Huberman’s 1934 performance of the Beethoven Violin Concerto provided my first acquaintance with that masterpiece, thanks to the kindness of a schoolmaster who in weekly sessions played us items from his collection of 78s. My memories of the rapt intensity with which Huberman leads from the cadenza into the coda (starting very slowly) and of the third subject in the slow movement are amply borne out in APR’s splendid transfer. I am not surprised at RC’s delight (“Replay”, July, page 42) at having such a CD of his ‘desert-island’ choice among violin recordings. The violin is astonishingly immediate and full of presence, though there are points in the orchestral sound which I prefer in Keith Hardwick’s earlier transfer for the now-deleted EMI References reissue (4/90) – the timpani beats at the start are less boomy for example. I also cherish the EMI coupling, Huberman’s 1930 version of the Kreutzer Sonata with Ignaz Friedman, but here it is also very welcome, as RC said, to have Huberman’s volatile and carefree account of the Symphonie espagnole, recorded at the same series of sessions, even if the central “Intermezzo” is omitted. Yet it is perhaps as well to warn that Huberman was performing at a time when portamento was much more in favour than it is now, and there are some surprising swoops, yet which are perfectly controlled as an integral part of Huberman’s sweetly expressive style.
The Huberman version of the Beethoven was readily fitted on to five 78rpm discs (ten sides), where in 1951 when Ida Haendel’s recording was belatedly issued, two years after it was recorded, they did well to squeeze it on to 11 sides. That was when Decca had already issued the first British LPs, and Haendel’s version was made doubly uncompetitive. It was never transferred on to LP in Britain, and it is good that Testament, in another excellent transfer, at last unveil an exceptionally powerful performance, commanding and concentrated even at spacious speeds. (The central Andante alone takes two minutes longer than Huberman’s reading.) It is striking that where Huberman’s expressiveness tends to urge him forward, Haendel here in the manner that has become the latter-day rule tends to be expansive, though always with a firm control. If after Huberman power seems rather to overlay the poetry, Haendel is quoted in Alan Sanders’s excellent note as saying that though she has approved the reissue, this is not the way she interprets the work today. Rightly the disc gives priority to Haendel’s 1948 recording of the Bruch, which combines power with great warmth to a greater extent than in the Beethoven, reminding one of her superb versions of the Brahms and Tchaikovsky offered on Testament’s previous concerto issue (10/94). Both Haendel and Kubelik are inspired throughout, the first movement strong and purposeful, the second passionate in its lyricism, the third brilliant and sparkling, a memorable account superbly realized.'