Bruch: Scottish Fantasy / Vieuxtemps: Concerto No. 5 as a hybrid stereo SACD from Analogue Productions’ RCA Living Stereo series: Jascha Heifetz with Sir Malcolm Sargent and the New Symphony Orchestra of London, remastered by Ryan Smith at Sterling Sound from the original master tape. Both works play in one sequence – Vieuxtemps first, then Bruch.
Two ways of telling a story on the violin
Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy and Vieuxtemps’ Fifth Violin Concerto put the same instrument at their centre, but ask very different things of it. In Bruch, the violin meets folk melodies and an orchestra in which the harp plays a special role; Vieuxtemps compresses his concerto into one continuous arc. Jascha Heifetz brings both worlds together with Sir Malcolm Sargent and the New Symphony Orchestra of London.
The real thrill is not simply what a violinist can do technically. It is how a melody is carried: how the bow gives it direction, how clearly a turn is shaped, and how a larger form stays audible. This coupling offers two contrasting chances to follow exactly that – virtuosity in the service of song.
RCA on the label, Decca at the sessions
The recordings were made in Walthamstow in May 1962, and Acoustic Sounds names Kenneth Wilkinson and the Decca recording team. If you automatically link Living Stereo with American RCA sessions, this is a fascinating piece of background: the route here leads to London and a different, long-established recording tradition.
It is the concrete combination that counts – a particular soloist, conductor, London orchestra and a named recording team. The history of the performance and the later remastering belong together, yet they remain two different chapters of this recording’s story.
The harp is in the title
Bruch’s full title names violin, orchestra and harp, with the free use of Scottish folk melodies – so the harp is no decorative afterthought but part of the conception. Listen for its entrances as the violin’s partner: what happens when a plucked sound joins a bowed line? Composed in 1879–80, the Fantasy was dedicated to Pablo de Sarasate, yet its first performance, in Liverpool in 1881, featured Joseph Joachim with Bruch conducting.
Vieuxtemps wrote his Fifth Concerto for the Brussels Conservatory competition; its three sections run without a pause, so the technical demands have to make sense within one continuous argument. Its nickname, Le Grétry, refers to a melody from Grétry’s opera Lucile in the slow section – behind the virtuoso task lies a love of vocal music, which is exactly why these two works belong together.
The hybrid stereo SACD from Analogue Productions
CAPC 2603 SA is a hybrid stereo SACD from Analogue Productions’ RCA Living Stereo series. According to the publisher, Ryan Smith at Sterling Sound remastered it from the original master tape – the original two-track session tapes. The SACD layer plays on SACD-capable players, the CD layer on any conventional CD player. The disc opens with Vieuxtemps’ Concerto No. 5, followed by Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy.
You order from Michael 45 in Germany. We arrange the US import and ship from Hilden.
More from the series: RCA Living Stereo Series
Also in another edition: Bruch: Scottish Fantasy / Vieuxtemps: Concerto No. 5
More SACDs with Jascha Heifetz: Rózsa: Violin Concerto / Benjamin: Romantic Fantasy
Customer question: Buying Analogue Productions records in Europe
Musicians
Named soloists, conductors and ensembles. The album credits do not individually name every orchestra member.
- Jascha HeifetzViolin
- Malcolm SargentConductor
- New Symphony Orchestra of LondonOrchestra
- Osian EllisHarp (Scottish Fantasy)
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