The Heifetz Collection, Volume 2 - 1925-1934

The 1920s that brought radio into the home also brought the symphony orchestra into the recording studio, opening a vista of possibilities still being explored. Within this documentation is a unique, Heifetz-only, manner of measuring the difference between acoustic "horn" recording and the vastly expanded aural image made possible by the introduction of the microphone into the sound-gathering sequence. Listen first to Ave Maria of 1917 in Volume 1; then put on Ave Maria of December 1926. Made in a studio on both occasions, with the same music, the same instruments, the same solo performer, the comparative results could be likened to the difference between a line drawing and a color portrait. One is a priceless vignette of perfection but a vignette still; the other brings the listener closer to the source of the sound than he had ever been before. Ave Maria was not the first electrical recording made by Heifetz; it was preceded by two sessions that produced, in all its veiled fantasy, his first Debussy (La plus que lente), Couperin's Les petits moulins á vent and his first Bach (Minuets I and II from the unaccompanied Partita No. 3). It was, however, the first "classic" of his literature to be duplicated in the new, pathbreaking technique, followed by such other of the original "snapshots" as On Wings of Song, Zapateado and Joseph Achron's Hebrew Melody, on all of which Heifetz was joined by a new accompanist, Joseph's brother, Isidor. All except the Mendelssohn are the products of a single session on December 31,1926, which also produced a first version by Heifetz of the frisky Rondo from Schubert's Sonata C)p.53/D.850 for piano, transcribed by Carl Friedberg. If you have to work on New Year's Eve, how more profitably than by chiseling a few more niches in the walls of the hall of fame? The decade from 1925 to 1934 could be characterized, in the on-going accretion of Heifetz recordings, as the years of consolidation and exploration. On the one hand there was the up-dating of the extraordinary talismans of personal identification already mentioned plus such others as Valse bluette and Moszkowski's Guitarre (the best simulaton of the instrument then to be heard on records, with Andrés Segovia not yet a universal presence). And the name of Heifetz begins to become more familiar as a transcriber—not only for Godowsky's piano piece renamed Alt Wien but also for Rimsky-Korsakov's The Flight of the Bumblebee (revealed to America by Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony), giving them new identities as violin favorites. New enticement was provided by the opportunity to expound—via new recording techniques and the extension to album length of 12-inch double-faced discs hitherto restricted to single issues—the full length of Glazunov's A Minor Concerto and the A Major of Mozart. The former always held a singular place in the Heifetz repertory, in part perhaps, because its composer was also the director of the St. Petersburg Conservatory who made a critical decision in 1910 to waive a rule and enable the prodigy (eventually) to join the Auer class. Both the Glazunov and the Mozart (a first, flavorsome proof of Heifetz's affinity for that composer's concerted works) were recorded in 1934 in conjunction with John Barbirolli as conductor. They were not only forerunners of others to come but also a first link in the chain of circumstances that brought Barbirolli to America only two years later to succeed Arturo Toscanini as conductor of the New York Philharmonic. Outstanding among the explorations of this period was Heifetz's sponsorship of a thoroughly enjoyable work by no less a master than Richard Strauss. It was the early Sonata in E-Flat, which for unaccountable reasons had never attained even modest prominence—and no disc identity—since its creation in 1887. It was first brought to notice by Heifetz in a program that opened his fall season of 1933, on October 11, in Carnegie Hall. The long-lived W.J. Henderson (one of the few then active critics who had also reported on the 1917 debut) wrote: "The first part of the program placed the pianist in such prominence that perhaps 'concert' would have been more precise [than 'recital']." He continued, "Mr. Heifetz has a new accompanist this season in Arpád Sándor." He was praised for sharing the effort that displayed the Strauss sonata to the advantage of "the best qualities of the composition." The recording, made on February 6,1934, is not only the work's first but one that contributed much to its wider appreciation. It also shows the Heifetz bow arm, like a divining rod seeking out a hidden source of water, probing unerringly to the wellspring of Strauss's melodic flow. —Irving Kolodin