Michael Rabin Collection Vol. 3 = MOZART: Violin Concerto No. 4 in D Major, K. 218; GLAZUNOV: Violin Concerto in A Minor, Op. 82; TCHAIKOVSKY: Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35; PAGANINI: Caprice No. 9 “La Chasse”; Nos. 11, 16, 21; ENGEL: Sea Shells; MENDELSSOHN: Song Without Words, Op. 19, No. 1; PROKOFIEV: March from he Love for 3 Oranges; SAINT-SAENS: Caprice After an Etude in the Form of a Waltz; Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, Op. 28; WIENIAWSKI: Polonaise Brillante in D, Op. 4; RAVEL: Tzigane; KREISLER: Tambourin Chinois, Op. 3; SCRIABIN: Etude in Thirds; GODOWSKY: Alt Wien; TCHAIKOVSKY: Chant d’automne, Op. 37b, No. 10; CRESTON: Violin Concerto No. 2, Op. 78 – Michael Rabin, violin/Denver Symphony Orchestra/Saul Caston (Mozart)/Radio-Orchester Beromuester, Zurich/Erich Schmid (Glazunov)/Oslo Philharmonic/Oivin Fjeldstad (Tchaikovsky)/Los Angeles Philharmonic/Georg Solti (Creston)/ Bell Telephone Hour Orchestra/Donald Voorhees/Raymond Lambert, piano
Doremi DHR-7970/1 (2 CDs) 79:49; 79:15 [Distr. by Qualiton] *****:
Producer Jacob Harnoy resurrects important materials from the legacy of the gifted but tragic legacy of Michael Rabin (1936-1972), a passionate and expressive artist of immaculate taste and uncanny technical proficiency. The immediate appeal of this set lies in the music of Mozart, extremely rare in the Rabin pantheon, here in the D Major Concerto (9 February 1960) from Denver in good sound. At first reluctant to program Mozart, Rabin found a natural vehicle in this fluent concerto, especially in the lyrical Andante cantabile, which Rabin keeps moving without allowing the music to ritard into an adagio. The outer movements remain light, affectionate, elegantly balanced for their alternate grace and light firetrap. Typically, in the rapid passages, Rabin digs into his instrument, squeezing out the precious wine of fluent ariosi. The galant figures in the last movement, their double stops and pliant ornaments, Rabin delivers with a sure and expressive hand. The cadenzas from Joachim, the lush sonority, and the incisive attacks in the upper notes make compelling listening regardless of this collaboration’s “collectible” value.
The Glazunov Concerto might well be called Rabin’s “swan song,” his having recorded it commercially and in concert with the likes of Dimitri Mitropoulos; it appeared on Rabin’s last concert in Houston with A. Clyde Roller conducting, 14 December 1971. The performance with Erich Schmid in Zurich (3 March 1968) elicits an unaffected directness and expressive lyricism in every bar, underlined by the artist’s rhythmic propulsion and suave freedom of phrasing. Schmid delivers a sturdy color line in deep strings and horns, while Rabin weaves his liquid, sterling magic in the upper line for the magical secondary tune, his flute tone mixing graciously with the harp. The alchemical sympathy extends into the Andante sostenuto, in which Rabin indulges us with a tailored cadenza whose maturity of line well rivals that of the older master Milstein. The last movement indulges us in festive trumpet and triangle colors and a nostalgic Russian air whose ritornello quite has us whistling and sailing with Rabin in the robust aether of his musical imagination that imitates a balalaika orchestra.
The Oslo concert of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto (29 October 1964) with Fjeldstad rings with the electrical sparks we long associate with Rabin’s elastic propulsive style. Rabin’s line points forward at each phrase of the first movement, the long arch measured in graduated riffs and dynamics to explode at the tuttis while anticipating the next series of variants. Rabin’s tempos, quite brisk, urge Tchaikovsky’s half steps and registration shifts at risk for mishaps, but none occurs. With feral thrusts we come to the cadenza, in which Rabin barely relents in his urgent negotiation of its own trials. When the flute announces the return of the orchestra, the sweet colloquy with Rabin’s fluid trill, arco phases, and sizzling bowing becomes a lesson in applied musical demonology, with Fjeldstad’s adding the upward rush to judgment. Despite the hurtling speed of the first movement, Rabin still casts the illusion of internal serenity, a loving rendition whose lyricism beguiles some fifty-five years after the event. The G Minor Canzonetta extends the spell under which we marvel at Rabin’s ever-youthful panache and grand introspection. The ensuing Russian Dance (with traditional edits) moves like greased lightning, equally capable of illuminating the night sky. The last pages receive the frenzied abandon that guarantees the bristles fly from both the violin and the backs of our collective necks!
