<<  -- 6 --  Jennifer Paull    A SLEEPING BEAUTY

Yehudi Menuhin overcame the Nazi ban by giving the American première less than two weeks after the German. He did so at New York's Carnegie Hall with Ferguson Webster playing a piano reduction of the score. It is unclear as to whether this took place on 5 or 6 December 1937. The records appear to be confused. Shortly after, on 23 December, he performed it with the St Louis orchestra under Vladimir Golschmann. This was Menuhin's revision of the concerto and again, the manuscript had been modified and amended. He was also to record his version of the score.

It was not to be until 1951 with the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra under Victor Desarzens, that Peter Rybar took great pains to perform Schumann's original score, follow his moderate tempi indications, and thus show the work in its best and truly inspired light. This great artist, now in his nineties, still lives in Switzerland today.

The first performances on both sides of the Atlantic in 1937 were fortunately not a full hundred years after Schumann's death, although Rybar's true version fell only a few years short. The two independent premières however, took place twenty-five years after the landmark composition of Schönberg's Pierrot Lunaire and a mere two, before Samuel Barber, the neo-romantic, was to write his Violin Concerto. This work, started in 1939 in Switzerland, was to have been continued in Paris. No sooner did Barber arrive, than Americans were warned to return to the United States. Before his boat reached native soil, the Nazis had invaded Poland and his projects were interrupted. Schumann and Barber, two such different men born far apart in time, were both touched by the Nazi regime.

On the 24 September 1937, Sir Donald Tovey sent a letter to The Times in which he made the following statement. '... I assert my positive conviction that the spirit of Schumann is inspiring Jelly d'Aranyi's production of Schumann's posthumous Violin Concerto'.

Perhaps the spirit of Sir Edward Elgar was lending a helping hand, thanking Robert Schumann for his spirit's inspiration during the composition of the Enigma Variations?