Sony Releases Feuermann Cello Anthology

A photograph of Emanuel Feuermann from the Thirties (from the book Forty years history NHK Symphony Orchestra, published in Tokyo in 1967, author unknown, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

This month began will the latest “anthology” release by Sony Classics. Emanuel Feuermann – The Complete RCA Album Collection consists of only seven CDs. This is a relatively modest offering, particularly when compared with cellists such as Pablo Casals and  Gregor Piatigorsky. However, we must bear in mind that Feuermann was only 39 when he died on May 25, 1942, the victim of negligence during an operation.

As a result, the repertoire covered by this collection is seriously limited. Nevertheless, it accounts for performances by Feuermann with three major colleagues from the last century. As might be guessed, the first among those colleagues was Jascha Heifetz, who appears on five of the CDs, four of which account for chamber music performances that also include pianist Arthur Rubinstein. The other Heifetz collaboration is for Johannes Brahms’ Opus 102 “double” concerto in A minor with Eugene Ormandy conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra. As might be guessed, the other significant partner is violist William Primrose, who joins Feuermann and Heifetz in a recording of Ernst von Dohnányi’s C major serenade, as well as accounting for the WoO 32 “Duet with 2 Obbligato Eyeglasses” by Ludwig van Beethoven and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 563 divertimento for violin, viola, and cello in E-flat major.

While the last of the seven CDs beings with Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 58 (second) sonata for piano and cello in D major, performed with Rudolf Serkin, the remaining tracks amount to “encore” selections.” Two of those offerings are Feuermann’s own arrangements. The first of these is a cello-piano account of the first two movements of George Frederick Handel’s HWV 291 organ concerto in G minor. The other, ironically, involves music originally composed for cello and piano, Frédéric Chopin’s Opus 3 “Introduction and Polonaise brillante” in C major.

As might be expected, the author(s) of Feuermann’s Wikipedia page could not avoid writing about Casals. I suspect that the primary “take-away” quotation from that page takes its source from Rubinstein:

He became for me the greatest cellist of all times, because I did hear Pablo Casals at his best. He (Casals) had everything in the world, but he never reached the musicianship of Feuermann. And this is a declaration.

I suspect that Rubinstein was not the only one to praise the cellist when both of them were alive. More telling, however, may be the account of Annette Morreau’s biography of Feuermann, which cites that, after Feuermann died, it took Heifetz seven years before returning to chamber music which he then performed with Piatigorsky.