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EAN: 0028945548821 Format: Original recording remastered Label: Decca Manufacturer: Decca Number Of Discs: 2 Publisher: Decca Release Date: June 13, 2000 Studio: Decca Editorial Review: Amazon.com: The new CD was recorded and issued to celebrate the 75th birthday of a legendary violinist who has never become a mainstream superstar. As Haendel's early recordings--like the ones on the bonus CD included here, or the concerto recordings on Testament--demonstrate, she has long been a patrician interpreter of the highest musical and technical standards. In fact, she may be a shade too patrician for some of the repertoire on this recording. With Ashkenazy in uncommonly vigorous and assertive form, Haendel, although always in command of the music and her instrument, doesn't play these mostly folk-based Eastern European showpieces with the kind of flair they invite. She is always sensible and never exactly sleepy, but her Enescu, for example, is much more polite than Menuhin's. The bonus CD, though, despite showing its age and mild lingering effects of Decca's noisy 78s pressings, gives us a more powerful, exciting Haendel, and it's worth more than the asking price of the set. --Leslie Gerber Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Haendel and Ashkenazy a mismatch, and the early recordings show how much the fiddler has lost 50 years laterAs the liner notes reminisce, Ida Haendel can claim a special legitimacy in Enescu's Sonata, as she was a student of the composer in Paris and played the composition for him. As partnered here by Ashkenazy in 1996, her timings in the first two movements are within average, sitting comfortably between the composer himself or his pupils Ferras (Les Introuvables de Christian Ferras) and Menuhin (in 1936, Menuhin Plays Enescu, Szymanowski, Prokofiev, Ravel and 1966, West Meets East: The Historic Shankar/Menuhin ... Read More Rating: - A sensation nonethelessDependent upon what "mainstream" in the editorial review stands for - if that means Elman, Oistrakh, Perlman: the most selling violinists in the biggest market, Haendel is indeed off the mainstream. Otherwise, the more selling, the more they are off the mainstream instead, as most of the cases turn out to be. But Haendel in this case did make it clear that she herself was not happy with the record. The causes? There are quite a number of them. Ashkenazy is a celebrity and he is selling. But is he ... Read More Rating:  - Frolicking with Ida and VladimirNearly a generation before Glenn Gould's towering 1955 recording of the Goldberg variations, Ida Haendel had recorded Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Kreisler and others on Decca. About a generation after Gould's 1982 swansong reprise of the Goldbergs, Ida Haendel was still firing on all eight cylinders (or was it four? Her birth year is variously reported as 1928 and 1924). This 2-CD set captures important fragments from both the early and more recent stages of this remarkable career. Ida Haendel ... Read More Rating: - WowI just got this CD yesterday and am still listening and absorbing, but it has to be said that the bonus CD is truly remarkable, while the Haendel/Ashkenazy coupling in Szymanovsi's "Mythes" is stunning...very heroic and convincing music making done by both artists. |
