Johanna Martzy, Vol. 2 = BEETHOVEN: Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61; MOZART: Violin Sonata in B-flat Major, K. 454 – Johanna Martzy, violin/Jean Antonietti, piano/Radio Svizzera Italiana Orchestra/Otmar Nussio
DOREMI DHR-7778, 64: 46 [Distr. by Allegro] *****:
Romanian violinist Johanna Martzy (1925-1979) commands enough of a cult following to appreciate this second installment of rare broadcast performances (1954-1955) of her otherwise stingy legacy. The major addition here from Jacob Harnoy’s DOREMI label is the live 1954 Beethoven Violin Concerto from Radio Switzerland with Otmar Nussio (1902-1990), a composer whose own violin concerto received a splendid performance by Guila Bustabo. The Martzy Beethoven provides us a technically superlative document of her work, here in a driven but immaculately honed rendition whose often Dionysiac frenzy rivals my personal favorite from 1953, with Wolfgang Schneiderhahn and Wilhelm Furtwaengler, once offered as part of the DGG “Furtwaengler in Memoriam” but never reissued.
Martzy’s total identification with the Beethoven resembles Nathan Milstein’s approach in many respects, and certainly for the forward line, the urgency of the phrasing, and the constant tension with which she forces the phrase to its musical point. With no less exalted monumentality does Nussio’s orchestral contribution rise to its several lofty heights, an alternately explosive or silver haze of cumulus or cirrus clouds in the throes of some primal vision. The aural quality in the orchestra can be somewhat shrill, but the pungency of the horns quite punctuates the segues to Marty’s inflamed entries, the half steps and long-held notes pearls of accented beauty. Those sections of her interplay with the orchestra Beethoven has marked “sempre perdendosi,” –always forgetting oneself– become literally excursions into some hypnotic and idyllic realm wherein ambrosia and music provide the daily regimen. The cadenza, in a series of double stops and jaggedly upward, modal scales, adds Martzy’s Romanian temperament to an already superheated mix.
The G Major theme and variations sets a gentle, Apollinian foil to act as an anodyne to the blistering first movement, the Larghetto a movement of repose and elevated poise. The tread of melody is spun so thin, so elastically, it hangs by a spider’s filament in singing its extended line over the course of nine minutes. The orchestral tissue, in plucked notes and suspended strings, adds to the empyrean tracery of the occasion. The Kreisler transition takes us to the fiery Rondo, a sprightly dance with undercurrents of fate’s once again knocking at the door. Martzy and the orchestra’s oboe intone the secondary theme with blissful charm. Her raspy approach to each further reprise of the ritornello extends both the drama and Jovian humor in Beethoven’s especial universe.
For the charming Sonata in B-flat Major by Mozart (14 November 1955), Martzy has as her accompanist the talented Jean Antonietti (1915-1994). The elegant sonata itself receives a reading that highlights its eminently classical contours, a salon reading that maintains the sense of aristocratic sentiment and elastic spontaneity of execution. At moments, the brilliant keyboard filigree threatens to transform the piece into a piano sonata with obbligato violin. Happily, Martzy and Antonietti achieve a détente in both parts, and the duo plays in spirited harmony. The second movement Andante crystallizes Mozart’s uncanny ability to transfer a melody from one instrument to the other, often mid-phrase. The intimacy of musical transmission, the sheer joie de vivre of real chamber music, has rarely been mounted so seamlessly in music. The last movement Allegretto has been hailed for “its unequaled depth.” The upbeat at the opening generates a nervous but audaciously resonant phraseology that breaks into a host of melodic tributaries. That this music could easily be mistaken for Beethoven only attests to the virile spirit that conceived it and the magic temperaments who here perform it.
DOREMI does the music and the record collector’s world a service with this reissue.
–Gary Lemco
