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.
