Violinist Ruggiero Ricci: Sonata Soloist

from the Amazon.com Web page for this recording

Following my introduction to the 1918–2018 Ruggiero Ricci Centenary Edition, consisting of remastered “discovered tapes” and released by Taiwan-based RHINE CLASSICS, in which I discussed concerto recordings, I shall now shift my attention the sonatas collection. Compared to the six CDs of concertos collection, the sonatas album consists of only four CDs; and, among them, only three of the CDs are devoted primarily to sonatas. The first CD in the set consists mostly (but not entirely) of shorter pieces recorded at recitals. On the other hand the sonatas album covers a somewhat wider time span, 1952 to 1984, compared with the concerto recordings made between 1951 and 1978. Like the concertos collection, the recordings were made both at concert performances and in studio sessions.

In terms of content, those already familiar with RCA’s Heifetz Collection will find a more-than-generous amount of overlap. I therefore feel a strong obligation to point out the one major offering that is not in the recorded repertoire of Jascha Heifetz. This is Sergei Prokofiev’s Opus 80 violin sonata in F minor, the first of the two that he composed. One reason that the second sonata is more familiar is that it was originally composed as a flute sonata (Opus 94 in D major) and subsequently reworked into the Opus 94a violin sonata (also in D major) for David Oistrakh.

The numbering of these sonatas is a bit deceptive. Opus 94 was completed in 1942, and the violin arrangement was written the following year. On the other hand, while Prokofiev began work on Opus 80 in 1938, he did not complete it until 1946; and its premiere performance was given by Oistrakh. The author of this sonata’s Wikipedia page calls it “one of the darkest and most brooding of the composer’s works;” and that author will get no argument from me over this assertion.

Prokofiev himself described some of the passages as depicting “wind passing through a graveyard.” To some extent, the sonata is comparable in rhetoric to Dmitri Shostakovich’s Opus 65 (eighth) symphony, composed in 1943 when Shostakovich’s sense of war-weariness was at its darkest. Prokofiev’s Opus 80 was composed in a similar time frame, even if the war was over when he was putting on the finishing touches.

Ricci’s performance was recorded in a radio studio in Saarbrücken in 1964 during a live broadcast. His accompanist was Helmuth Barth. It was preceded by two far more familiar compositions, Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1016 sonata for violin and keyboard in E major and Johannes Brahms’ Opus 108 (third) sonata in D minor. Brahms had explored all of the dark rhetoric frequently associated with D minor in Opus 108, and Ricci never stinted in honoring Brahms’ rhetorical stance. Nevertheless, the  Prokofiev sonata makes Opus 108 feel like a walk in the park; and, given how seldom this sonata gets recorded, Ricci’s approach to Opus 80 comes close to making the entire album worth the price of admission.

Nevertheless, I feel it necessary to point out that Bach does not to provide cards in Ricci’s strong suit. The account of BWV 1016 is at least satisfactory, but I have to wonder whether this may have been due to guidance coming from Barth. On the other hand the collection also includes two of the solo sonatas, BWV 1001 in G minor and BWV 1003 in A minor. Both of these were recorded from concert recitals, BWV 1001 at Carnegie Hall in 1958 and BWV 1003 in the Grand Hall of the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in 1984. Most disappointing is Ricci’s approach to the fugue movements in both of these sonatas, which seem more focused on playing the right notes at the right time than on the underlying grammar of subjects and episodes. The Carnegie performance definitely sounds strained, reinforcing my personal bias that neither the space itself nor the audiences it draws are particularly receptive where Bach (or anything pre-Classical, for that matter) is concerned.

At the more positive extreme, however, there are the selections from the 24 caprices of Niccolò Paganini’s Opus 1. According to his Wikipedia page, Ricci made six audio recordings of Opus 1 in its entirety, the first four originally released on LP and the other two after the transition to CD. (The earliest of these marked the first time Opus 1 had been recorded in its entirety.) There are also two videos available, one made for BBC Scotland and the other an unedited account of a performance at the University of Michigan (where Ricci taught) in 1987.

Taken as a whole, the tracks that offer considerable satisfaction significantly outnumber the disappointing ones.