ORREA PERNEL plays BACH Sonatas for solo Violin PRIVATE TEST PRESS 1 of a kind

$

1,800

Label + #:  W.H. Troutbeck
Composer: Bach
Name of work: Sonata in C major for Solo Violin / Sonata in G Minor for Solo Violin
Violin: Orrea Pernel

An insanely rare, one of kind record for offer here. 

This is a test press, or more accurately, probably a single pressed (or at the maximum a handful of copies made) record that had no intention to be pressed and sold anywhere. It was pressed on the very obscure private W. H. Troutbeck label. 

Recorded on 12/3/68, this is Orrea Pernel's sole recording other than one track of the legendary Prades Festival Vol. 3 LP, and definitely her sole solo recording. Coming to think about it, I have little doubt that this copy was no other than Pernel's herself.

Orrea Pernel (1906-1993) was an English violin player. Pernel was ambitious only for music: she found the life of a travelling soloist not to her taste, so she opted for a quieter life, teaching at a girls' college in Vermont and occasionally coming to Europe, notably to play at Prades in the early Fifties - a contact and association with the great cellist Pablo Casals confirmed her style of playing and her way of life. She owed little or nothing to the virtuoso style of playing of the Russian school. Many of us who heard her play agreed that for comparison we thought of Joseph Szigeti, Georges Enescu and Sandor Vegh. 

Her high intelligence owed nothing to schooling for she had none, being brought up privately between Kent, Venice and Paris, where she studied at the Conservatoire and was the first Briton to win a Premier Prix. She made her debut at the Wigmore Hall in 1928 with a chamber orchestra directed by Malcolm Sargent. In the Thirties she played under Sir Henry Wood most years at the Proms: Bach, Mozart, Brahms and Delius concertos.

She played Sibelius to Sibelius in Helsinki but focused her attention more and more on the United States, with recitals in New York Town Hall, and concertos with Serge Koussevitsky and the Boston Symphony. She established a string quartet and a regular series of concerts at Bennington College for over 20 years.

After her retirement from Bennington in 1968, she re-established her career somewhat, playing concertos at the Proms with John Eliot Gardiner and Sir Colin Davis. She spent five summers at the Summer School at Dartington, Devon, teaching, playing solos and chamber music with Joyce Rathbone, Andre Tchaikowsky and Sir William Glock. Her playing was passionate but her stance was calm, no histrionics. 

Cover: - (generic cover)
Vinyl: VG- (actually, quite a clean vinyl with no serious marks, but it plays with some background crackle. It will definitely benefit from a professional cleaning, but still an enjoyable listen as is.)

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