Yehudi Menuhin’s ennobled interpretation of the Beethoven Violin Concerto has, over the years, been available in at least six separate recorded performances; but the one that was taped at the Kunsthaus, Lucerne was the first to be scheduled for commercial release. I reviewed an even earlier live Menuhin recording – made in Moscow during 1946 – in June, but the Lucerne production boasts better sound, finer conducting and superior orchestral playing.
The question that most collectors will be asking is whether – or how – this Lucerne set compares with the 1953 EMI recording that Menuhin and Furtwangler made in London with the Philharmonia. The answer is simple: the older sessions achieved the better performance, the newer ones, the better recording. Alan Sanders’s excellent booklet-note recounts a touching occasion where Menuhin unknowingly tuned in to a broadcast of the Lucerne recording and “reflected that he would dearly love to be able to realize the Beethoven Concerto in such a fashion”. The collaboration with Furtwangler had obviously inspired a rare and distant inspirational flight, one that even memory could not adequately recall. And it is a great performance: ardent, inward, unhurried, with a rapturously beautiful Larghetto (faster than the Philharmonia recording though not as broad as its Moscow predecessor) and with superior playing of Kreisler’s two cadenzas. Turning to the worthy Philharmonia remake witnesses a noticeable drop in intensity and a rather more awkward delivery of the solo line. As to the Music & Arts September 1947 broadcast (with droning Dakotas reminding us of the Berlin Airlift), that, too, is well worth hearing – though the interpretatively similar Lucerne performance has a more refined tonal profile.
The two Romances are nicely done, though personally I would have preferred less weight of utterance and rather more elegance (David Oistrakh is among my own favourites). Andrew Walter’s transfers are extremely impressive, save that some conspicuous ‘de-noising’ near the beginning of the Larghetto leaves a rather synthetic aftertaste (unavoidable, perhaps, given the limitations of available source material). Viewed overall, this is a memorable CD.'