Violinist Ruggiero Ricci: Concerto Soloist

from the Amazon.com Web page for this recording

This past Tuesday I wrote about the Ivry Gitlis Edition project of Taiwan-based RHINE CLASSICS to release a collection of recordings of the Israeli violinist Ivry Gitlis. While this project has thus far resulted in only two CDs, violinist Ruggiero Ricci has received far greater attention. His project is the 1918–2018 Ruggiero Ricci Centenary Edition. Thus far RHINE CLASSICS has three box sets, all consisting of remastered “discovered tapes.” Each involves a specific genre: concertos, sonatas, and showpieces (usually a euphemism for “encore favorites”). The concertos collection consists of six CDs and the other two each provide four. Each of these categories will be examined separately, beginning with the concertos.

All of the performances in this collection consist of recordings previously unreleased made between 1951 and 1978. Thus, these involve the work of a mature performer in contrast to the “early years” content of the Gitlis collection. The total number of recordings is fourteen, only four of which were made in the United States. Two were made at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles on June 13, 1965 (Jean Sibelius’ Opus 47 concerto in D minor) and June 13, 1967 (Johannes Brahms’ Opus 77 concerto in D major), respectively. The resulting CD was made from monophonic recordings made on Ampex tape equipment with only a single microphone. The other American performances were made in New York from broadcast recordings of the New York Philharmonic. The November 8, 1958 recording (Niccolò Paganini’s Opus 6, first, concert in D major) was made in Carnegie Hall; and the October 3, 1963 recording (Alberto Ginastera’s Opus 30 concerto) was made at what was then Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center. The Hollywood Bowl conductors were (in chronological order) Hans Swarowsky and Eugen Jochum. The New York conductors were (again chronologically) Thomas Schippers and Leonard Bernstein. All other recordings were made in Europe. Most of the conductors will probably be unfamiliar to most readers with the possible exception of Ernest Ansermet leading the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande.

In terms of content, Paganini gets the most attention: three concertos, the earliest of which has two recordings, along with his Opus 9 set of variations on “God save the King” taken as an encore. The Brahms concerto is recorded twice (the other time in Europe), both with cadenza material by Joseph Joachim. In addition to the composers already mentioned, the other composers are Antonín Dvořák, Igor Stravinsky, Karl Goldmark, Émile Jacques-Dalcroze, Alexander Glazunov, and Carlos Heinrich Veerhoff.

For the most part, these are meat-and-potatoes selections. The most imaginative work comes from Ginastera. Nevertheless, it was hard to resist speculating that Bernstein never quite figured out what was going on in this concerto, particularly the middle Adagio movement which calls for solos from 21 of the Philharmonic’s section leaders. The piece was dedicated to both Ricci and Bernstein, but my guess is that most of the navigation work came from Ricci himself and whoever was serving as Concertmaster that evening.

When playing the more familiar repertoire, Ricci delivers consistently solid accounts. I certainly had no trouble listening to two different recordings of the Brahms concerto. At the same time, I was delighted with the life that Ricci breathed into the Stravinsky concerto, a concerto that only recently seems to be getting the respect it deserves.

There is also a “local perspective” for these recordings. Ricci was born in San Bruno. That puts him in the same class with the two “San Francisco violinists,” Yehudi Menuhin and Isaac Stern. Personally, I find Ricci to be less of a showboat than the other two. His interpretations are consistently imaginative and compelling, but they are more about the composers than about the soloist. There is much to appreciate on all six of the CDs in this collection.