Philippe Hirschhorn, violin = PAGANINI : Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major, Op. 6; SAINT-SAENS: Caprice for Violin et Piano apres l’etude en forme de valse; BRAHMS: Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77; Violin Sonata No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 108; TCHAIKOVSKY: Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35; SIBELIUS: Violin Concerto in D Minor, OP. 47; BERG: Violin Concerto; BACH: Solo Sonata No. 2 in A Minor, BWV 1003; PROKOFIEV: 5 Melodies for Violin and Piano, Op. 35; RAVEL: Tzigane – Philippe Hirschhorn, violin/Orchestre National de Belgique/Rene Defossez (Paganini)/Southwest Symphony Orchestra, Stuttgart/Jiri Starek (Brahms)/Bamberger Symphony Orchestra/Ferdinand Leitner (Tchaikovsky)/ Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra/Uri Segal (Sibelius)/New Philharmonia Orchestra/Uri Segal (Berg)/Lidiya Leonskaya, piano (Saint-Saens)/Helmuth Barth, piano
Doremi DHR-7906-8 (3 CDs) 80:40, 79: 35, 78:40 [Distr. by Allegro] ****:
Latvian-born Philippe Hirsch horn (1946-1996) remains among the best-kept secrets in the annals of musical marvels. A pupil of Mikhail Vaiman, he won First Prize at the 1967 International Queen Elisabeth Competition, in which Gidon Kremer placed third. His tone, a cross between the sterling, lean sound and precise articulation of Heifetz and the warm resonance of Artur Grumiaux, makes a lasting impression, given the level of technical execution, which is flawless. A brain tumor caused Hirschhorn’s premature death, and lax marketing kept his name from having become internationally famous, despite his having collaborated with Mischa Maisky, Martha Argerich, and Herbert von Karajan.
From this Doremi collection of Hirschhorn’s various appearances, 1967-1977, we witness two of his spectacular performances at the Queen Elisabeth Competition, the Paganini D Major Concerto and the Saint-Saens Caprice after his Op. 56 keyboard etude. The approach to the Paganini proves quite broad, Hirschhorn preferring a slightly less brisk Allegro that permits him to show off any number of bravura techniques, such as his absolute delight in harmonic runs and quick alternation of plucked and bowed notes. His flute tone climbs into the leafy heights of tall trees. At the end of a volatile first movement, the audience breaks out in spontaneous applause. Electric sparks hardly describe the pungent, lightning runs he tosses off in the Rondo, a razor’s edge that would make Ricci blush. The dazzled spectators begin raving with glee long before the coda has finished. From that same showcase, we have the Saint-Saens in glorious presence, self-indulgently preening, as most of the composer’s work permits. Slides, huge trills, double stops, chords in harmonics, the entire arsenal of post-Paganini virtuosity condensed into seven minutes’ worth of musical dynamite explodes in a phenomenon called Philippe Hirschhorn.
The Brahms Concerto (28 June 1974) steps up the voltage even more, given the depth of the music and the uncanny entry by Hirschhorn, who, like Milstein, likes to open a semi- or quarter-tone above the note and comes down to nest in the most luxurious statement of the full theme. Not since Berl Senofsky’s almost forgotten collaboration with Rudolf Moralt (on a deleted Epic LP) have I reacted so viscerally to a soloist’s opening foray and then his plangent transition (with help from winds and tympani) to the urgent sequence that is forever the envy of Edward Elgar. Hirschhorn’s rubato warrants another dissertation in plastic rhythm. I did not know the work of Czech maestro Jiri Starek, but this Brahms makes me curious to hear more, especially as I find strong influences of Rafael Kubelik. The two musicians build a fierce arch to the orchestra’s big tutti for the recapitulation over a pedal point, while Hirschhorn’s instrument takes us into some aether where the gods can still hear a talent denied us mortals. The Joachim cadenza induces us to hear Hirschhorn play Bach–and we can, in the A Minor Sonata (mis-identified on the label as D Minor). The segue to the coda drips with sympathetic tendresse, the violin’s tone in the long notes something like lavender mixed with ambrosia. Starek picks up the tempo for the explosions that rock the cadences at the finale. From that same showcase, we have the Saint-Saens in glorious presence, self-indulgently preening–as most of the composer’s work insists–in staccato and spiccato articulation.
A long line and fast vibrato mark Hirschhorn’s Adagio espessivo, the intensity of the playing carrying the effect rather than any sentimental lingering over phrases. The Hungarian Rondo, per expectation, boils with raspy, singeing power, the kind we associate with Hirschhorn’s contemporaries, Rabin and Ferras. The forward motion maintains a solidity and poised impetus that takes us to the brief, quasi-cadenza, then on to the martial variation of the rondo theme, resolute, the four beats echoed along the woodwinds. Hirschhorn decides to cut the rope and indulge in some pyrotechnical wizardry that has Starek moving to keep up, and us and the Stuttgart audience agog.
