Great Performers: Joseph Szigeti
If you want to hear pristine technical perfection, I suggest you don't listen to Joseph Szigeti (1892–1973). In his recordings from the 1940s on, when arthritis was taking control of his hands, his bow is shaky, his vibrato slow and wide. Even as a young man, with his long arms and fingers, he seems ill-designed to play such a dainty instrument. If, however, you are searching for sincere connection with a player, as if they are speaking to you directly, explaining the profound thoughts the composer is invoking, the deepest things there are to say, then he is your violinist.
Read more…That he is able to do this through the medium of the violin is partly technical, partly intellectual. Szigeti was obsessed with the details of violin playing. He continually searched for the ideal fingerings (the choice of left-hand fingers to play each note) to convey the meaning of music, colouring each note to create variety, sense and narrative. In this cause, he also used his bow precisely, articulating each note carefully in "parlando" style, which gives the impression of speech, as you hear, for example, in his wonderful Mendelssohn Violin Concerto. He also had an inviolable sense of pulse so that music always moves forward, even while it breathes and expresses emotion. These are never big showboat, operatic performances, but intimate, expressive journeys.
Intellectually, Szigeti was voracious, and largely an autodidact. Born in 1892 in Hungary, he studied the violin with his uncle and quickly distinguished himself as a prodigy, so that by the age of ten he was studying in Budapest with the legendary violinist Jenő Hubay (whose Czardas we hear him playing here in perfect gypsy idiom). Szigeti made his Berlin debut in 1905 aged 13, from which time he taught himself everything he needed to know about violin, music and life. (The earliest recording we have is his Bach E major Prelude from 1908, where we hear his sense of direction already key.)
Even as a young man he read broadly, went to museums, galleries and theatres, and learnt from analysing the great violinists of his time, such as Kreisler, Elman and Thibaud, and studying scores rigorously. It's not fanciful that one can hear this wisdom in his performances – nowhere more so than the slow movement of his 1932 Beethoven Violin Concerto.
Aged 21, while on a cure for tuberculosis in Switzerland, he met Béla Bartók, who would become a lifelong friend, and we have an all-too-rare recording of Bartók the pianist performing 'Contrasts' with Szigeti and jazz clarinettist Benny Goodman, for whom Szigeti asked the composer to write the work. This definitive performance shows Szigeti's instinctive sense of folk style, passed down from his uncles, who played in the village band, as well as his keen sense of chamber ensemble playing. We find that again in the Brahms Piano Trio with Pablo Casals and Myra Hess, the musical charm and dynamic overcoming his by-then wide vibrato.
Szigeti revolutionised the recital programme of the era, making sure to include new works alongside more popular classics. He was a passionate advocate of new music and performed several premieres, including the first Russian performance of Prokofiev's Violin Concerto, which he imbues with so many moods and colours in this 1940 recording, as well as humour. He also premiered the Bloch Concerto, which is not heard often these days, but full of the colour and romance of a Hollywood score, and shows him as passionate as he was intellectual.
Violinists can learn from his classical repertoire, too. His Mozart Concerto No.4 with Sir Thomas Beecham is a lesson in voicing, colour and nuance within tight rhythmic discipline and refined phrasing, allowing some judicious portamento.
So suspend judgement and listen for what really matters in the wonderful playing of this violinist's violinist.
[Due to geo-blocking restrictions, some tracks might be unavailable in certain territories.]