MENDELSSOHN: Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64; BRUCH: Violin Concerto No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 26 – Ruggiero Ricci, violin/London Symphony Orchestra/Pierino Gamba
Pristine Audio PASC 226, 50:50 [various formats avail. at www.pristineclassical.com] ****:
Performances inscribed 15-16 January 1957 feature virtuoso violinist Ruggiero Ricci (b. 1918), a musician trained–like Yehudi Menuhin–by Louis Persinger, who guided the youth to the Romantic repertory dominated by Paganini and Sarasate for which Ricci remains famous today. I met Ricci 1980 in Atlanta for the Atlanta Symphony premier of the Ginastera Violin Concerto–”homage a Paganini”–which proved a tumultuous success.
The familiar Mendelssohn Concerto benefits from a finely-chiseled focus from Ricci, and an inflamed orchestral contribution from Pierino Gamba (b. 1936). Few can ricochet chords and sizzle a tremolo passage like Ricci; and he moves briskly through the fioritura in a most lyrical and edgy manner, Ricci’s forte always having been the “gypsy” flavor he brings to a score, making an otherwise tame piece of repertoire a bit wild and unpredictable. A rasping and throaty cadenza leads to an anticlimax before the recapitulation, and the movement quakes with no small heat until the last chord, when the bassoon’s sustained B carries us into the C Major Andante. A bittersweet paean to cherished regrets it becomes, with an impassioned foray into A Minor. The last movement, opening Allegretto, seems relatively glib until the animated figures begin the Allegro molto vivace, straight out of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The excursions into B Major and G Major only delay the inevitable intensification of the somewhat cyclical materials, with Ricci and Gamba driving the final pages either into the ground or straight into the far reaches of the cosmos, depending on one’s emotional gyroscope.
The 1866 Bruch G Minor Concerto offers Ricci much opportunity for clarion and hortatory effects, his collaboration with Gamba reminding us that the opening movement is marked Vorspiel–Prelude–and serves as a dramatic and lyric archway to the second movement Adagio. The orchestral tissue boils up after a sustained pedal from Ricci and accompaniment, and the tutti volcanoes its way to the seething surface. Again, Ricci’s tone can be punishing and rasping or tenderly seductive, perhaps both at once. The segue to the Adagio obviously derives from Mendelssohn, but the lyric gift remains Bruch’s own German-Slavic psalmody. The LSO string, French horn, and woodwind sections make their hearty presence known, the music palpitating with a visceral sincerity. The dub from which producer Andrew Rose took this reissue seems to have been in stereo, thus adding more potent ambiance to the total effect. We might recall that Ricci studied with another German master–as Menuhin had with Adolf Busch–Georg Kulenkampff (1898-1948), who had himself a great success with this concerto. The wicked violin double stops that open the last movement Allegro energico ignite the orchestra, and the two move with a demonic accord to their shared peroration, an eternally luscious moment in violin concertos. The elegiac tone of the counter subject becomes quite expansive, the sense of pure virtuosity–upon which the concerto will conclude with increasing, pulverizing acceleration–subdued to the purpose of grace and sterling arioso perfection.
— Gary Lemco
