The radio & press here in Germany have gone wild over Jascha Heifetz's
100th birthday today, reminding me of a mini-vignette involving him,
Fritz Kreisler, Isaac Stern, & Pau Casals which I happened to
eye/earwitness at one of the Casals Festivals (1950, 1953, 1955) I
attended in the hamlet of Prades up in French Catalonia's Pyrenees-
Orientales. Isaac regarded the old Kreisler recording of the Brahms
concerto (recorded in 1936 with the London Philharmonic under John
Barbirolli) as the best ever, and after discovering that Casals had
never heard it (he did know the Heifetz recording), he had to go to
vast trouble to track down as used copy (78rpm, naturally), for at
that point it had lapsed out of print. After Casals had had a
chance to listen to the Kreisler, he told Isaac - to everyone's
considerable surprise - he really preferred Heifetz's to
Kreisler's. . . .
pm
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