It was 100 years ago today since...

[pastoralguy]

I've just asked Siri to remind me to listen to Discs 81 & 82 of the Heifetz Edition on November 9th since it'll be exactly 100 years since a certain Master Jascha Heifetz entered the Victor Studios in New Jersey to record five items for the gramophone. It'll be amazing, to me anyway, to be able to listen to these recordings exactly a century later.

Unbelievable!

[pastoralguy]

Just listening to Mr. Jascha Heifetz playing...

Schubert. 'Ave Maria'.

Riccardo Drigo. Valse Bluette.

Beethoven. Chorus of Dervishes.

Elgar. La Capricieuse, op. 17

Wieniawski. Scherzo Tarentelle.

Jascha Heifetz, violin.

André Benoist, piano.

Recorded one hundred years ago today in Camden, New Jersey.

[richardfinegold]

I had just bought the Sony reissue of the RCA Concerto recordings. It cost about $1.50/CD. Of course they have been reissued umpteen times but I hadn’t really listened to them since the lp days. The remastering are great and I have mainly been listening to the Brahms, Sibelius, Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn; I still can’t warm to that Beethoven, but oh well. I never realized that JH had so much color in his playing

[pastoralguy]

Arguably the greatest violinist ever to put horse tail and sheep gut together!

[BBMmk2]

Arguably the greatest violinist ever to put horse tail and sheep gut together!

How can anyone make a remark like this, when you consider greats such as Paganini?

[pastoralguy]

How can anyone make a remark like this, when you consider greats such as Paganini?

Well, I never heard Paganini. In fact, there's no-one alive who did. However, contemporary reports often mentioned that Paganini could play very badly as well. An assertion that could never be made about Mr. Heifetz. However, don't take my word for it. Ask violinists such as Kreisler, ('Gentlemen, we might as well all break our fiddles over our knees'), Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Ida Haendel or James Ehnes. A list of fiddle players who know a thing or two...

[Barbirollians]

Well, I never heard Paganini. In fact, there's no-one alive who did. However, contemporary reports often mentioned that Paganini could play very badly as well. An assertion that could never be made about Mr. Heifetz. However, don't take my word for it. Ask violinists such as Kreisler, ('Gentlemen, we might as well all break our fiddles over our knees'), Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Ida Haendel or James Ehnes. A list of fiddle players who know a thing or two...

Technically peerless I would agree but thinking about it I was trying to think which of his recordings would I regard as my favourites of a particular work and I came up with Wieniawski 2 not any of the great violin concertos .

[BBMmk2]

Technically peerless I would agree but thinking about it I was trying to think which of his recordings would I regard as my favourites of a particular work and I came up with Wieniawski 2 not any of the great violin concertos .

Technically peerless but what about musicality?

[gradus]

Leonid Kogan for musicality.