I've become moderately obsessed today with listening to Andrew Manze's recording of Bach's Toccata & Fugue in D minor arranged for solo violin, which sounds better than you might think, owing to six parts Manze and two parts echo chamber. I tend to go weak at the knees where Bach is concerned, and his pieces for solo string instruments are, for me at any rate, the ne plus ultra of Baroque music. The ambition to someday convincingly play his sonatas and partitas for solo violin was what prodded me to take up the violin in the first place, and I've gradually accumulated a mini-library of various recordings of the tunes, which I listen to often and with great interest, as the differences from one performer to the next can be enormous.
Recordings of the Toccata & Fugue on violin, however, are less common, and with good reason. The piece is nice enough to listen to on strings, and some parts work wonderfully, but there's no denying that it's organ music, and it needs that instrument's breathy resonance to keep it sounding proud and full. Manze's version is well played, but he can't manage to keep it perpetually afloat, and there are times when the music simply deflates.
I was thinking about his recording yesterday, while I listened to an assortment of Paganini's Caprices played on various instruments at the Royal Academy of Music. Hearing Caprice No. 2 on the flute was a first for me, and though I despise the instrument, I'll happily admit that it worked reasonably well. No. 9, on the other hand, was a different story. Also played on the flute -- and reasonably well, by Dmitry Terentyev -- the piece sounded more academic than musical, even by Paganini's standards. Playing double stops on a flute is a doozy of an operation, which basically boils down to the performer fingering one note while at the same time singing another. It's impressive to behold, and I suppose it can be lovely to hear, but it's hardly a match for the gutsy chords a violin can produce. The effect in the case of Caprice No. 9 was something like the Partridge Family singing a cover of Janis Joplin's Cry Baby. The notes were the same, but the spirit was more felicitous than ferocious.
To prove that I'm not a hopeless curmudgeon, I'll add that Caprice No. 5 worked well on guitar (which is hardly news, as it's been played by virtually every classical guitarist under the sun, and even a few rockers, like Steve Vai), and I enjoyed No. 6 with Enesco's piano accompaniment, which, I understand from the program, was recorded by Menuhin with Enesco, his teacher, at the piano.
On a side note, I happen to be working my way through a stupefyingly poorly written, but absolutely fascinating, biography of Enesco -- or Enescu, if we're being pedantic, and apparently we are -- that discusses the violinist/composer in relation to late-19th, early-20th century society. I've become increasingly intrigued by the great 19th century virtuosos who later in life have been talked into being recorded. Some, like Joachim, just barely made it, and left behind hauntingly scratchy wax cylinders that, like the famous recording of Tennyson reading his poem Charge of the Light Brigade, or Bill Morrisson's remarkable film Decasia, now exist as beautifully ethereal spectres of another time. Others, like Ysaye and Caruso, made it to the gramophone, but not far beyond. Enescu, who died in 1955, laid down far more technologically advanced recordings, but the ones he made in his prime still have that wonderful crackle to them that, romantic ideal or not, convey a purity of play that you just don't hear anymore. Modern day twelve-year-olds might be able to match his technique, but, as certain transcriptions will teach us, playing the correct notes is only half the game.
