Mischa Elman’s style personified Russian Romanticism in its liberal rubato, arched phrasings, pronounced string portamento, and heart-on-sleeve sentiment. However, it was eclipsed when the violinist’s younger compatriot Jascha Heifetz appeared on the scene. Heifetz’s tauter, more streamlined style boasted unprecedented technical prowess and a kind of rhythmic drive that quickly set standards to which violinists have aspired since. In contrast, Elman was something of an anachronism by his 40th birthday. Still, he retained an active career and a loyal public up until his death in 1967. And judging from the first of two boxed sets encompassing all of the recordings the violinist made for Decca during his tenure with the label in the mid-1950s, I’d go so far as to claim that Elman has been underrated.
His conversational, tonally varied phrasing in the two Mozart concertos (No. 4 in D, No. 5 in A) holds your attention to the point where the “outmoded” tempo variations nearly sound organic. The 1954 Tchaikovsky concerto is slower and more sedate than Elman’s famous shellac recording from a quarter century earlier, yet it has the advantage of far superior sound and Adrian Boult’s virile podium support. Both Bruch concertos and the Wieniawski D minor suit Elman’s gifts for melodic projection and knack for finding pockets of color and nuance that flashier fiddlers leave unexplored.
However, of all the items in this set, I was most curious to hear Elman’s 1955 collaboration with Georg Solti in the Beethoven Concerto. It’s true that Solti’s coiled precision has nothing in common with Elman’s looser temperament. Yet Solti’s firm and meticulously detailed orchestral framework manages to anchor Elman’s flights of fancy without inhibiting them (Elman’s own cadenzas, though, remain thoroughly garish and controversial). In addition to his rich but never cloying tone, Elman was famous for his trills, as the first movement’s long chains magically prove.
Three violin/piano items fill out this release. If you want to know how Hindemith might have rewritten portions of Gershwin’s An American in Paris, Werner Josten’s three-movement Sonatina provides the answer. Elman gives Korngold’s Much Ado About Nothing suite all the lilt and sly character the four movements require, but the Vitali Chaconne lacks “vitali-ty”, so to speak. Testament’s transfers do the original source material full and honest justice, and Tully Potter’s notes are excellent and informative.
