Yehudi Menuhin plays Contemporary Sonatas – Bartok, Prokofiev – Pristine Audio

by Audiophile Audition | May 22, 2026 | Classical CD Reviews, Classical Reissue Reviews

MENUHIN plays Contemporary Sonatas = BARTOK: Sonata for Solo Violin, Sz. 117; PROKOFIEV: Violin Sonata No. 1 in F Minor, Op. 80 – Yehudi Menuhin, violin/ Marcel Gazelle, piano – Pristine Audio PACM 132 (53:04) [www.pristineclassical.com] *****:

I met violinist Yehudi Menuhin (1916-1999) for the first time in Atlanta, Georgia in 1980, on a Saturday, after having heard him perform the previous evening the Elgar Violin Concerto, one of many of his personal, prized specialties. He greeted me in his suite at the Fairmont Hotel, glad that I bore many of his vinyl LPs. Early in our conversation he beamed, “I am so touched to find someone so familiar with my work!” I must state that Menuhin’s demeanor, in conversation, totally fixated on his guest, as though my words and presence were all that meant anything at that moment. 

I inquired into Menuhin’s decision in 1947 – the same year he committed to recording history his performance of the Bartok Solo Violin Sonata – to return to Germany, only just beginning to recuperate after the destruction of WW II and actively pursuing, under international jurisdiction for retribution, various, guilty parties of the Holocaust: 

“Mr. Menuhin, there are fellow Jews who consider you ‘a dirty Jew’ because you opted to participate in German cultural reconstruction.”

“Yes, I am only too aware. But I received an invitation to perform the Beethoven Violin Concerto in Berlin with Wilhelm Furtwaengler – the greatest of concertos with the greatest of orchestra conductors, and I had to make a decision. Obviously, with the recent revelations of the mass destruction of human beings in Germany, many people felt every German ought to be pushed into the sea. Absolutely, a legitimate reaction.  I felt, however, deeply, that if the world were to heal, I must be part of the process. My presence would be unique – after all – my name “Yehudi” means quite literally ‘the Jew.’ There would be no ambivalence.” 

“Among my many recordings of you, one of my favorites is that of the Nielsen Concerto with Mogens Wöldike.”

“Thank you. You know, we achieved such good harmony together, that some of the musicians asked if I had Danish in my heritage? But more significantly, in my meeting with the composer Sibelius, he asked me directly whom I thought was the greatest living composer! I felt caught between honesty and courtesy. But he saved me any embarrassment: he stated directly that Bartok was the greatest living composer.”  

Which brings us to consider Menuhin’s recording 2-3 June 1947, of Bartok’s Solo Sonata, commissioned by Menuhin, dedicated to him, and premiered in New York City – after minor alterations to facilitate the realization – on 26 November 1944.  Given Bartok’s intellectual penchant for academic rigor – he read Beethoven string quartets at bedtime – we experience a pungent stridency, a severity of demeanor that dominates the emotional affect of the work, even in spite of the Magyar, rhythmic vitality that infiltrates the last movement. Bartok has synthesized much of the Bach sonata and partita craftsmanship to his own ends for this work in four movements. The opening Tempo di ciaccona alternates between agonized gestures and ardent, plaintive assaults into the harmonic atmosphere. Either in dialogue or in chromatic ariosi, the musical line exudes a rich but dissonantly poised tautness, rife with folk harmonies in counterpoint. Menuhin’s plaintive tone imbues a tragic humanity to the occasion. 

The Fuga, curiously, exerts a degree of melodic freedom to the procedure, despite its four-voice, initial motif. The episodes introduce new subjects, each of them clearly articulated whether by the bow of by pizzicato inversions of the material. The rapid shifts in register and bow technique display no mean gymnastics from Menuhin, who often advised Bartok on the technical resources demanded of the solo. Late in the Fuga, a buzzing motif sallies forth to allow a throbbing, rasping contour in harmonics. The Melodia projects something of Bartok’s patented “night-music” affect, proceeding in expanded degrees of the intervals: sixths, octaves, and tenths, settling high on the instrument’s flute tone or descending low into viola regions. Intensely meditative, the music virtually asks for our silence as it luminously proceeds.  

