Ben-Haim reviews

BBC Philharmonic/Omer Meir Wellber, et al (Chandos)

Avi Avital (mandolin), et al; Venice Baroque Orchestra (DG)

Raphael Wallfisch (cello); BBC National Orchestra of Wales/Lukasz Borowicz (CPO)

The music of Ernest Bloch and Paul Ben-Haïm shares Jewish elements, yet also seems to draw inspiration from different musical traditions. Bloch draws from Bachian rhetoric as well as elements of Jewish cantillation and French Impressionism, whereas for Ben-Haïm, who was of German extraction, the main creative stimulus seems to stem from Bartók and Eastern-European folk music.

Recorded in 1965, this was intended as Itzhak Perlman’s debut album, but was supplanted by something more ‘serious’, and has only just seen the light of day. Aren’t the ways of record companies strange? The variety of colour in the playing, let alone the sheer technique on show, could only have enhanced the 20-year-old’s already burgeoning reputation. Three of the Paganini Caprices are even more impetuous than in his later complete recording, and contrast nicely with the Berceuse sfaradite by Paul Ben-Haim, where Perlman spins a line of melting tenderness.