It is Myra Hess's centenary year and so the appearance of this compilation of her performances is exceptionally well-timed, especially since very few of her discs have been reissued. This release, aside from presenting three issued performances of major works from the solo and chamber repertoire, also contains the Mozart concerto and the Haydn sonata movement that have never been before the public until now. Apparently, the Mozart did not appear in the catalogue because of pitch fluctuation in the recording studio—it was made in 1942, during the last war. Putting together this performance was made even more difficult by the fact that the final 78rpm side had been lost and was not with the shellac test pressings that had been found in the EMI archives. Fortunately, somebody had made a dubbing of the test pressings on tape, and this source has been used to complete the recording. Quite naturally the recorded sound varies a great deal when one comes to this part in the finale.
Leslie Heward and the Halle provide quite sympathetic support for Hess's amiable reading of the concerto. Her smooth and intelligent pianism, characteristically calm, creates an impression of liquidity. Her shaping of the main theme in the Andante slow movement has a magnificent simplicity and softness to it, although one certainly wouldn't describe her treatment as searching. The finale is neat and there is a real affinity with the idiom of the composer.
I liked the Haydn, too, especially in the development section, which is full of intelligent momentum. This is a difficult sonata to play absolutely accurately, but Hess is never brittle in the fastest figurations. The little Schubert A major Sonata, recorded in 1928, does not have terribly good sound, with thickish surface noise, but the performance, again, is ingratiatingly-toned and phrased with characteristic eloquence. She does find darker elements for the transitional passage leading into the first movement's development section in octaves, but overall this movement is a bit too even for my taste. The finale, rather than gliding along in a light-hearted mood, is quite serious, though with plenty of colour and poetry to the style. It is only towards the end that things become freer in spirit. I would like to have known who made the arrangement of this item from Rosamunde, added as an encore piece; was it, I wonder, one of Hess's own?
The piano is not especially well focused in the Schubert trio and here, again, there is surface noise. I found myself listening more to Felix Salmond than his partners, although there is undeniably a like-minded approach to the line of the music. Hess varies her role in the ensemble with extreme skill and it is her instrumental style that sounds the least dated of the three. In the Allegro vivace fourth movement there is a Viennese buoyancy that carries the music along, despite some slightly bizarre effects in places.
Hess almost hinted at a Brahmsian style in passages from the Schubert, and when she gets into the former composer's Piano Trio No. 2, this time with Cassado as cellist, she demonstrates a very clear affinity with the composer. The mature strength comes through, both in the tonal depth and the broad phrases of her piano playing. There is a marvellous sympathy between the three artists in the Trio section from the Scherzo; the golden, autumnal colours are wonderfully vivid. Altogether, this is an accessible performance, so obviously resulting from a mutual love and understanding of the music.
The discs are well presented with good documentation in the accompanying booklet. On a point of historical interest, however, I might point out that it is wrong to claim that Hess ''was one of the very first pianists to programme Schubert's Sonatas in America''. The truth of the matter is that the Bostonian pianist Ernst Perabo, amazingly, gave all the published sonatas in a cycle in 1866, and other early performances included single works from von Bulow (1876), Dohnanyi (1900) and Harold Bauer (1906), all decades before Hess came to the States.'