The concluding Presto meant to realize true Magyar tonal elements in quarter tones, but Menuhin convinced Bartok to remain in the traditional chromatic system. The muted, buzzing introduction breaks off precipitately into a driving series of agonized scalar passages and quick alternations of register. A degree of humor persists in the juxtaposition of flighty motifs and ardent, even voluptuous, passages of multiple stops. The coda, too, opens with a quiet scalar synthesis of the three main impulses, only to sail upwards into the realm of the gods. 

Menuhin and Marcel Gazelle (1907-1969) recorded Prokofiev’s First Violin Sonata (1938-1946) for EMI on 1 October 1948, the 1946 debut having been given by Russian virtuoso David Oistrakh with pianist Lev Oberin. Likely sympathetic in tone to Prokofiev’s “war” pain sonatas, this Violin Sonata opens, Andante assai, with a series of low, hazy, descending chords pregnant with uneasy sentiments, the melodic content anguished and pleading over persistent grumblings from Gazelle. A rising gesture attempts to bring a degree of light into this malevolent darkness, but the (buzzing) gloom persists. The pizzicato riffs offer no relief from the meandering scale, while the piano intones a bass dirge that has left us in die straits.

The ensuing Allegro brusco injects strident, rasping impulses in C major, and arising melody maintains a martial contour. The activity becomes fierce, combative, but just as suddenly obsessive in a demented character. The texture lightens grudgingly, always ready to engage in combat. A lyrical impulse struggles upward but gets swallowed in the heaving, percussive sonorities. The lyrical strain finally gains a kind of nervous ascendancy, but the underlying agitation had become more unforgiving as the violin sweeps upward to the coda.  Gazelle has solo entry in the Andante, to which Menuhin has equal access, and the two sing a wavering arioso in F major. A melancholy intimacy takes form, in a three-note pattern that serves as a persistent plea. The texture lightens to allow the orison an aerial space, while Gazelle plays a parlando line that joins Menuhin in the most emotionally rapt occasion experienced thus far. It stutters to a flighty, diminished call that evaporates.

The Allegrissimo finale opens with a furor in the major mode of F that does relent, in its own way, to a series of stuttered phrases over Gazelle’s extended parlando. A pizzicato pattern begins a new section, aggressively impassioned, that bears a kind of gypsy rapture, only manic. The music has modulated back into its minor mode, Andante assai, dark and menacing, as Menuhin weaves a series of hazy scalar patterns. The opening of the sonata proper emerges, sadly plaintive, and the music leaves us lamenting for the fate of our century. 

Despite its relative brevity, this album stands as a potent document of the connection between composer and loyal performer, given Menuhin’s singular conviction that music bears a moral purpose.

—Gary Lemco

Michael Tilson-Thomas Conducts, Vol. 2 – Bach, R. Strauss, Brahms – Yves St-Laurent

by Audiophile Audition | May 19, 2026 | Classical CD Reviews, Classical Reissue Reviews

BACH: Suite No. 3 in D Major, BWV 1068; R. STRAUSS: Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30; BRAHMS: Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 83 – Malcolm Frager, piano/ Boston Symphony Orchestra. Michael Tilson-Thomas – Yves St-Laurent YSL T-1815 (2 CDs = TT: 106:46) [www.78experience.com] ****:

The recent death of conductor Michael Tilson-Thomas (1944-2026) stirs a host of musical and artistic memories, especially given my own residence as a reviewer and broadcaster in the Bay Area, 2000-2025. Tilson-Thomas had assumed the mantle of both Dimitri Mitropoulos and Leonard Bernstein, tirelessly championing American musical composition and music education, while continuing to deliver a wide-ranging repertory from the Classics. One particularly glowing occasion involved Sibelius’ symphonies six and seven, in incandescent realization, these with the San Francisco Symphony. Another striking moment occurred after a piano recital in Atlanta by Tilson-Thomas that included Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, where while waiting on the line of congratulatory admirers, I spotted actor Jeff Corey – a friend of the conductor’s family, as it turned out – who invited me to join his acting class.

