Few musicians had been so respected by their peers.
Pianist Artur Rubinstein thought him “the greatest cellist of all times.” For fellow cellist Janos Starker, he was “the most important figure for 20th century cello playing…” Conductor Eugene Ormandy said his playing “was something which led me on to what music really means, what it has to say.” His death in 1942, the result of complications during surgery at the age of just 39, was a shock to the musical world. His pallbearers included Ormandy, Arturo Toscanini, George Szell, Artur Schnabel, Rudolf Serkin, Mischa Elman, and Efrem Zimbalist.
Such was the esteem in which some the great musicians of the twentieth century held cellist Emanuel Feuermann.
His official recorded legacy encompasses one 70 recordings, from short works on single 78s to chamber music and works with orchestra – but some of the finest recordings were made privately – live at Carnegie Hall – toward the end of his life with conductor Leon Barzin’s National Orchestra Association.
Parnassus Records is pleased to release Feuermann in concert performances of Antonín Dvořák’s “Silent Woods” and Rondo, Ernest Bloch’s “Schelomo”, and concertos by Eugen d’Albert and Josef Reicha. These recordings, which occasionally surfaced during the LP and CD era in mediocre transfers on hard-to-find private labels, have been sourced from archival copies and restored by Urlicht AudioVisual’s Gene Gaudette, presenting Feuermann’s inimitable musicianship in sound that is superior to studio recordings of the era.
“Another master in Dvorak was the cellist Emanuel Feuermann, well known for his recordings of the Concerto (two captured live, one set down in the studio), and two shorter works. Silent Woods, Op 68, and the Rondo in G minor, Op 94 (Feuermann here accompanied by the National Orchestra Association under Leon Barzin), the latter also available with piano as a video link (where a virtually expressionless Feuermann plies a lightning use of the bow and phenomenal lett-hand stretches). As to his tone. Casals might score equally for personality but for sheer tonal beauty, emotive immediacy and as a seductive proponent of the bow, no one compares with Feuermann. Parnassus’s latest transters of these matchless performances are admirably smooth and the same CD also includes another Feuermann mainstay, Bloch’s Schelomo again under Barzin and soloisticallv at least a fair match for his Philadelphia version with Stokowski conducting.… A must for all cellists and cello lovers.”
—Rob Cowan, Gramophone (February 2024)
