ROMANCE OF "LOST" CONCERTO

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 79, 27 December 1940, Page 13

ROMANCE OF "LOST" CONCERTO

Schumann’s Work Located Through "Spirit Messages"’

literary manuscripts after they have been lost for many years is no uncommon thing, but it is doubtful if there was ever a more romantic story than that which attaches to Schumann’s "Violin Concerto in D Minor," broadcast last Sunday afternoon from 1YA. Lovers of Schubert’s "Rosamunde" music (and their number is legion) have reason to be grateful to two young Englishmen for its discovery after it had lain forgotten in a dark cupboard for forty-four years. Sullivan and Grove, when young men in 1867, paid a special visit to Vienna to try to of musical and

locate the missing portions of the "Rosamunde" music, and after a week of digging into dusty parcels, they dragged out the divine "Rosamunde" like a recovered jewel from an ash-heap, Tense with excitement they sat up till two in the morning copying the parts, and although they were worn out, they were clearly far from being out of spirits because in "Groves’s biography we are told that they played leap-frog! Discovery of Two Women The Schumann Concerto also owes its recovery to two musicians-but they were both women: Adila Fachiri and Yelly d’Aranyi-both sisters-both brilliant violinists-and both grand-nieces of an even. greater violinist, Joseph Joachim. When Schumann finished his Violin Concerto in 1853, Joachim was the first person to whom he showed the score. It is now known that the violinist discussed the work with Schumann, possibly suggesting emendations and alterations in the solo part. The work was, however, probably the last that Schumann wrote before he lost control of his reason, and after his death Joachim

was unwilling to play the Concerto, feeling that perhaps the composer would have wanted to alter it still further. When Joachim died, the manuscript passed to his heirs, and was eventually deposited in a Berlin library with a proviso that it should on no account be published or performed until one hundred years after Schumann’s death (or until 1956). Thus the Concerto seemed effectively buried, and, in fact, its location was unknown until 1933 to anyone, except the curators of the Prussian State Library, and one or two members of the Schumann and Joachim families. " Messages " from Two Spirits The story of its location may appear fantastic, but the facts of the case are supported by persons of absolute and unimpeachable integrity. Here they are:

In a series of "spirit messages" from Schumann in 1933 he expressed the wish that Yelly d’Aranyi should find and play a posthumous work of his for violin. At that time no one knew where to locate it, but more "spirit messages" (this time from Joachim), declared that the Concerto "ought to be in the Hochschule Museum, but I cannot recall for certain." Baron Erik Palmsfierna, the Swedish Minister in London, while returning to London, via Berlin, devoted some time to a search, and after meeting with no success at the Hochschule (a State Musical Academy) Museum, he tracked down the work in the Prussian State Library. Four Different Copies The official in charge of the work said that Schumann’s daughter had forbidden publication of the work, but permission was finally obtained to have the Concerto copied on condition that it was not played in public. Later this ban was also removed, with the result that the Concerto was played in London on October 20, 1937, by Yelly d’Aranyi and the BBC Symphony Orchestra,

Before the performance, four different manuscript copies of the work came to light, and musicians and many others became resigned to the belief that the sources of human knowledge are sometimes to be sought for in regions which lie outside ordinary human experience. All these people and many who find themselves not able to credit the "spirit messages" will agree on one point. They will all be gratified to know that the soloist at the world premiére was Yelly d’Aranyi, Joachim’s grand-niece. Others on the Scent At the height of the public excitement caused by the discovery of the

work and its first English performance by Yelly d’Aranyi, a German, George Kulenkampff, and the American, Yehudi Menuhin, were also on the scent, In the following December they both played the work. The German broadcast it from Berlin. Menuhin’s perform. ance was at Carnegie Hall, New York, the orchestral part being played by Ferguson Webster. Since then Menuhin has recorded the Concerto with the Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra of New York under the, English conductor, John Barbirolli, (This is the version that was broadcast by 1YA).