Janos Starker recorded for Mercury on several occasions during the mid-1960s and it is timely to reassess these performances, now available on CD. Starker's playing is exemplified by a highly individual blend of intensity and specialized musical intelligence which has, on occasions, been misconstrued as cool detachment, rather than interpretative integrity. His formidable intellectual, as well as technical assimilation of the Schumann Cello Concerto, presents it with rare ipso facto cogency. This work reflects the composer's almost Byronic heroism in the face of mounting paranoia, having been completed in a mere six days of mental torment during 1854. Starker's reading of the opening Nicht zu schnell has an elemental pulse and fearless zeal, but he recognizes that this is not altogether Schumann's 'Dark night of the soul', as many would have us believe! I would certainly take issue, though, with his dubious insertion of a cadenza in the Sehr lebhaft finale, although this remains a truly valiant performance.
Lalo's Cello Concerto receives a similarly massive reading, and few recorded accounts can approach Starker's emphatic gravity in the opening Allegro maestoso, but the prelude, marked Lento, is simply over-dramatized. There is the expected relaxation in the second subject, but the relentless dynamism of this turbulent movement is fearlessly maintained. There are some fine woodwind contributions, too, in the central intermezzo, and Starker moderates his vibrato to great effect in the dream-like Andantino sections, while his quicksilver brilliance in the finale could not offer greater contrast.
Starker's reading of Saint-Saens's First Concerto dates from 1964, and is in many ways exemplary in its studied clarity. The gripping urgency of the opening is well sustained, with only marginal repose found in the lyrical secondary theme, whilst the soloist's effortless facility in the difficult double-stopped passage later is also noteworthy. He does, however, adopt a necessarily slower tempo in the charmingly under-scored neo-classical minuet which follows. The finale, which then comes without a break, presents two contrasting elements, and quite possibly the faster sections are a little hard-driven. A stratospheric scale of artificial harmonics leads to a coda which has flair and a degree of dignity, and Starker succeeds in making this work sound a good deal more substantial than it really is!
Here, then, are some highly individual, occasionally provocative, and yet never less than totally valid, accounts of three seminal works of the cello literature. That these performances are now almost 30 years old seems scarcely credible, given the transparency and range of the sound, whilst from a historical standpoint they form a vivid document of one of the great cellists of the century, heard at the height of his powers.'