The Boston Symphony concert of 8 December 1973 opens with J.S. Bach’s ever-popular Suite No. 3 in D Major, (c. 1717-1723), whose revered “Air” receives a brisk andante realization, devoid of romantic sentimentality. The opening “Ouverture” enjoys a ceremonial pomp and resonance that maintains an elastic, dignified lyricism hose contrapuntal grandeur shines through. The playing by concertmaster Joseph Silverstein (1932-2015) illuminates Bach as well as Richard Strauss for his tonal richness and technical security. At the time of this concert, first trumpet Roger Boisin had retired, but his successor plays most admirably. The inflections for the two “Gavotte” movements, bouncily animated, remind me of Hermann Scherchen’s approach. The last two movements proceed with the same luster and graceful momentum, with the concluding “Gigue’s” igniting a grateful audience response.

Tilson-Thomas’ gift for leading large forces finds a happy vehicle in the Richard Strauss 1896 symphonic poem Thus spake Zarathustra, after the philosophical meditation by Friedrich Nietzsche. Recall that Nietzsche himself embraced contradiction as a viable element of human nature, so it comes as little surprise that the various appearances of Strauss’s “world riddle” motif will remain unresolved and even blatantly dissonant. The famous C-G-C opening has girth and immediacy, which Koussevitzky no less relished in his 1930 recording. The second section, Von den Hinterweltern, enjoys lyrical breadth but not the sustained intensity Fritz Reiner provided in Chicago.

“The Grave-Song,” juxtaposed with the succeeding “Of Science and Learning” pits the two dramatic forces in human finitude at odds, with the intricate figure of the latter section’s embracing, a la Liszt’s Faust-Symphonie, the tones of the whole chromatic scale, for their pursuit of all possibilities. Tilson-Thomas urges the BSO “The Convalescent,” to its joyful culmination in the luxuriousDas Tanzlied, Nietzsche’s assertion of amor fati, love of fate. Late in this section, set in C major, the B minor Das Grablied recurs, if only to complete the total acceptance of Man’s finitude. The “chimes at midnight” toll for a lonely existence of the Night Wanderer, exactly what Nietzsche chose to relish. An enthusiastic Boston audience applause reassures our conductor that he is not alone.

Joining Tilson-Thomas for the Brahms 1881 Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major, we have American virtuoso Malcolm Frager (1935-1991), one of the more noted pupils of the great Brahms and Schumann disciple, Carl Freidberg (1872-1955). Clarity and optimism of spirit define the large opening movement, Allegro non troppo, which often beckons its poignant, “symphonic” texture out of the Black Forest. We can appreciate Frager’s huge landings in the various periods that define the first movement’s sonata-form progress, the alternation of huge block chords and fluent arpeggios with staccato filigree that easily transition into monumental gestures. The alert character that emanates between solo and individual orchestral choir members enjoys a palpable congeniality of effect, given the warm patina the BSO projects throughout the entire score.

The “tiny wisp of a scherzo” in D minor ensues, the structural innovation that added a new dimension and girth to the concerto format, with an emotionally turbulent character that testifies to the composer’s own concept of sturm und drang. Frager urges the momentum breathlessly forward, the intervening, meditative riffs notwithstanding. Both collaborators maintain the epic scale of the score, even permitting the softer periods a degree of refined intimacy. The central D major section enjoys a hymn-like sonority, answered by Frager in his most brisk toccata style, then relenting into a warm salon moment that soon explodes into a jubilant exclamation of the opening motif in a hazy then stentorian mode.

