Customer Reviews

Huberman Festival / Violin Concertos [VHS]

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Henryk Szeryng, undeservedly less famous these days than Perlman or Zukerman, was for more than 20 years, from the late '50s to the early '80s, among the world's greatest violin players (together with Heifetz, Milstein, Oistrakh, and later Perlman). His special talents were the most perfect intonation (pitch) in all of recorded violin playing, a miraculously huge, radiant, almost organ-like tone, and a pronounced ability to convey the overall architecture of a piece. Szeryng's bow arm, stronger and better controlled than anyone else's, was and is the stuff of legends. This video lets us witness the master in his prime. The sound is not very good (to get a real sense of Szeryng's sound, buy a CD of one of the many violin concertos he recorded in the '70s), and the camera does some annoying things, but overall it's a wonderful opportunity to watch how he kneads a tone, how his ridiculously muscular and flexible fingers seem to come alive on the fingerboard, how he (like a great opera singer) carefully develops a long melody from a soft beginning to spectacular ringing heights, how intelligently he interacts with the orchestral accompaniment. The second movement of the Tchaikovsky particularly is out of this world in its combination of soaring melody and darkest passion and pathos. For anyone interested in the violin and its capabilities, this is an indispensable document.

...make no mistake, I'm a big fan of Szeryng...however, he had a reputation of occasionally having one or more cocktails before a performance...and in this video he appears to be lit up like a Christmas tree and the result is sloppy and demeaning.