Born in San Francisco in 1918, Ruggiero Ricci kept on concertizing long after most performers would have laid aside violin and bow. Technique, like everything else, wanes with advancing years, and the result in Ricci’s case was a string of shaky stage performances and, worse still, a batch of recordings (including that embarrassing CD for Biddulph, in which he played the Brahms and Beethoven concertos with cadenzas by everyone under the sun, and a rather horrible but slightly better-played Unicorn-Kanchana disc of Wieniawski showpieces) in which armchair scrutinizers with instant replay could isolate one risible blunder after another. So where the rest had the good sense and humility to retire, Ricci kept right on going, the most serious consequence being that these later endeavors obscured the truth: that Ricci indeed was one of the most astounding virtuosos of his epoch.
That’s why anyone who loves the violin should have these amazing Decca recordings from the 1950s, for here is Ricci at his dazzling best. Another fascinating dimension to these priceless performances (I use the term advisedly, for much of this is playing to the gallery at its worst, and yet Ricci always gets away with it!) are the contributions of Louis Persinger, Ricci’s (and Menuhin’s) first teacher, who also proves to have been a crack accompanist. Unsurprisingly, it’s works by Paganini and Sarasate that dominate these two discs, and Ricci’s accounts are sensational, even if they sometimes betray a certain lack of musical good taste. And the rest, a smattering of virtuoso showstoppers by Wieniawski, Elgar, Vécsey, Kroll, Chopin, Smetana, Suk, Achron, Hubay, and Moszkowski, makes you realize that today’s hot-house-reared fiddlers are snubbing a universe of masterpieces they rate beneath their dignity. Or is it that many of these pieces are just too difficult? Listen to Ricci in Bazzini’s La Ronde des Lutins, the last track on Disc 2, and make up your own mind! Extraordinary violin playing and nice-sounding transfers–don’t miss it!