The wonderful Andante relishes two minutes of cello arioso with strings and woodwinds before Frager enters, so we have soon succumbed to the idyll’s enchantments. The easy ballade darkens into passionate tumult in B-flat minor, in which we can savor Frager’s vibrant trills and large or broken chords. The needed calm, here in F# major,  attains an almost static serenity in the mode of a pian and winds serenade or intermezzo. The uncredited cello soloist leads us, by circuitous routes, back to the tonic key along with a lithe Frager, whose upper register sings most transparently.

The five-part Allegretto grazioso communicates a large, buoyant (Mozart-like) dance character, with an occasional Hungarian flavor that can erupt into some volcanic bravura. The long singing lines – an alternation of march and ardent, romantic lyric – revel in their mixed orchestral blends, with Frager’s injecting that degree of virtuosic impetus which thrilled us in movement two. Frager and French horn invite us to the closing energies, mostly in triple meter, the keeps the flightiness fresh and bold. This long concert has had the audience in the palm of its hand, and now all  hands are free to explode in admiration.

—Gary Lemco

Karajan Conducts – Bruckner Symphony No. 7 – Pristine Audio

by Audiophile Audition | May 14, 2026 | Classical CD Reviews, Classical Reissue Reviews

BRUCKNER: Symphony No. 7 in E Major, WAB 107 – Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra/ Herbert von Karajan – Pristine Audio PASC 769 (64:14) [www.pristineclassical.com] *****:

Pristine’s issue of the 6 April 1962 performance in Vienna of the Bruckner Seventh Symphony, with the Vienna Philharmonic led by Herbert von Karajan (1908-1989) resonates rather personally for me, since I experienced my first Bruckner in concert with this very same work under Karajan’s direction in New York, with that city’s Philharmonic Orchestra. Karajan’s tenure in Vienna and Berlin posed some problems for music connoisseurs, entirely discounting Karajan’s political affiliations. Karajan boasted a refined, homogeneous sonic image, literally devoid of “rough edges.” The smooth gloss he achieved, the blending of a luminous whole, became his especial pride, which combined with his closed eyes during performance, added a decidedly aesthetic mystique to the occasion. Karajan managed to create a temenos, a sacred space, a rarified bower of musical execution, virtually unmatched – excepting Furtwaengler, Horenstein, and Celibidache – by any other interpreter.

By now, the etiology of the 1884 Seventh Symphony has become common parlance, with its homages to Richard Wagner, especially in the scoring of tubas and the liturgical character of the C# minor Adagio, by which time Wagner’s death in 1883 had been announced. The Allegro moderato’s opening sequence – the tremolando strings that reveal a cello melody that floats over two octaves in just over 24 measures – leading to a pair of melodies that woodwinds and brass, respectively, deliver Bruckner’s epic scope with a contradictory, “leisurely urgency” under Karajan, whose forces weave a seamless progress in dignified periods. I recall, at age fourteen, my uneasy resolve to hear this huge work through, having not yet uncovered the nasty epithet from Brahms that Bruckner’s symphonies were “tortured boa constrictors.” Then, as now in this Royal Festival Hall performance, Karajan urges the music with a logical, emotional rigor that never sacrifices lyricism for bombast. The richness of Bruckner’s interior lines compels us at each moment to consider Bruckner’s mode of musical development as unique to himself. Potent, hymnal orisons alternate with whimsical, Austrian dances in rustic figures. Somehow, by circuitous intricacy, the coda has become colossal, a revelation of “God’s Grandeur” akin to the best lines from Gerard Manley Hopkins. 

