The Week's RECORDS

Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 30, 6 January 1939, Page 9

The Week's RECORDS

PAD the infant-death rate of Johann Sebastian Bach’s day and gencration approxtmated to that of New Zealand in 1938, there would have. been a far larger tribe of able descendants. Only one of the seven children of Anna Magdalena (his second wife) lived to be more than three years old; and at Bach’s death his surviving children numbered nine, out of the twenty that his two wives bore him. ¥ ven so, the Bach family revelled in grand. music-makings together. The domestic circle played Bach’s concertos in their. own home, Thanks te the gramophone we can now, in another way, do the same. The difference is that our modern method is, in a variety of ways, far more efficient and convenient. The two violin concertos by Bach are amongst the best things in the whole repertory of the violin. In .these works the orchestra is of great importance, and in the recent recording of the "No. 1 in A Minor," by Yehudi Menuhin, violinist and Symphony Orchestra, under Georges Enesco, no pains have been spared to give a vivid and realistic performance. This is the kind of ,concerto which is complete on two records (HMYV. DB 2911-12), is by no means hard to follow, and finally, affords easy listening. We may be experiencing a boom in Bach, but whatever it is called, the demand. for records of the music of the "Old Father of Fugues" is not likely to slacken while such fine examples of his music are allied to the unmistakably masterly violin playing of Menuhin. He Fidgets Listening to a Kreisler record or watching him play is so wholly pleasant that any association of nervousness with him seems just silly. But in the artist’s room ata recital he is apparently a bundle of nerves. He moves persistently from one side of the room-to the other, picks up his fiddle to fidget with it and then puts it down again, and is as nervous and tense as if he were making a none too confident first appearance before the public. At last his call comes, and he appears before an audience which * wonders if he still remembers what it feels like to be all tense with anxiety. They think he would require to look back years, but in truth he has to recall no more than a few seconds. Yet this remarkable violinist has been playing since he was seven. Kreisler is 28 man of many accom- . plishments-he has undergone a course of training in medicine, he Phas studied painting in Paris and in Rome, and finally he became 2 cavairy officer. Beside alt this, he has added substantially with his original compositions to the violin repertory, and as an "arranger" and "transcriber" he has no superior.‘ in Europe today. Kreisler’s two latest records indicate the truth of this claim. In the first (HMV. DA 1628) he has yvecorded with Franz Rupp at the piano, his own "Rondino on a Theme by Beethoven," and his arrangement of the Gavotte from Bach’s "Partita No. 3 in E major." The remaining disc (HMV. DA 1622} contains Kreisler’s own versions of Poldini’s "Poupee Valsante" (Dancing Doll) and "Londonderry Air." Franz Rupp is again at the piano, Kreisler and Rupp are an ideal team and both records are heartily recommended.