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Campoli's Mendelssohn beats them all (Heifetz&Perlman, incl)

brerfox@tm.net.my | Kuala Lumpur, MALAYSIA | 08/30/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Alfredo Campoli - The Underrated GeniusAlthough I was born about 56 years after Campoli, his violin playing legacy survives via a few examples of his art on Compact Disc. I have played the violin for about 30 years now and have collected violin recordings for about 20 years.One of my very favourite violin recordings is his version of Mendelssohn's E minor Concerto Op.64. I nearly passed over this fantastic CD (the Pickwick version) but now have 2 other CD copies of another mastering (BEULAH 1PD10). I have a vast recording collection of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. In my opinion, there is no finer version of this concerto on records or CD. My collection includes Yehudi Menuhin, Jascha Heifetz, Henryk Szeryng, Itzhak Perlman, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Ruggiero Ricci, Maxim Vengerov, Sarah Chang, Johanna Martzy, Michel Schwalbe, Michael Rabin, Aaron Rosand and Gioconda de Vito.For me, Campoli's version is ideal due to the technical security of his playing, sweet tone, narrow and fast vibrato and seamless transitions of tempo between various sections of the concerto. He also captures the mood of the whole piece perfectly - young, refreshing and innocent in the 1st. movement with delightful touches of glissando; a flowing (but not over-dramatic development section) for the 2nd. movement and an elfin lightness of touch and spiccato bowing (that epitomizes Mendelssohn's earlier inspirational Midsummer Night's Dream music) and carefree spirit for the 3rd. movement. Listening to the fantastic way he reaches for the highest E at the end of the 3rd. movement always gives me goose-bumps and I feel really great when I hear this interpretation. The other important point about Campoli's playing is that he never forces his tone, as some of today's modern players tend to do.DON'T EVER PASS OVER this disc, as I nearly did. You will definitely regret it if you do. 5 STARS does not do justice to this disc - it should be 50 STARS !!!!!"

Reissue please!!

SwissDave | Switzerland | 05/07/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"There's a no shortage of of well-played recordings of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, but I know of no other that is as musically (interpretatively) satisfactory. Many famous versions favour an overtly virtuosic approach (e.g. Heifetz, Kogan - let's not even mention those who over-sentimentalize the piece), which I won't dare say wears off on the listener, but it's true one always tends to be either fascinated or one's mind keeps wandering off - there seems to be little in-between or beyond.



Campoli is different. The "danger" performing Mendelssohn seems to be to try and "save" his music from its alleged superficiality, the "solution" to take his compositions at face value. Campoli must have loved and known inside out this piece like no other - he performed it in concert no less than 900 times! It shows: he takes the piece seriously without intellectualising it, plays with a gorgeously sweet tone without ever sounding schmaltzy. There is no undue sentimentality, and miraculously, he makes every phrase sound newly minted - nothing perfunctory about this. Great, great art!



The result is the kind of performance that forbids analysis: the result is more than the sum of its parts. That said, one can tell a lot of attention has been paid to detail (or what too often is treated like mere detail); listen to e.g. the transitions from the Allegro molto appassionato to the Andante, and from the Andante to the Allegretto non troppo - I have never heard them done so convincingly.



Boult (who admired Campoli) and the LPO respond to the challenge, and it doesn't hurt that the legendary dream team of James Walker (producer) and Kenneth E. Wilkinson (engineer) set up microphones and sat at the controls.



In contrast to the audiophile stereo sound quality of the 1958 Mendelssohn, the 1954 Elgar was recorded in (well-balanced!) mono. Even in the company of Sammons and Menuhin, Campoli's warm, singing tone holds its own - and of course Elgar was a Boult specialty. I can honestly say I could live with this version alone if need be.



The Elgar has recently been coupled by Eloquence Australia on an all-British composers' disc with compositions by Arthur Bliss. A pity insofar as it means we'll have to wait for the greatest rendition of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto to be reissued. And that is a great pity indeed...



Greetings from Switzerland, David."