Credits:

Fritz Kreisler

Description:

Chrysler fans rejoice! Bell Telephone Hour Vol. 2 is also the first recording to be released. The Bell Telephone Hour was a popular American radio program broadcast from 1940 to 1958. It featured stars of classical, jazz, and pop music, and reached 8 to 9 million listeners. Kreisler also appeared on the program from 1944 to 1950, but only a few of his performances were ever recorded and never released to the public. Biddulph will reissue Kreisler's performance at the Bell Telephone Hour on three CDs, based on "the best possible material in private hands. Kreisler was in a car accident in New York in 1941, and his return to the stage was temporarily threatened, but he made a comeback in 1943, which was called "a miraculous comeback. The Bell Telephone Hour recordings are a valuable recordings of Kreisler from the period immediately after his "miraculous comeback" to his retirement in 1950. According to the label's documentation, tracks 1, 6, 8, and 9 are Kreisler's first recordings of the same music. Corelli's La Follia has a solemn start and sounds more like a funeral march than a Baroque dance. The sound of the violin part is very different from what we hear today, and even a magnificent cadenza is provided, transforming the piece into a Romantic virtuoso piece.This should be called a re-creation by Kreisler rather than an arrangement. The two Rachmaninoff pieces were performed two years after Rachmaninoff's death, and Kreisler must have had special feelings for them, as he was a close friend of Rachmaninoff. Although other violinists have recorded these four pieces, including Rimsky-Korsakov's Fantasy on a Russian Theme, using Kreisler's arrangement of the score, the significance of the recordings conveying Kreisler's own interpretation is immeasurable. The final piece, Chausson's Poem, was performed by Kreisler at the age of 72. The unique agogik conveys the interpretation he reached (only this piece was reissued by Biddulph in 1994). Naxos Japan