Yehudi Menuhin. Brahms Violin Concerto, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult. (1943)

A rare recording of the Brahms Violin Concerto in D (Op. 77) and the bach Solo Partita No3 in E Recorded at BBC Maida Vale in 1943. The following is a recent blog post from Mary Lawson who was the recording engineer at the BBC Maida Vale. Yehudi Menuhin, the now renowned violinist and former child prodigy whom I had heard on the wireless in my school days, would arrive from the US and be the soloist with Adrian Boult and the BBC SO. As he was being flown over by the US Air Force the Estimated Time of Arrival was uncertain, so I had to be prepared for any possibility. I spent the morning selecting the sharpest sapphire cutters and doing test recordings on reels of film to find any flaws in the surface coating which might affect the track. He was to play the Brahms Violin Concerto so I examined the score and marked all the appropriate bars for machine Change Overs. Early in the afternoon I was told by the SRE to make a brief visit upstairs. A brief glimpse through the Studio 1 window and I saw the handsome 27 year old chatting to Adrian Boult. From the “ten seconds from now -“ to the final labelling of the reels, I was so busy that I recall nothing of the performance. Fortunately, I had not yet switched off the machines when the soloist filled a few remaining minutes of recording time by playing Bach’s Partita No 3 in E. The reels were collected and taken away with the rest of that day’s output of recordings. An unrewarding part of our job was that our product, after being broadcast a few times would often be scrapped. Imagine my surprise when the publication BBC Music Magazine / September 1997 issue gave for the free monthly CD, a remastered dubbing of this Menuhin recording which I had made 54 years before, and it included the Bach Partita. Also, in BBC Music Magazine / December 2017 in the series ’Music that changed me,’ Gábor Takács-Nagy , violinist and conductor chooses this recording of Menuhin’s performance of the Brahms Concerto. Thanks to the surprising popularity of the 1942 season in the Albert Hall, the 1943 Proms began in mid-June for an eight week summer season Two orchestras, the BBC Symphony and the London Philharmonic and conductors Henry Wood, Adrian Boult and Basil Cameron shared the load. Concerts began at pm so that people could be back in time for their nightly and overnight wartime duties.