Bronislaw Huberman: “like a cultured angel”
April 15th, 2010
On 19 October 1942 Irving Kolodin of The New York Sun wrote: ‘Mr. Huberman’s "Chaconne", in mere physical terms, was a good deal more composed than his playing of the "Kreutzer" sonata. Here the surge of music too often force Mr. Huberman into sheer abuse of the violin, as counterpart to the sections in which he made it sing like a cultured angel."
The St. Louis Daily Globe-Democrat wrote on 21 November 1942 wrote: "After an ovation which recalled him again and again at the concert’s close he played Bach as an encore. The greatest Bach this reviewer has heard – so poised it was, so serene – a very flow of faith which suddenly illuminated this reviewer’s knowledge that the violinist would worship and talk on his life in Palestine with his co-religionists at Temple Shaare Emeth last night.
Serenity of soul was in his Brahms [Violin Concerto], and overmastered the virtuosity which was its foundation. This attainment left him mannerisms, so that he appeared a gnome-like figure bent over his violin to rise to his full stature as its aspiration was completely realized in the poignant beauty of exquisite tone.’
Felix Herce wrote at the Excelsior from Mexico wrote on 20 February 1942: "somebody who hears Huberman for the first time will feel himself overwhelmed by the diabolic power with which the artist dominates his violin, enraptured by the docility or the mechanism, for which difficulties do not exist, opening to fantasy an unlimited space, giving to his violin the most divine breath of the human voice and arousing with his profundity the innermost sentiments of the soul’.