BARTOK Violin Sonata No 2 Tossy Spivakovsky Artur BALSAM Piano CONCERT HALL

$

20

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A series of great  classical orchestral and instrumental performances by major conductors, composers and instrumentalists.

The limited issue collectors CONCERT HALL Society produced modern and unusual works with new performers, many from the West Coast in the Late 40s. Their 78 rpm records were pressed on a superior red vinyl record, and all issues were limited to 2000 or 3000 numbered copies with the artist signatures, and a hand-written numbershown in the back of the album:

 Concert Hall   LEAGUE OF COMPOSERS RELEASE with (printed) signatures of the performers

FIRST RECORDING

Bartók: Violin Sonata No. 2
Four Roumanian Dances

Tossy Spivakovsky, Violin
Artur Balsam, Piano

recorded c. 1947
Concert Hall Society Album AA (1033/35)

3x12" CONCERT HALL red vinyl 78 rpm records in original album with notes

Condition:

EXCELLENT minus, unworn scuffs, plays E very very quiet faint crackle, album solid, right hand edge a bit rough

A CHOICE COPY

this recording of the Bartók 2nd Violin Sonata by Tossy Spivakovsky and Artur Balsam, issued in late 1947 by Concert Hall Society. Odessa born Spivakovsky (1906-1998) was actually trained in Berlin, and was appointed concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic at the age of 18. Later, in the US, he was Artur Rodzinski’s concertmaster with the Cleveland Orchestra, where he gave the American premiere of the Bartók 2nd Violin Concerto. His solo career was perhaps not the success it could have been, but his playing reflects an intriguing mixture of virtuoso pedigree and musicological concerns (he gave much thought to issues of execution of chords in the solo works of Bach, apparently holding the bow above the frog to facilitate “grabbing” the chord all at once, which was a controversial idea then and now).

This was the first studio recording of the work, as the earlier Szigeti/Bartók version was a live performance only issued later. It’s a very different approach from his, cultivating more tonal and violinist beauty compared to Szigeti’s more sharply etched (and, of course, very idiomatic) style. But both Spivakovsky and Balsam find such beauty and variety that I think it’s a valid point of view, and the violinism is of a very high caliber indeed! It reminds me very much of the approach Christian Ferras takes (in a superb performance issued on DVD by VAI), which takes great pains to savor the beauty and connection of the intervals that traditional wisdom would say are dissonant and more of a non linear, pointillist variety. The Roumanian Folk Dances are played with a great depth of tone, very secure artificial harmonics, and a few slightly overripe effects, but it’s still something to savor. It’s a shame that only four of the dances are performed.

Nathan "Tossy" Spivakovsky (December 23, 1906 [O.S. December 10, 1906] - 20 July 1998), a Jewish Russian-born, German-trained violin virtuoso who taught in Australia and later settled in the United States, was considered one of the finest violinists of the 20th century.

Tossy Spivakovsky was born in Odessa, in 1906 still in Imperial Russia. Under the threat of pogroms his family moved to Berlin, where he studied with Arrigo Serato [1] privately and with Willy Hess at the Berliner Hochschule für Musik. A violin prodigy, he gave his first recital at age 10. Together with his elder brother Jacob "Jascha" [2] (1896–1970), a renowned concert pianist, Tossy made his first European concert tour at age 13, performing as soloist with orchestras in a number of countries including Holland, England, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, in 1919, where the brothers played for Danish royalty. At only 18, after being talent spotted by Wilhelm Furtwängler, Spivakovsky became the youngest concertmaster hired by the Berlin Philharmonic. Two years later he left to pursue a solo career in Europe.

