REVIEW POTPOURRI: Anne-Sophie Mutter, Pablo Casals, and Walter Goehr: Timeless Voices in Classical Music

by Peter Cates

Anne-Sophie Mutter

Vivaldi 4 Seasons and Tartini’s Devil’s Trill Sonata. Anne-Sophie Mutter, violinist and conductor of the Trondheim Soloists. Recorded 1999. Deutsche Grammophon 2894632592, compact disc.

Anne-Sophie Mutter

Anne-Sophie Mutter collaborated with Maestro Herbert von Karajan (1908-1988) and the Berlin Philharmonic on a very good record of the Mozart Violin Concertos 3 and 5, also on Deutsche Grammophon, back in 1977 when she was only 14 years old. And her playing was not merely that of a child prodigy flash in the pan but of a mature artist and musician, that record still making for worthwhile listening. Finally, to me personally, anything conducted by Karajan is worth hearing and owning.

The above 1999 CD has Anne-Sophie both playing and conducting six string instrumentalists and a harpsichordist in truly galvanizing performances of Antonio Vivaldi’s most well-known composition and the fiendishly difficult, aptly named Devil’s Trill Sonata of Giuseppe Tartini.

From 2002 to 2006, Mutter was the fifth wife of the late Andre Previn (1929-2019).

Pablo Casals

Conversations with Casals, by J. Ma. Corredor, translated from the French by Andre Mangeot. Published 1956 by Dutton Paperbacks.

Pablo Casals

Cellist Pablo Casals (1876-1973) married his third wife Marta Martinez in 1957 when he was 80, she 20. To those who commented about the age discrepancy, he replied, “I look at it like this. If she dies, she dies.”

He made numerous records as both cellist and conductor between the acoustic early 1900s and just a couple of years before his death in 1973 at the age of 97, setting new standards for the cello as a solo instrument. His most well known recordings include the 1930s Bach Cello Suites and Dvorak Cello Concerto, itself done with the Czech Philharmonic led by George Szell, in Prague, in 1937, just before the Nazi takeover. I also own a really good World War I acoustic Columbia shellac of him playing Camille Saint-Saens The Swan from Carnival of the Animals and several very early 1950s Columbia Masterworks LPs of him conducting music of Bach that were recorded at his summer music festivals in the mountain villages of Prades and Perpignan.

Casals appeared in a 1958 documentary film Windjammer depicting the voyage of a sailboat in its voyage from Oslo, Norway, to various ports including Portsmouth, New Hampshire. For a number of years during the 78s era, he was part of an all star trio recording chamber music of Beethoven, Schubert etc., with violinist Jacques Thibaud (1880-1953, who perished in a plane crash) and the phenomenal legendary French pianist Alfred Cortot (1878-1962).

Casals was involved in later years with the Puerto Rico and Marlboro Vermont summer music festivals.

In Conversations, author and long time friend Corredor talks with Casals about composers, performance and life experiences. One question is as follows:

“I read somewhere that when you first went to America, some impresarios were rather shocked to see a young performer nearly bald, for it was very much the fashion for musical virtuosos to wear long hair in those days!”

Casals: “Yes, one of these impresarios actually told me that he would raise my fee considerably if I agreed to wear a wig during the concerts. ”

A rumor spread during those youthful years that some impresario publicly announced that Casals was prematurely bald because he gave a lock of hair as a souvenir to all of his girlfriends attending the concerts.

Walter Goehr

Maestro Walter Goehr (1903-1960) recorded prolifically for the Concert Hall label of the early 1950s and its subsidiary inexpensive mail order Musical Masterpiece Society. His LPs of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony and Hebrides Overture, the Beethoven Pastoral and 9th Symphonies, the Grieg Piano Concerto with Grant Johannesen, the Schu­mann A minor and Chopin 1st Concertos with Mewton-Wood and Bach Violin Concertos with Riccardo Odnoposoff are of high merit.

During the 1930s and ‘40s, Goehr was one of EMI’s busiest house conductors in London and his work with instrumentalists and singers appeared on numerous 78s in the U.S.

In December 1960, after conducting Handel’s Messiah, Walter Goehr died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 57.

Most all of the above selections are accessible on YouTube.