Profil’s Anthology of Violinist Michael Rabin

courtesy of Naxos of America

A little over a week ago, Profil released its latest archival anthology, modestly entitled A Genius on the Violin. The collection itself is more modest than the title, since it consists of four CDs of recordings of the American violinist Michael Rabin. To be fair, however, Rabin’s life was tragically short. He died on January 19, 1972 at the age of 35. A neurological condition had begun to undermine his sense of balance. He had taken one fall during a recital at Carnegie Hall, and a more serious fall in his New York City apartment was the cause of his death.

Rabin was born in New York on May 2, 1936, the son of a violinist in the New York Philharmonic. This sets him apart from the three distinguished violinists that were raised in San Francisco: Yehudi Menuhin (April 22, 1916, leaving New York for San Francisco at a very early age), Ruggiero Ricci (July 24, 1918, born in San Bruno), and Isaac Stern (July 21, 1920, born in Poland but arriving in San Francisco when he was fourteen months old). Ricci may be the most interesting point of reference, since in 1947 he was the first violinist to record the complete set of 24 Caprices for solo violin composed by Niccolò Paganini. However, while Ricci was over 25 when he made that recording, Rabin recorded the full collection in 1951, when he was about ten years younger.

That recording was made for EMI, now a division of Sony Music; so it is not included in Profil’s collection. Paganini is represented only by the Opus 6 (first) concerto in D major in a 1954 recording made with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Lovro von Matačiċ. The other “usual concerto suspects” are, in order of appearance, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Alexander Glazunov, Henryk Wieniawski, Felix Mendelssohn, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In the same vein there is also a recording of Max Bruch’s Opus 46 “Scottish Fantasy.”

On the other hand there is one significant departure from all of this familiarity: Paul Creston’s Opus 78 (second) violin concerto. Creston wrote this concerto for Rabin. Failure to mention this composition on Rabin’s Wikipedia page constitutes a serious sin of omission. The concerto was given its premiere performance on November 17, 1960 with Georg Solti conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic; and the Profil collection concludes with the “live” recording of that event. Creston is probably even more out of fashion than Rabin these days, and any attempt to restore attention among serious listeners deserves significant appreciation.

The “chamber” repertoire is confined to the third for the four CDs in this collection. Johann Sebastian Bach is represented only by the BWV 1005 solo violin sonata in C major, but this is one of the best examples of Rabin’s consummate skill at balancing rich expressiveness against intense focus on technique. The two sonatas are the third, in the key of G major, of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 30 collection and Gabriel Fauré’s Opus 13 (first) sonata in A major. The pianist for both of these selections is Lothar Broddack.

This is a disappointingly modest collection. To be fair, however, the six CDs compiled for the EMI collection are not much richer in content; and they do not include the Creston concerto. There are other releases that include a recording of this premiere performance, but Profil gives the concerto an extra jolt of significance through the context that the entire collection sets.