IDA HAENDEL

Ida Handel was a child prodigy, engraved in the memory of listeners as the „little one who played phenomenally“. At the age of five she received the Warsaw Conservatory Gold Medal and the Huberman Prize for her performance of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto; aged seven she became a laureate of the Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition; and at the tender age of nine she debuted with Brahms’s Violin Concerto at the PROMS in London (where she would subsequently appear on another 67 occasions). Yet she was just as magnetic when, after an extraordinary almost eight-decade career, in July 2013 she was still leading master classes for young violinists in London – to mark her 85th birthday. By the way, when it comes to her age she says that she wouldn’t have noticed it had the others around not drawn attention to it all the time.

Ida Haendel has actually paid just a few short visits to Prague, mainly connected with her appearances with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and at the Prague Spring music festival. The present album contains all the recordings she made during her concerts in the Czech capital until 1965 (as well as some later ones), with the majority of the LIVE recordings produced by Czech Radio not having previously been released.

Perhaps the most comprehensive and apposite description of Iva Haendel’s artistry was provided by Jaroslav Šeda back in 1957: „Haendel is of the stock of great violinists who above all base their performance on the instrument’s spe­cificity, mainly focusing on the tone, its natural ‘violin-ness’, in a slender shape and light colour on the one hand and a wide dynamic and agogic scale on the other. It is fascinating indeed to follow what Haendel’s supple and firm right hand and her splendid Stradivari are able to accomplish: the tone floats and flows, whispers and sings, caresses and passionately embraces. She is not afraid of producing an emotional sob, at some moments transcending the borders of the vibrato in so sensual an agitation that she even risks defying the general conception of stylishness. This position of creativity, plasticity and expressive variety of tone serves as the basis for the entire conception of her playing. She is not interested in detail, she sees and hears the work in its entirety, not only the area and shape of its form but also the overall psychical atmosphere, mood, the fundamental ideational intention. Under a microscope, here and there one could find a minor deficiency as regards the precision of intonation or the aesthetic lawfulness of the skidding technique, yet, oddly enough, you do not really perceive it so sensitively owing to being captivated by the overall imagination of her expression, its impassionedness and ardency, poetry, energy and lustre.“

That is Ida Haendel’s (musical) world in a nutshell. When the artist, who has always drawn attention to herself owing to her playing, as well as statements, says: „I am the violin…“ (which is also the title of a 2004 TV documentary), it does not come across as a manifestation of lack of humility or self-aggrandisement but an expression of her extraordinary devotion to music and utmost coalesce with the violin, which she intends to play „as long as I am able to hold the bow“.