The Life and Death of Classical Music by Norman Lebrecht Page A

an exuberance whose infectiousness transcended sonic limitations and gave listeners the impression that here was a man who was full of life and enjoyed his work, whether he was singing tragedy or comedy. The great racking groan he gives at the end of E lucevan le stelle could only have come from a man who had loved and, irresistibly, suffered loss.
2. Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue

George Gershwin, Paul Whiteman band
Columbia: New York, 10 June 1924
    In his early twenties, and the century’s, George Gershwin was one of the happiest, busiest men on earth. Too young to go to war, he had risen from street-corner song-plugger to writing shows for Broadway and songs-Swanee, Somebody Loves Me, Fascinatin’ Rhythm-that were on everyone’s lips. Prolific? He invented the word. In a matter of two and a half weeks in January 1924 Gershwin dashed off A Rhapsody in Blue which, orchestrated by the bandsman Ferde Grofe, became a hot jazz sensation and the first all-American piano concerto. Among the curiosity seekers at the Aeolian Hall premiere were Rachmaninov, Stokowski, Kreisler and Jascha Heifetz.
    Gershwin recorded the Rhapsody twice with Whiteman-acoustically in June 1924 and three years later in superior electrical sound. The first band had exactly the same players as the premiere;the second was augmented by Tommy Dorsey and Bix Beider-becke and marred by serious clashes between Gershwin and the bandmaster. His playing on both occasions is headlong and propulsive yet imbued with an introspection, and possibly a sadness, that isolates him from the ambient hubbub. The jittery jazz era was both a reaction to the war and a denial; Gershwin in these recordings manages to evoke that ambivalence. For unfathomable reasons, these performances are scarce and seldom reissued. Gershwin’s piano rolls constitute an adequate replacement, the more introspective for being played alone (attempts to overlay them with modern orchestras are too oxymoronic to warrant discussion). Otherwise, the most authentic evocations are those by Earl Wild, who played the concerto with both Whiteman and Toscanini, and Leonard Bernstein’s, directed from the piano by an empathetic composer-pianist of similar background.
3.
Beethoven: Violin Concerto

Fritz Kreisler, Berlin State Opera Orchestra/Leo Blech
EMI: Berlin (Singakademie), 14–16 December 1926
    There was only one Fritz Kreisler. Honey-toned and twinkling with good humour beneath handsomely coiffed hair, Kreisler exerted a hypnotic fascination not only on audiences but on the rest of his profession for generations to come. He continues to be revered by violinists as diverse as Nigel Kennedy and Maxim Vengerov.
    As the foremost soloist of the early recording era he used the medium to change the way the violin was played, applying an obligatory vibrato in softer passages to mask the inadequacies of sound reproduction. His cadenza for the Beethoven concerto-the section where soloists are supposed to let their hair down-was taken up by the overwhelming majority of concert soloists, unwilling to pit their imagination against so magnetic a personality. Its synoptic ascending chords have become as standard to the repertoire as the concerto itself.
    Viennese by birth and of sunny disposition, Kreisler adopted a pronounced austerity in the Beethoven concerto, as if conscious of its immensity. His attack is measured and unostentatious, every note assiduously and beautifully articulated. His playing transcends the possibility of difficulty and yields nothing but pleasure. As for the cadenzas, they do what they are meant to: they reflect back on what has just been played and project forward to what is yet to come. Kreisler’s is the benchmark account of this concerto beyond all comparison. Although he re-recorded it with better sound in London ten years later, his Berlin performance is unsurpassably intense. No other violinist has ever made a high trill sound organically like a nightingale’s song, or the concerto