By Eileen Wingard in La Jolla, California
Following the Double Sens string orchestra setting up on the Baker-Baum stage of the Conrad Prebys Music Center Saturday evening, November 7, the Serbian-French violinist, Nemanja Radulovic, entered, taking control of his orchestral forces as they launched into the opening bars of Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.
With his dashing appearance, tall, athletic, and a long mane of straight black hair, he moved in front of the standing players, closing in on the principals with whom his solo line interwove. The performance became a delightful theatrical experience as well as a musical one.
The music took on great excitement with its precision and patina of Eastern European Roma (gypsy) influence, rubatos in the slower passages and frenzied speed in the fast passages. Radulovic also treated the slow movements with poetic sweetness. The full house rose in an enthusiastic ovation after this unique rendition.
The Four Seasons, four violin concertos of programmatic music depicting Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter, was part of a 12-concerto opus published during Vivaldi’s lifetime in Amsterdam, Holland. However, this music might not have reached its current popularity—I just heard it played in the same hall last June as part of the Mainly Mozart Festival–, were it not for the promotion and sleuthing of Alberto Gentile, a musicologist at the University of Turin, and Hollywood studio violinist, Louis Kaufman, who recorded it at Carnegie Hall and performed Vivaldi’s music in Europe and the US.
When monks brought stacks of manuscripts for evaluation to the University of Turin with the hope of selling them to raise funds for monastery repairs, musicologist Gentile recognized their worth and recruited a wealthy merchant, who had just lost a baby son, to purchase the manuscripts for the University of Turin library in memory of his deceased child.
After examining the manuscripts, Gentile realized they were only half of a collection. With the help of a genealogist, he managed to track down the owner of the other half, a Neopolitan descendant of royalty, who was not about to sell his manuscripts. It was not until Gentile persuaded the music-loving priest of this man to convince him to sell his half to the University Library, that, with the philanthropy of a Turin banker, Gentile was able to acquire the entire collection for the university library.
The astute musicologist arranged performances of the Vivaldi music, but during World War II, because he was Jewish, he went into hiding, and it was not until 1948, when Ricordi Publishing in Milan published the first volume of this Vivaldi music that Alberto Gentile was given the first issue off the press and the recognition of his role in bringing this Vivaldi music to light.
Although an Italian violinist, Remy Precepi, made a recording of the Four Seasons in 1941, it was not until Hollywood studio violinist Louis Kaufman performed it in Carnegie Hall and recorded it in 1948 that he helped popularize Vivaldi’s music.
After scouring libraries and church collections throughout Europe, Kaufman and his wife. Annette, finally found a copy of the published Four Seasons and the other eight concertos of Vivaldi’s Op. 8 collection, Il Cimento dell′ Armonia e dell′ Inventione in a library in Brussels, Belgium, and made the first complete domestic recording of the other eight concertos of Vivaldi’s Op. 8.
Locally, Louis Kaufman and his pianist wife, Annette, gave recitals at our San Diego Jewish Community Center on 54th Street, now torn down, under the auspices of our JCC Music Committee.
The second half of the November 7 concert was devoted to a chamber music arrangement of Scheherazade, Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s beautiful programmatic music inspired by 1001 Nights, in which Scheherazade staves off her beheading by telling the sultan stories with out endings.
The Serbian composer and conductor, Aleksandar Sedlar, made a beautiful arrangement of Rimsky-Korsakov’s work for violin solo and chamber orchestra, giving the solo violin all the orchestral solos as well as enhancing the violin cadenzas representing Scheherazade. It was surprising how the string orchestra was able to create loud energetic sounds replicating the storms at sea.
The theme for the Kalendar prince morphed into a Klezmer-like tune. That melody, in particular, I recall my father singing, and, since Rimsky-Korsakov not only taught and influenced composers such as Glazunov and Stravinsky, but also encouraged his Jewish students to use Jewish motifs in their music, which later led to the formation of the Jewish Folk Song Society, he might have learned that klezmer-sounding tune from one of his Jewish students. Who knows?
The exciting rendition of Scheherazade once again had the full house rising to its feet in a standing ovation, and multiple encores were played before the audience went home, inspired by the infectious sounds of these Serbian and French musicians and their charismatic leader, violinist Nemanja Radulovic.
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Eileen Wingard, a retired violinist with the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, is a freelance writer specializing in coverage of the arts.