Menuhin and Elgar's violin concerto


Edward Elgar "Violin Concerto in Si minor", Opus 61. Dimitri Shostakovich. “Symphony n. 11 in Sol menor ”, Opus 103. Ibermúsica. National Auditorium of Music. November 28, 2019. London Philharmonic Orchestra. Dir. Vladimir Jurowski. Violin: Nicola Benedetti, violin

Prodigy children are always a rarity, the exception, in all the arts, but in music they seem to be above the average that exists, say, in mathematics or chess. The interpretation of the Elgar violin concert on Thursday at the National Auditorium offers an opportunity to talk about a prodigy among child prodigiesYehudi Menuhin The explanation is that Menuhin, with 16 years, and Edward Elgar himself, with 70 already met, joined in 1932 to record the latter's violin concert. The interpreter was at the beginning of his career, the composer was a living legend and the record they made of this work, one of the most difficult of the romantic repertoire for this instrument, has remained since the early thirties of the last century available in every classic record store that boasts from Oslo to Buenos Aires and from Tokyo to San Francisco. In an era in which the recordings compete with each other to see which one is more aseptic and "flawless", it is refreshing to hear this album that, despite having been remastered several times, still sounds deliciously ancient and perfect in its imperfection. As a curiosity it can also be noted that the record company that made the record was EMI, which had just been founded months earlier in 1931. EMI had Menuhin on payroll for 70 years, the longest record record ever of music at the moment.

It was precisely with the San Francisco Symphony when Menuhin debuted with seven years. With 13 years it was released with the Berlin Philharmonic directed by Bruno Walter, which went from skepticism to enthusiasm with the new child prodigy of the United States in a matter of seconds when I hear him interpret the beginning of Beethoven's concert in a hotel room in Berlin playing the orchestral part of the piano himself. It was Walter who said of him that it was a prodigy among the child prodigies. And the same tuning had to reign between little Menuhin and veteran Elgar since the recording sessions were so good that the last one was canceled by the composer himself, who took the young violinist to spend a day in horse racing . Greater importance acquires this fact if one remembers that of all his compositions, Elgar always loved his Opus 61 especially, which never ceased to be interpreted even when the composer's popularity declined incomprehensibly in the fifties. He himself played the violin from his humble childhood as a Catholic boy in an England that never finished seeing him with good eyes, like one of his own, until many years later. It is enough to realize what place this work occupied in his heart to point out that on one occasion he confessed that he would have liked them to tax the subject of nobly of the walking of the violin concerto in his grave.

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