180-gram hand-numbered double LP
Remastered from the original analogue tapes
Lacquer cuts by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio
New tip-on gatefold jacket printed in Italy
Pressed by Marciac Workshop Pressings, France
16-bit album download included

“God has given you everything, you must be among the ten greatest violinists of your time, era.” So spoke Jeno Hubay, Johanna Martzy’s teacher at Liszt Academy in Budapest. She was 13 years old. How could she have imagined that her fate would be that of a comet passing through an uninterrupted succession of lights and shadows? Everything happened very quickly. In 1943, in Budapest, under the direction of the great Willem Mengelberg, she appeared for the first time in the Tchaikovsky concerto. But the arrival of the Nazis in a still protected Hungary stopped this momentum. The young Jewish woman and her husband were sent to an Austrian camp until the end of the war. Does she then remember her teacher’s prediction? She took up her violin again and, in October 1947, won the first first prize in the Geneva competition. Success was within reach of her bow. Amsterdam in 1949, London in 1953, New York in 1957 and in 1958 under the direction of the young Leonard Bernstein.

The setbacks however multiply: she faces a permanent permanent cabal concerning supposedly doubtful political affinities with the regent Mikklos Horth with the regent Mikklos Horthy in Hungary during the Second World War. A Edinburgh, in 1959, the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra refused to perform with her. with her. In addition, she records little, as a result of stormy disputes with with the record companies. The music critics do not spare her either: some find her talent “deceptive”! Her career becomes chaotic, alternating ovations and ignorance. In the middle of this turmoil, the proud Johanna does not give in to any compromise. To remain authentic, that is her line!

The Lost Recordings has been lucky enough to be able to resurrect resurrect in Berlin and Amsterdam this set of previously unreleased studio and concert recordings between 1955 and 1965, which testify to the exceptional talent of Johanna Martzy. Given the age of these documents, significant restoration efforts had to be made to to bring back to life the depth and brilliance of the playing of this comet of musical space.

In 1955, in the Jesus Christus chapel in Berlin, she recorded, with Jean Antonietti at the piano, the sonata for violin and basso continuo by Handel as well as the sonata in B flat major by Mozart. Rigorous tempi, devoid of the mannerism so common at the time the search for the most colorful musical sonorities. Thus, each phrase becomes a rich world in itself. On November 25, 1961, it is at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. Willem van Otterloo conducts the Radio Filharmonish Orkest. Johanna was often criticized for her for the interpretation of this concerto which she particularly liked. The present document shows how unfounded these criticisms were. She demonstrates ability to reject all pretense and to inhabit a work from within, however uncompromising it may be. Her playing is limpid, in luminous harmony harmony with an orchestra that she knows how to lead to musical musical summits. Perfect emotion.

It has often been thought that Johanna did not dare to approach the works of 20th century musicians. On the contrary, she shows here shows here with what vivacity and what sense of rhythm she pays homage to Ravel in a dynamic yet intimate vision of his violin sonata, recorded in a studio in Hilversum in January 1965, always with the pianist Jean Antonietti.

1965 marked the beginning of her eclipse. She prefer to leave the scene gradually, to find refuge in Switzerland where she died, almost ignored, in 1979, at the age of 55. Extreme injustice. The great Glenn Gould saw in her an artist who had always seemed to him to be the most the most underestimated of the great violinists of her time. A mistake today repaired.