Now this really is something – a fully fired-up Menuhin, high on adrenalin and relishing the thrill of the moment. The specific circumstances were a Japanese tour, a punishing concert schedule and a two-day sequence of sessions which, on the evidence of the manifest results, probably involved a minimum of ‘takes’. Granted, there were technical audio problems, most of them concerning substandard shellac and a rough-sounding end product. Surface levels are unusually high (laughably so for 1951 commercial releases), but the recorded balance is adequate.
What really surprises is the raging intensity and burnished tone quality of Menuhin’s playing, especially when considering that various of his commercial recordings from the same period – or thereabouts – were prone to roughness. I initially wondered whether a blanket of surface noise was acting to camouflage some of those ‘rough edges’ that even by the early 1950s had crept into Menuhin’s playing, but closer scrutiny suggests not. It seems that this playing really is as good as it sounds!
The Kreutzer Sonata throws caution to the wind (a little too much perhaps in the central section of the first movement) with a compensating spontaneity that recalls Menuhin’s audacious youth and those fabulous records from the 1930s. Adolf Baller (whose testing life story is eloquently retold in Erik Wen’s excellent notes) is no mere accompanist, but an immensely strong player in his own right, with plenty of individual ideas.
The Bach solo sonatas are truly home territory for Menuhin, and these particular readings show greater maturity than his pre-war recordings (EMI, 12/88) and a surer technical command than the two complete sets that he made a few years later (neither of which are currently available domestically). Wen suggests that the Japanese performances ‘project an expressive, almost improvisatory, freedom while maintaining an eloquent pacing throughout.’ I concur wholeheartedly, though the sound on the pre-war set is better.
The heat remains full on for Tartini’s Devil’s Trill, which is again notably superior to Menuhin’s earlier commercial recording – Biddulph, 12/91 (fabulous double-stopped trills). The ‘encores’ breathe fire and passion by the second: Brahms’s First Hungarian Dance is super-fast and the Dvorak ‘Negro Spiritual Melody’ (i.e. the principal theme from the New World Symphony’s Largo) witnesses a veritable flood of tone. Just occasionally in these shorter pieces the tempo is pushed too far – as if a chauffeur is shuffling impatiently outside, car keys in hand, waiting to hurry the pressured virtuoso to his next engagement. But the sense of excitement remains almost tangible. A marvellous release, one that truly extends our knowledge and experience of this peerless artist.'