The source of the Bach A Minor Sonata is not clear: do we assume it derives from the same 1974 Schwetzingen Festival as the Brahms D Minor Sonata and Ravel Tzigane? What is clear is the total absorption of Hirschhorn’s playing, full-blooded in the manner of Szeryng and Milstein, the Grave haunted by a sense of tragic mystery. The monumental Fuga Hirschhorn projects as series of studies in textured counterpoint, his varying each of the entries’ tone color to create the impression of a chest of violins in concert. The massive chords and chromatic tensions prepare us mentally, if not in fact, for what Hirschhorn would have wrought of the great D Minor Chaconne. No less unique is the sound of the Andante, its drone ostinatos and pulsing melodic line conveying a pathos from one of the composer’s settings of Passion-music. Hirschhorn manages the spirit of the dance in the feverish final Allegro, his subtle applications of bow pressure and wicked rhythmic incisiveness jarring us into an alert reception of his overpowering musical means.
With pianist-pedagogue Helmut Barth Hirschhorn delivers a thoroughly idiomatic rendition of the Brahms D Minor Sonata, all rainy day nostalgia, as though the composer were sending a love-letter to the Schumanns that ends in dreamy D Major. Hirschhorn creates another leisurely, Brahms idyll in the D Major Adagio ,with its cantilena musings into a Lydian version of G Major. A deliciously buoyant scherzando in F-sharp Minor, with an impassioned central section and the return via D Minor, sweet dalliance with hints of tragedy. Wonderful keyboard colors from Barth. The D Minor Finale (Presto agitato) in 6/8 Hirschhorn plays as a thoughtful tarantella, the subterranean frenzy and emotional turmoil erupting from a volcano of repressed drives, the syncopations quite wild. We might have whetted our lips in expectation of Ravel’s Tzigane with Hirschhorn. He delights in the gypsy filigree, lingering over the staggered, chromatic line, flaunting its nostalgia and its coy leaps into sultry invitation. Recall the “keyboard” part had been conceived for an archaic instrument called the lutheal, a kind of color-cembalom that would enrich the gypsy element. Barth invokes the harp-like figures in the piano while the violin twists, plucks, and screeches its exotic homage to Sarasate and Paganini. When Hirschhorn finally compresses enough steam, he lets loose a whirlwind of raucously erotic colors, a festival of feral energy. By contrast, the Five Melodies of Prokofiev (1935) exude a gentle lyricism, a quality of an instrumental vocalise. Only No. 2 exerts that angular, slightly oriental languor that usually infiltrates Prokofiev’s eclectic classicism. The passionate No. 3 enjoys a touch of Liszt or Ravel. A gavotte follows, animated and flighty at once, tinged by demure melancholy. The last could be Prokofiev’s answer to the Brahms’ rainy day wistfulness. It breaks into a gently aggressive march, but the urge to sing overcomes its moment of choler, and sweet harmonics assuage the storm.
Hirschhorn joins conductor Uri Segal (b. 1944) in two concertos of different temper: the Sibelius Concerto (25 October 1974) with the Cologne Radio Symphony and the valedictory Berg Concerto with the New Philharmonia Orchestra. The opening runs in the Sibelius pass so quickly as to defy description, only that this kind of intensity already presages the sinewy approach throughout, reminiscent of the best days of Julian Sitkovetzky. The symphonic scope of the concerto makes itself evident, Hirschhorn negotiating the persistent double stops and tricky fingerings with poised dexterity, like trilling and accompanying himself simultaneously with first and third fingers. The early first movement completely beguiles. The recap moves with a muscular stealth, quite electric. The whirlpool of an extended coda sets a banshee against the furies, Hirschhorn’s pyrotechnics colossal. The B-flat Major Adagio intones a melody of noble resignation, the violin tone broadly expressive, Hirschhorn’s broken-octave playing in the central section poignant and resolute. Hirsch horn’s “polar bear” polonaise has light feet, over a glacially thick orchestral texture from Segal, the tympani, clarinet, and low brass wending through Hirschhorn’s active G string. Northern mesmerism, those last chords.
Like fellow Gallic violinist Christian Ferras, Hirschhorn fell under the spell of the Berg Concerto, composed “to the memory of an angel,” Manon Gropius. Hirschhorn plays the lyrically expressionistic work as a melodic, “tonal” exercise in its division into the G Minor, D Major, A Minor, and E Major triads, despite its being set as an atonal row in the Schoenberg tradition. The piece also reveals a kind of a symphonic poem construct, similar to Richard Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration. The color elements of the writing, in both violin and orchestra, beguile us, as a delicate spirit seems surrounded by forces of dissolution. The waltz tune, of Carinthian folk origin, portrays Manon’s eternal youth. The second movement elicits more martial character from Hirschhorn and Segal’s orchestra; we sense a battle of will for spiritual supremacy between solo and orchestra, until the Bach chorale assigns an armistice to this primal struggle. Luminously disturbing music-making of a high order, this reverential performance.
The Tchaikovsky Concerto teams Hirschhorn with veteran German conductor Ferdinand Leitner (1912-1996) for a performance given in May 1977. The Francescatti influence makes itself felt in Hirschhorn’s patient loving applications to the main and secondary themes, though his quick, light sforzati add a touch of Russian spice to the mix. The cadenza thrives on its modal expressivity rather than the sheer, bravura leaps and runs. The violin’s reunion with the flute is a moment of transparent beauty. A delicate G Minor Canzonetta leads, rather dramatically, to the scintillating Allegro vivacissimo, opening with thunder from Leitner. Hirschhorn literally toys with his long chords before dashing into the fray, repeats taken, a joyous rendition – peppery and devilishly brilliant in all parts. No wonder colleague Mischa Maisky called Hirschhorn “unbelievable” and “possessed of hypnotic power.”
–Gary Lemco
