and String Quartet, Op. 21; RAVEL: Trio in A Minor for Piano, Violin
and Cello; FAURE: Violin Sonata No. 1 in A Major, Op. 13; DEBUSSY:
Violin Sonata in G Minor; FRANCK: Violin Sonata in A Major — Jean-Yves
Thibaudet, piano/ Stephen Isserlis, cello/ Takacs Quartet
Decca B0004447-02 (2 discs), 64:43; 63:02 (Distrib. Universal)****:
Constituting one of the most satisfying of the Joshua Bell
retrospective series, these performances from 1989-1990 of French
chamber staples finds Bell in extremely good form, perhaps rivaling
Jacques Thibaud in repertory that eminent Gallic artist made his own
two generations ago. What impresses me about these inscriptions is the
consistent sobriety as well as the facility of ensemble, the thoroughly
idiomatic leisure of execution. Bell seems an extremely natural
purveyor of the French line, a limpid, extended tissue that suffers no
extraneous pulse or heavy beat. The marvelous Chausson Concerto, which
I have admired since the CBS LP with Robert Casadesus, Zino
Francescatti, and the Guilet Quartet (ML 4998), here finds a musical
sextet of sympathetic, ardent players — intimate, warm, and dynamically
restrained enough to urge the piece forward without melodrama. The
Decca engineer, John Dunkerley, has been fastidious in his balances,
avoiding the old Heifetz tendency to make every chamber work a
concertante work for violin. The Sicilienne achieves a serene wash of
colors that never becomes gaudy. The ostinato piano opening with violin
at the beginning of the Grave could foreshadow moments in Berg, until
the violin opens the melodic line in modal harmony. Thibaudet’s own
virtuosity, while subdued for most of the Concert, cuts loose for the
impassioned Tres anime finale. As always, the Takacs Quartet plays with
incisive resolve.
Ravel’s wiry Trio (1914) has maintained its eerie, exotic fascination
since my old recording on RCA with Heifetz. Rubinstein, and Piatagorsky
(LM 1119). For the cello part, Stephen Isserlis brings his own songful
virtues, and the opening Modere is as diaphanous a realization as I
have heard in recent times. We do seem to have entered a secret garden,
a bower of orientalized bliss of shifting colors and rhythms,
insouciant meanderings among hothouse flowers. Is the world of Loris
Huysmans and Pierre Louys nigh? The respective sonatas of Faure,
Debussy, and Franck are much traversed fare; but rather than make
comparisons, invidious or not, to Heifetz, Francescatti, and Neveu, let
us be satisfied with a triptych of finely honed, tasteful performances,
each of which display a youthful but nobly sincere temperament. This is
an album, I think, that distinguishes Bell as a virtuoso who has
matured into a musician.
–Gary Lemco