During the 1920s he and his brother Jascha performed together as the Spivakovsky Duo. In 1930 Tossy and Jascha established the Spivakovsky-Kurtz Trio together with cellist Edmund Kurtz.[3] The trio was on a tour of Australia in 1933 when the Nazi Party took power in Germany, temporarily ending Spivakovsky's European career. He remained in Australia, where he married Dr. Erika Lipsker Zarden, philologist and Renaissance historian, who was his wife of 63 years.[4] All three members of the Spivakovsky-Kurtz trio joined the teaching staff of the University of Melbourne Conservatorium of Music. The youngest of nine, Spivakovsky belonged to a musical family. His brother Albert, a distinguished pianist, also played the cello and conducted orchestras in Germany and Denmark. Another brother, the violinist and cellist Isaac 'Issy' (1902–1977), who had studied violin under Willy Hess, and cello with Hugo Becker and Gregor Piatigorsky, also migrated to Australia in 1934, and for 28 years (1937–1965) taught violin, viola and cello at Scotch College, Melbourne. Adolf (1891–1958), a bass-baritone, also migrated to Melbourne in 1934 and taught at the University Conservatorium where his students included the sopranos Glenda Raymond [5] and Sylvia Fisher.

In 1940 Spivakovsky moved to the United States with his wife and baby daughter, and made his New York debut at Town Hall that year. He became concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra under Artur Rodzinski, in that capacity also often performing as soloist. In 1943 the conductor Artur Rodzinski invited him to present the premiere United States performance of Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 2. Bartók himself described this performance of his violin concerto as "first rate". Spivakovsky also gave this work its first performances in New York and San Francisco. His rendition of this concerto, which elicited extraordinary critical acclaim, launched his U.S. career as soloist. According to the critic Alfred Frankenstein of The San Francisco Chronicle, Spivakovsky's was "The finest violin playing of a generation!" The critic Virgil Thomson of the New York Herald Tribune wrote: "Such unfailing nobility of tone, such evenness of coloration through the scale and, most extraordinary of all, such impeccable pitch...left one a little gasping." "Was this the best since Heifetz," asked Frankenstein after a 1948 performance of the Bartók Violin Concerto, "or was this just the best, period?" Following Spivakovsky's New York performance of the violin concerto by Gian Carlo Menotti, a review appearing in the May 3, 1954 edition of Time Magazine stated: "As always, his tone was luxuriant, his pitch impeccable, and he brought the music to full-blooded life." The same article referred to Spivakovsky as "one of the most brilliant violinists alive."

Spivakovsky was soloist in the première performances of Leon Kirchner's Sonata Concertante and David Diamond's Canticle and Perpetual Motion. Accompanied by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, he gave the New York premières of violin concerti by Frank Martin and Carl Nielsen. He composed and published his own cadenzas to the Beethoven violin concerto and to all five Mozart violin concerti. For more than four decades he travelled extensively throughout the U.S., Canada, South America and Europe giving solo performances. He also found time to teach violin and chamber music at the Juilliard School in New York City from 1974 to 1989.

In order to draw from his instrument the richest, most brilliant tone possible, Spivakovsky developed an innovative method of bowing that was described in detail in a book entitled "The Spivakovsky Way of Bowing," by Gaylord Yost.[6] In a lifelong effort to perform his repertoire just as the composers wanted their music performed, he sought and researched their original sheet music. Upon discovering that Bach wanted certain chords in his solo violin suites played without arpeggiation, he wrote an article entitled "Polyphony in Bach's Works for Solo Violin," published in 1967 in The Music Review, Vol. 28, No. 4, in which he provided the evidence for Bach's preference. A curved bow, or "Bach Bow", which Spivakovsky acquired from Knud Vestergaard of Denmark, enabled him to execute the whole four-string chords of the Bach sonatas and partitas with greater ease and sonority.

[edit] BiographyHe studied in Lódz, making his debut there at the age of 12 then enrolled at the Berlin Hochschule fur Musik. In 1930 he obtained the prestigious Mendelssohn Prize. In 1932 he made a tour of the United States with Yehudi Menuhin. With the rise of the Nazis, Balsam settled in America, where he became a celebrated accompanist to well-known artists, including Henri Temianka, with whom he performed twice in 1945 at Carnegie Hall. He also played much chamber music and gave occasional solo recitals. He served on the faculties of the Eastman School of Music, Boston University, and the Manhattan School of Music.

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