Complete American Victor Recordings

Complete American Victor Recordings
- The legendary early recordings of one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century
- First ever release of the Beethoven “Spring” and “Kreutzer” Sonatas from 1949 with his sister Hephzibah Menuhin at the piano
- First official CD release of Mendelssohn’s D minor Violin Concerto, Bruch’s Concerto No. 1, Bach’s Sonata No. 3 and Bartók’s Sonata No. 1, transferred from the original analogue master discs and tapes
- Menuhin’s complete first recordings as an 11-year-old prodigy, remastered from the original Victor matrices using 24 bit / 96 kHz technology
- 2 songs with baritone Robert Merrill for the first time on CD plus 6 previously unreleased encore pieces
Between his birth in New York on 22 April 1916 and his death in Berlin on 12 March 1999, Yehudi Menuhin, the son of humble Russian immigrants, grew from a brilliant child prodigy violinist, who made his public concert dÃ©but in San Francisco in 1924, aged just 7, into not just one of the 20th century s finest and most celebrated artists (as a conductor as well as a soloist), but also a peace campaigner, civil rights activist, spiritual guru and revered senior statesman of the musical world, who ended his days as the Right Honourable the Lord Menuhin of Stoke d Abernon, with a seat in the House of Lords, yet also found time to establish two music schools, a violin competition and an international scheme for taking music out of the concert hall and into the wider community.

Now, to celebrate Yehudi Menuhin s centenary in 2016, Sony Classical is releasing Yehudi Menuhin The Complete American Victor Recordings, a 6-CD set bringing together legendary early recordings by this titan among 20th-century violinists.
Gems of the set include the first ever releases in any format of two previously unpublished items: the December 1949 recordings of Beethoven s Spring and Kreutzer Sonatas with Menuhin s sister Hephzibah at the piano.

Also included are the first official CD releases (all transferred from the original analogue master discs and tapes) of Mendelssohn s teenage D minor Violin Concerto (a work that Menuhin himself rescued from oblivion, buying and editing the surviving manuscript and premiÃ¨ring it at Carnegie Hall in February 1952, two days before making this recording), Bach s Sonata No. 3 (a historic 1944 recording with the legendary Polish harpsichordist Wanda Landowska) and BartÃ³k s Sonata No. 1 (a vividly intense 1947 account of a work that Menuhin had played for the composer himself just four years earlier and in which the violinist is impressively abetted by the pianist Adolph Baller, a Polish-born musician who was Menuhin s regular accompanist and chamber music partner from 1939 until after WW2, despite having had all his fingers broken by Nazi torturers in Vienna before his escape from Europe). Also making its first official appearance on CD is a 1951 account of Bruch s ever-popular Concerto No. 1 with Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony (Menuhin s only collaboration on disc with the Alsatian violinist turned conductor), which sits alongside Menuhin s better-known 1945 recording of the same work with Monteux and the San Francisco Symphony and his 1946 premiÃ¨re recording of BartÃ³k s Violin Concerto No. 2 with Antal DorÃ¡ti and the Dallas Symphony. The set also includes the first ever CD release of two songs (Rachmaninoff s In the Silent Night and Handel s Ombra mai fu ) with the leading Metropolitan Opera baritone Robert Merrill.

Finally, a special disc in the set couples newly remastered versions of the very first (1928) recordings that the 11-year-old Menuhin ever made a set of stylishly played encore items, with his beloved teacher Louis Persinger at the piano with previously unreleased encore pieces by Kreisler and Wieniawski from 1929.
Country USA
Brand SONY MUSIC
Manufacturer Sony Classics
Binding Audio CD
ItemPartNumber 888751985421
Model 888751985421
ReleaseDate 2016-05-06
UnitCount 6
Format Box set
UPCs 888751985421
EANs 0888751985421

Country	USA
Brand	SONY MUSIC
Manufacturer	Sony Classics
Binding	Audio CD
ItemPartNumber	888751985421
Model	888751985421
ReleaseDate	2016-05-06
UnitCount	6
Format	Box set
UPCs	888751985421
EANs	0888751985421

Complete American Victor Recordings

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