Karajan molds the great Adagio movement, conscious that its chromatic contours maintain a chorale of immense power and beauty, a rare distillation of Bach, Schubert, Wagner, and Beethoven, that relishes blazing fanfares and luxurious pedal points. The deep majesty – especially poignant in the F# major period and its deep strettos – of the low strings and high horns bestows an uncanny measure of solemnity to the occasion; no wonder that this one movement “redeemed” Bruckner for many skeptical listeners. Rarely has Bruckner’s written designation Sehr feierlich sustained such regal intensity. The overwhelming climax, marked by cymbal crashes and thunderous timpani, resolves into a simple flute call over pizzicato strings and a another orison from the French horns, eventually finding a long-sought peace in haunted, heart-throbbing acceptance close to Valhalla.

The A minor Scherzo ever suggests a cross between a trumpet, barnyard call and Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries,” and the Vienna audience, after the long vigil of the Adagio, feels alert to the robust energies Karajan releases in pungent regalia. In advance of the Trio, Karajan milks the swaggering hunting rhythm so it resembles a peasant waltz. The Trio proper enjoys a grateful repose, constant shifts in the orchestral texture remind us of Bruckner’s fondness for the diapason of his chosen instrument, the church organ. The voluptuous, earthy rhythm takes up the da capo, enriched by competing, syncopated impulses, the various choirs sharing alternating, four-bar phrases. The “Valkyries” win, defiantly. 

And so on to the last movement, Finale, opening with he first of three intertwined themes. Strings and woodwinds vibrate in Austrian nature sounds, but the second theme, a poised chorale worthy of Schubert, will soon prove its ascendancy over all rival motifs. The third motif, ff, an athletic fanfare, presents a martial bias, emblematic of the “Wagner tubas” idea with their invocation from Das Rheingold. Bruckner’s various inversions of his motifs testify to long study of Beethoven, but the declamatory mode remains kindred to Wagner. The sweet, secondary theme leads the recapitulation, enhanced by glowing brass colors. The initial opening arises, now in full brass pageantry, the string almost manic in their insistence. A concession to cyclic form ensues, with allusions from movement one, but the massive momentum to a solid E major triumph cannot, will not, be denied.  Pristine has cut short what must have been a Saturnalia of enthusiastic applause. 

—Gary Lemco

RACHMANINOV: The 24 Preludes – Moura Lympany, piano – Pristine Audio

by Audiophile Audition | May 11, 2026 | Classical CD Reviews, Classical Reissue Reviews

RACHMANINOV: The 24 Preludes – Moura Lympany, piano – Pristine Classical PAKM 096 (73:20) [www.pristineclassical.com] *****: 

Dame Moura Lympany (1916-2005) remains among the most gracious and conscientious of British musicians, a lyrical artist of thought and intuition who possessed a towering technique that did not ostentatiously assert itself despite her broad, virtuoso repertory. Pristine revives her 1951 complete Rachmaninov Preludes, a musical enterprise she had addressed for Decca shellacs 1941-1942 and would once more, in stereo sound for Erato, in 1993.  Born in Cornwall as Mary Gertrude Johnstone, she adopted her stage name at the suggestion of conductor Basil Cameron that arranged her mother’s maiden name, Limpenny along with a Russian diminutive of Mary. Lessons with Mathilde Verne (1868-1936) and Tobias Matthay (1858-1945) proved decisive in the formation of her musical approach, though later study with Edward Steuermann and Ilona Kabós refined her technique in 20^th Century compositions. Her recordings of concertos by Rachmaninov, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Saint-Saens, and Khachaturian have consistently rewarded repeated listening, projecting a freshness and spontaneity of effect that avoids mannerism associated with more “potent” interpreters. This 1951 version of the Preludes had life on the Testament label. 