Paul Creston’s Violin Concerto No. 2 has its world premier in this performance (17 November 1960) in Los Angeles with conductor Georg Solti. Creston (nee Giuseppe Guttoveggio) writes in a conservative, albeit highly rhythmic style. Rabin attacks the chromatic, even “slippery” violin part of the opening Allegro with his usual assertive energy, his high tone burnished and his riffs etched with acid. The orchestral tuttis resonate with a certain Hollywood flavor, as if Creston had composed a popular notion of a classical concerto for the movies. Rabin holds the last note of the Allegro as a segue into the heart of the work, Andante. A melancholy cosmopolitanism suffuses this moody section, which might carry a program, “A Walker in the City.” A lyrical aria, the music allows us to savor Rabin’s capacity for extended melody. The middle section takes on animated riffs in syncopated figures, almost a waltz or soft rumba with plucked punctuations. A plaintive, meditative cadenza of taxing difficulty leads to the re-entry of the orchestra woodwinds whose sonority soars with northern lights in the manner of Nielsen or raspy Sibelius. The Presto finale reveals the jaunty, explosively extroverted character in Creston, who cannot help his being seduced by a rollicking Italian or Neapolitan dance. The last two minutes have us tapping feet and beating time to the sultry pyrotechnics Rabin and Solti conjure in their efforts to convince us that Creston has bestowed upon us a new classic.
The “La Chasse” Caprice in E Major derives from a tape made at “The Listening Room” of WQXR-FM studios, where Rabin’s violin imitates flutes and horns alternately – via the A and E strings the former, the G and D strings the latter. The double stops and glissandi twitter and scurry with raspy pointed inflection, Rabin the master of all the music he surveys.
The Bell Telephone Hour concert (18 June 1956) celebrates Rabin’s natural birthright as the heir to the Heifetz tradition, with the exception of the Saint-Saens-Ysaye transcription, which Heifetz did not play. The Engel “Sea Shells” comes by way of a Zimbalist transcription. “Sweet Remembrance” by Mendelssohn and the Prokofiev March have Rabin directly phrasing in the Heifetz mold, the long line high on the bridge. Rabin and Voorhees make heat in the Saint-Saens Etude, which arranges itself as an introduction, waltz-theme in sonata-form, and finale.
In July 1952 the sixteen-year-old Rabin embarked on an Australian tour — touted as “the greatest young talent since Heifetz” — with accompanist Raymond Lambert, the recitals broadcast by the ABC and privately recorded by Simon Preston on a home machine utilizing acetate discs. The 2 July 1952 recital from Sydney Town Hall opens with the fiery Polonaise Brillante in D by Wieniawski, an Elman specialty, but no less belonging to the precocious Rabin, who likewise championed the composer’s Op. 14 Concerto. Some sonic deterioration mars the Introduction et Rondo Capriccioso, but the shining artistry remains focused, the product of an uncanny musical maturity, again bearing inevitable comparison with the Heifetz conception.
The set of ten pieces from 8 July 1952 opens with unaccompanied Paganini caprices, not the Ferdinand David arrangement with keyboard Heifetz favored. No. 21 features Rabin’s double stops in the etching of an arietta that ends presto. No. 11 moves in Bach-like sarabande at first, tremolos and double-stops in abundance. It breaks into a hearty reel of demonic virtuosity, exploiting various registers and timbres in a breathless succession of uneven metrics, only to return da capo to its sostenuto beginning. No. 16 in G Minor is a grueling exercise in sustained arpeggios that Rabin tosses off with aplomb, the triple meter and chromatics no issue for his astonishing technique. So, too, Szigeti’s transcription of the Scriabin D Major Etude in Thirds, a tortuous exercise at least. The old Vienna-by-Heifetz charm appears in Godowsky’s Alt Wien, to be trumped by hectic Viennese exotics from Kreisler in the Chinese Caprice. Ravel’s Tzigane receives an inflammatory rendition from Rabin, exuding enough ardent firepower to warrant the sweetly sentimental encore, Tchaikovsky’s Autumn Song from “The Seasons.”
–Gary Lemco
