hear it, partially because I'd read that it was more HIP-influenced.
Her second recording has beautiful SACD surround sound (recorded at Skywalker Sound), which captures a whiny tone with much less vibrato. I was very disappointed in the performance. If I want something HIP, the farthest I will go is the Kuijken set originally recorded for the Smithsonian's record label (and I think that's the same set now on Naxos, although I haven't heard that performance). He's a really involved player.
I don't hear what you guys (and Mr. Potter) hear. Difference of opinion...
I'm not going to try to convince you to become a Johanna Martzy fan. I'm not really on board with the idea that her unaffected, bordering-on-severe style is most effective in Bach and Mozart, as some professional critics and reviewers seem to think. From what I can hear on youtube, I like her best in Bartok's Six Romanian Folk Dances. This is from an out of print limited edition collectors' reissue LP that will probably cost you at least $250 if you can find it.
Indeed - that's why it's so fascinating to compare one's own reactions to those of other listeners. I often learn things, as I'm sure you do too, from listeners who have completely different performance preferences from mine.EDIT: BTW, I don't always agree with Tully Potter myself. He recently had some snarky words to write about the Fritz Reiner CSO Living Stereo recordings, mainly because he seems to be upset with the idea of tyrant conductors from the past, such as Reiner and Szell. But his most preposterous comment on the Reiner Living Stereo recordings was that they featured a "vast spread and Hollywood-style miking". Words fail me on that one! ;-)
Edits: 06/22/13
I guess that's why they are reviewers and critics. ;)
What a nice thing to say--thanks!
I handled the Artist & Repertory end of things, putting Arturo together with Kavi Alexander, on the theory of "the more the merrier." While Kavi's LP had critical success, I am not sure about sales, and in any event he decided to get out of Western Classical, so I bought the master tape and had Bob Ludwig remaster it with Arturo and me in attendance. I think the JMR remastering sounds better than the Water Lily CD, and the 24-Kt Gold remastering is really something. John Atkinson was I think it fair to say was taken aback at the differences he heard between aluminum and gold pressings from the same stamper, over Vivid Audio B-1s. That gold CD is available exclusively from Stereophile's store. Yeah, it costs a lot. Sorry.
By the time Arturo gets to the end, the mental image I usually get is the Count of Monte Cristo down in the dungeon, digging away with his spoon, muttering, "Just wait, you bastards." In other words, nearly unbearable intensity.
If anyone has any influence with their local classical recital series (or wants to get 20 audio friends together to sponsor it on their own) they would be very smart to present Arturo Delmoni in a recital of solo works--if interested, contact me through Asylum email.
Thanks again.
JM
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