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Some Rare "Live" Recordings By Ginette Neveu

Jeffrey Lipscomb | Sacramento, CA United States | 06/07/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This 3-disc Tahra CD set "Hommage a Ginette Neveu (1919-1949)" is currently out of print and rather hard to find. Except for the Rosbaud Beethoven concerto, everything else here is a first release on CD. Anyone who admires the tragically short-lived French violinist will find this set fascinating.



CD 1 contains two 1949 radio interviews, lasting about 9 minutes total, and a "live" 10 Sept. 1949 Beethoven Violin Concerto with Hans Rosbaud and the SWS German Orchestra. This performance is also available in similar sound on a Hanssler CD, coupled with Rosbaud's Beethoven 8th Symphony. CD 2 has another performance of the Beethoven (dated 1 May 1949) with Willem von Otterloo conducting the Hilversum Radio (here identified as simply "Radio Filh. Orkest"). CD 3 offers two Brahms items: a 4 April 1948 account of the Violin Concerto under Roger Desormiere and the French National Orchestra, and the Violin Sonata #3 with Neveu's brother Jean at the piano (from 21 Sept. 1949).



This set certainly belies the silly notion that female violinists and French conductors are both out of their element in Brahms. To my taste, Neveu joins her fellow distaff violinists Gioconda de Vito and Johanna Martzy somewhere near the very top of the heap in this concerto. And while Pierre Monteux (and perhaps Charles Munch) have long been singled out as rare exceptions to the idea that Gallic conductors aren't suited to the thick-textured orchestral works of Brahms, here the great Roger Desormiere proves an eloquent Brahms interpreter - in fact, one of the finest on disc. How wonderful to hear this talented conductor in non-French music (he would suffer a stroke just a few years later and be forced to retire, leaving us just a handful of studio recordings).



I prefer this Neveu/Desormiere Brahms reading and her studio account with Issay Dobrowen (Dutton)to her live accounts with Schmidt-Isserstedt and Dorati. The sound is variable - there are a few moments of blasting distortion in the last mvt. - but all in all it's very listenable. This concerto and the lovely, straightforward reading (with brother Jean) of the sonata are the highlights of this set.



The two accounts of the Beethoven Concerto differ in several respects. Neveu's intonation is somewhat more secure under Otterloo, who provides a very straightforward accompaniment. She uses a cadenza that may be of her own devising (I need to check and see if it may be the same one used by Bronislaw Huberman, which had a similar Paganini-like virtuosity about it). With Rosbaud, whose conducting is somewhat more subtle and probing than Otterloo's here, she employs the Joachim cadenza. While fascinating to hear, both readings strike me as just a little short of greatness. Certainly Joseph Szigeti and Adolf Busch, among others, manage to sustain the line and explore the poetry more deeply than Neveu. And that is not a function of gender but simply a matter of greater maturity - sadly, we can only dream of what Neveu might have given us had she not died at age 30.



Recommended primarily for Neveu's great Brahms concerto with Desormiere, and for one of the finest-ever readings of the 3rd Sonata with her brother Jean, who would die with her in that ill-fated plane crash in the Azores.



Jeff Lipscomb





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