Anyone who invests in Pearl’s excellent Toscha Seidel CD and who reads Lawrence F. Holdridge’s thoughtful annotation will now be able to acquire the Korngold Much Ado about Nothing Suite that Holdridge says is ‘unissued’ but that has just appeared as part of Biddulph’s equally desirable programme. So nice to have loose discographical ends neatly tied.
Seidel’s sound is like your favourite ‘centre’ in the chocolate box, full and succulent, with lashings of tonal richness on all four strings. He was the ‘Cinderella’ of the famous Leopold Auer triumvirate of ‘Mischa, Toscha and Jascha’, by all accounts rather awkward and notoriously retiring. But what a tone.
The Pearl selection has already appeared in good sound on Biddulph (6/90), minus the superb 1927 Columbia Brahms First Hungarian Dance (quite different to the more aggressive Victor remake included on the latest Biddulph CD, 11/94). The early sonata readings are nourished inestimably by Arthur Loesser’s unpredictable but responsive piano playing. Indeed, I seem to remember that the first (unofficial) LP reissue of Brahms’s First Sonata was featured on a disc devoted to Loesser, rather than to Seidel.
The G major’s opening is rapturously beautiful (albeit not exactly Vivace ma non troppo) but as the performance progresses, you begin to note a certain lack of fibre, as if – for Seidel, at least – lustrous singing was the be-all and end-all. In the Second Sonata, Loesser’s reading of Brahms’s amabile and tranquillo is to indulge maximum rhythmic freedom, and this openly rhapsodizing approach suits Seidel’s lyrical style better. To describe it as wayward would be something of an understatement and yet the delicious frisson created between Seidel’s tonal weeping and Loesser’s improvisational pianism calls you back time and again.
The 1929 Grieg C minor is rather less taut than the famous Kreisler-Rachmaninov Victor recording of the previous year (3/93), though scarcely less beautiful, especially in the central movement. The finale is suitably playful but for an even more vivid example of Seidel in sparring mood, try the closing Hornpipe from Korngold’s Much Ado about Nothing Suite (originally for orchestra) with the composer at the piano. Seidel’s class-mate Heifetz had already recorded the March of the Watch and Intermezzo to fine effect, also for Victor, but Seidel and Korngold are both more spontaneous and more extravagantly expressive (Seidel was by this time playing for Hollywood soundtracks).
The shorter pieces are variable, Seidel’s Mozart being perhaps a little overemphatic, though the Albumblatt is ravishing and so is the title-music for the Ingrid Bergman film Intermezzo. I was hoping that Brahmsiana might be a gnomic ‘compilation’ (dreaded word) of Brahms melodies, but in the event it is merely a couple of Hungarian Dances knitted together. The items with Miliza Korjus were arranged for the MGM film The Great Waltz and represent Seidel’s sweetest work for Hollywood.
Which leaves the Franck Sonata, taken from a privately issued Impresario LP where Seidel’s tone has lost much of its lustre and Harry Kaufmann’s rather splashy piano playing (on what sounds like a substandard instrument) is an occasional distraction. The Recitativo-Fantasia comes off best (there is still the odd hint of that glorious tone) but anyone sampling Seidel from just this one recording is unlikely to understand what all the fuss was about. And, believe me, ‘fuss’ is very much in order. My advice is to buy the Pearl (or earlier Biddulph) disc first, then, if you like what you hear, follow up with the second Biddulph release. Anyone who responds to old-style violin playing should be over the moon with either.'