Pristine has done an exemplary job in eliminating defects from which the Decca/Testament issue of these readings suffered. The stunning bass chords in the ubiquitous Prelude in C# Minor ring without upper level shatter, especially precious since Lympany sports a fluid legato and stunning sense of structural transition. The searching, poetic character of No. 1 in F# Minor has a lyrically volcanic No. 2 in B-flat Major as successor, the tumult of arpeggios and thick chords controlled but ardently driven. The mincing, martial figures of No. 3 in D Minor achieve a limpid, flexibly luminous texture. Poetic reflection suffuses No. 4 in D Major, diaphanous in color content but tautly focused on what the composer called “the point” in drooping phrases. Lympany’s sonic palette offers a dazzling array of colors, immediately persuasive, tinted cautiously by an idiosyncratic rubato. The infectious, militant buoyancy of No. 5 in G Minor finds a spectacular haze in its middle section, a sensuous romance. The dream-nocturne No. 6 in E-flat Major enjoys a hazy insistence, palpably intimate. Swirling arpeggios mark No. 7 in C Minor, an eddy of toccata motion, soft in allure and vibrant periods. The A-flat Major, No. 8, extends energies from a colorful, mesmeric eddy of impulses, Lympany’s selective pedal adding a seductive bass line. The brief Prelude No. 9 in E-flat Minor conveys a nervous syncopation, a study in distinct legato and staccato touches, much in the Chopin style. Rachmaninov’s Op. 23 ends with Prelude No. 10 in G-flat Major, here played by Lympany in the style of a ballade, taking on girth, color, and dynamic nuance in a richly parlando style. Lympany’s palette feels a mere step away from Debussy in its graded hues.

Massive chords and deft articulation define Lympany’s hefty realization of Prelude No. 1 in C Major from the Op. 32 set of 1910. The Schumann-like innigkeit of the Prelude No. 2 in B-flat Minor projects an insistent nostalgia that spins a long-lined melodic curve. Prelude in E Major throbs with Russian bells, virtually an orchestral tone-poem set upon a troika. The tonic minor, that in E, Op. 32, No. 4, casts a severe, dramatic tenor in the form of a colloquy that becomes quite intense, offering a temporary, far-and-away emotional asylum in its middle section. The relentless momentum regains ascendancy, though Lympany avoids a mere cacophony of percussion in order to release its melodic kernel. While Lympany’s shaping of the diaphanous Prelude No. 5 in G Major projects exquisite sensitivity, she still must yield to Benno Moiseiwitsch for interpretive alchemy of rarest invention. The No. 6 in F Minor intrudes upon us, an angry toccata a la Russe by way of Franz Liszt. The wide leaps and jabbing accents flutster Lympany not at all. The ensuing F Major Prelude approaches the same technical issues with a lighter, happier countenance, the patented cross rhythms in voluptuous, fluid motion. 

For volatility of articulation, Rachmaninov’s terse Prelude No. 8 in A Minor has few rivals, here performed with an aggressive boldness that ripples with steely control. The companion Prelude in A Major, builds on a series of rising chordal patterns, almost a hymn-in- progress. Chopin would qualify as the likely model but influenced by a sense of Bach’s legacy fertilized by Russian chimes. “The Return” served as Rachmaninov’s definition of No. 10 in B Minor, and Moiseiwitsch had to concur. Lympany kneads a striking concoction of melodic clusters based on the falling motif, and the whole rises in a yeast of explosive, yet tempered fury. Another fine female interpreter, Gina Bachauer, had, like Lympany, a singular sympathy for this massive, poignant work. Does the piece end with an evocation of the South Seas, or is that Hollywood talking? The Prelude in B Major plays in the form of an antique dance, cautiously lyrical.  Lympany generates throbbing, tremolando tension for No. 12 in G# Minor, a cascade of mystery and reverie that dissolves into a spatial ether. The final Prelude in D-flat Major rather serves as an epilogue to the entire set, in the lyrical-dramatic fashion of Robert Schumann. Eschewing rubato for its own sake, Lympany exhibits a fine sensibility for narrative proportion, especially since this prelude verges on the composer’s notion of an étude-tableau. The epic finality of the last chords may well stand for Moura Lympany’s especial sound, a mastery of every aural nuance.

—Gary Lemco