The Heifetz Collection, Volume 9 - Chamber Music I Mozart, Handel, Grieg, Sinding

Chamber music was a lifelong private pleasure for Jascha Heifetz, but it was not until 1941 that his public activity in that realm began—not in concerts but on records. Within a period of a few months he recorded the Chausson Concerto for Violin, Piano and String Quartet with Jesús María Sanromá and the Musical Art Quartet; piano trios by Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms with Artur Rubinstein and Emanuel Feuermann, and works in other forms by Mozart, Handel and Dohnányi in which the esteemed violist William Primrose participated. Feuermann's recorded collaborations with Heifetz were the final entries in that legendary cellist's discography. Nine years later Heifetz and Rubinstein resumed their chamber music recording project with another great cellist, Gregor Piatigorsky; the sessions followed public performances at the previous summer's Ravinia Festival celebrated in the press with references to the "Million-Dollar Trio." From that time chamber music with distinguished colleagues assumed increasing importance in Heifetz's schedule, leading eventually to the famous Heifetz-Piatigorsky Concerts of 1961-68. That series is documented by numerous recordings; the present set represents the earlier chamber music years. Mozart: Divertimento in E-Flat, K.563 At the end of the summer of 1788 Mozart followed his remarkable final symphonies with one of the true masterworks of his chamber music production, the great string trio in E-flat that came to be labeled a divertimento. It is the only original composition for this combination of instruments he carried to completion and is, as Albert Einstein observed, "one of his noblest works." It was also a fairly neglected one when Heifetz, Primrose and Feuermann recorded it. While the classic divertimento format is observed—six movements, including two minuets, one slow movement in sonata form and another (the Andante) cast as a theme and variations—the work itself has nothing in common beyond that outline with the lighter "entertainment music" Mozart composed earlier for various larger ensembles. This indeed noble and warm-hearted string trio, as Einstein noted, "is a true chamber-music work, and grew to such large proportions only because it was intended to offer... something special in the way of art, invention, and good spirits ... Each instrument is primus inter pares, every note is significant, every note is a contribution to spiritual and sensuous fulfilment in sound." Mozart: Duo No.2 in B-Flat, K.424 It is possible that Mozart composed his two duos for violin and viola as a favor to an erstwhile Salzburg colleague, Michael Haydn, during a visit to his home town in 1783, when that younger brother of Joseph Haydn was unable to complete a commissioned set of such works because of illness. But before the year was out Mozart wrote to his father asking for the return of the two duos, whose authorship he clearly acknowledged from that time on—if indeed he had ever renounced it. In any event, the duos were written at the beginning of Mozart's richest period of chamber-music production, when he began the series of string quartets he dedicated to Joseph Haydn. They are thoughtful if not "learned" works, in which the handsome writing for the viola reminds us (as in the earlier concerted work for the same two instruments) that it was the string instrument Mozart preferred to play. Mozart: Sonatas in B-Flat, K.378 and 454 These two sonatas, only five years apart, represent wholly different styles. K.378 was composed in Salzburg in 1779, just after Mozart's return from his dismaying sojourn in Paris. It exudes more of a "social" air than that of the recital hall, but it boasts a conspicuously rich and radiant slow movement. K.454, the most favored of all Mozart's violin sonatas, began his final series of such works. It is not the intimate sort of chamber music designed for the drawing room but, as Mozart himself pointed out, a concert work in the grand manner. He composed it at the end of April 1784 for the Italian violinist Regina Strinasacchi, a favorite in Vienna at the time, and he was her keyboard partner in the first performance. Emanuel Bay was Heifetz's keyboard associate from 1934 to 1954; at the end of the latter year these two sonatas became the first works Heifetz recorded with his new accompanist, Brooks Smith. Handel: Passacaglia, transcribed by Halvorsen After Mozart and Michael Haydn, few composers wrote unaccompanied duos for violin and viola. The Norwegian composer Johan Halvorsen (1864-1935) added one of the best-known works to that small repertory with his tasteful and imaginative transcription of the majestic passacaglia from Handel's Harpsichord Suite No.7. Twenty-two years after Heifetz made this collector's-item recording with Primrose, he rerecorded the piece with Piatigorsky in Halvorsen's alternative arrangement for violin and cello. Handel: Sonata in E, Op.1, No. 15 By no means one of Handel's earliest efforts, his Op. 1 is a collection of sonatas for solo flute, oboe or violin with figured bass, drawn from various periods in his creative life. All of them follow the format of the sonata da chiesa: four brief movements in a slow-fast-slow-fast sequence. The last of the set, one of two Heifetz and Bay recorded on the same day, is one of the most expressive, epitomizing the specifically Handelian blend of dignity and warmth of heart. Grieg: Sonata No.2 in G, Op. 13 Heifetz consistently favored this very early sonata (1867) over the more popular one in C Minor that Grieg composed 20 years later. The G Major, one of the first works in which Grieg brought out a specifically Norwegian character, is on a somewhat smaller scale than the C Minor, but its three movements fairly exude the exhilaration of the young composer's having found his own path. The recording here is Heifetz's second of the work, his first made in 1936 with Emanuel Bay. Sinding: Suite in A Minor, Op. 10 A compatriot of Grieg and Halvorsen, Christian Sinding for years enjoyed a celebrity based on a single slight work, Rustle of Spring, known in both its original form for piano solo and countless arrangements for ensembles ranging from tearoom trio to military band. His three-movement suite, composed for violin and piano in 1888 and subsequently orchestrated, is not a descriptive work but rather a miniature concerto, with a pronounced Norwegian flavor. It is one of several worthwhile but neglected pieces Heifetz discovered and promoted with proprietary fervor. The recording is a fortuitous document of his collaboration with one of the most sympathetic of conductors, Alfred Wallenstein. —Richard Freed