Ginette Neveu: Beethoven Violin Concerto

In 1935, the sixteen year old Ginette Neveu won the Wieniawski competition, beating all comers including David Oistrakh, who finished second. She was a wonderful violinist with an inner fire and a stupendous technique. Her career took off; then came the period 1939-45 when, for most of the time, she was confined to cycling round Paris during the German occupation. During the second half of 1945 her career re-started until she died in an air crash 28^th October 1949. What a loss!

A friend and I were somewhat surprised when Gidon Kremer, after a personal analysis of a whole pile of recordings of the Beethoven violin concerto (the analysis lasted 44 pages) declared that, for him, the greatest of all the recordings was by … Ginette Neveu, recorded off-air in September 1949 with Hans Rosbaud conducting a somewhat second class German south-west radio orchestra. My friend and I rushed to unearth our copies of the recording; mine had been untouched for several decades and, with 86 different recordings of this concerto on my shelf, it might well have remained unheard for a few more decades.

The orchestral playing is a bit rustic at times, not too surprising in the Germany of 1949. However, in a perverse way this serves to emphasise the serenity of Ginette Neveu's playing, especially in the first two movements. Neveu was renowned as an often fiery player (witness her famous Ravel Tzigane, and her predilection for the Brahms violin concerto). The Beethoven concerto is not easy to bring off in performance, since the violin rarely challenges the orchestra or indulges in pyrotechnics. To my mind, Neveu's serenity (with character) and flowing tempi achieve a really great performance of this fragile concerto. In the cadenzas we glimpse the fiery Neveu from time to time (but, surely, that is what cadenzas are for). Rosbaud's part is strong and firm, pace the orchestra. This performance is admitted to my pantheon of great recordings of Beethoven's violin concerto. Fortunately, Ginette Neveu was recorded quite often during the period 1945-49, with a batch of recordings of shorter pieces during 1938-39.