Reviews | RH-034 | CHRISTINE WALEVSKA | private archive recordings

30 March 2025 | Jean-Charles Hoffelé | ARTAMAG' - Focus - Le disque du jour | LA RETROUVÉE

[...] Throughout the 1970s, Christine Walevska recorded a handful of LPs that revealed a remarkable temperament. I haven't forgotten her Saint-Saëns Concertos, incredibly virtuosic under the baton of Eliahu Inbal, as if exalted by the sheer energy that would also carry through an admirable Schumann Concerto. Philips had one of the major bow players of his generation, and all her recordings for the Dutch label were recently brought together in a beautiful little box set for the Japanese market. Emilio Pessina had access to the cellist's private archives: the record of two rare microgrooves ("Concerto de violoncello" released on the Brazilian label Sodira, the self-published LP "The Artistry of Christine Walevska") but above all a quantity of concert recordings which show the extent of her repertoire, from Bach to Jean Françaix, illustrating the chamber music part that Philips had ignored, preferring to focus on the virtuoso rather than the musician.

[...] perfect portrait of a major interpreter, finally rediscovered.

21 February 2025 | Rob Cowan | GRAMOPHONE - Vol.108 March 2025 | Box-Set / Round-Up

Rob Cowan on collections devoted to two pianists, a cellist and a composer

[...] Another collection of archive CDs celebrates the considerable artistry and beautiful tone of the American cellist Christine Walevska, best known for her Philips recordings (a box, please, Eloquence?), especially of works by Saint-Saëns. The First Concerto also turns up in Rhine Classics’ Walevska collection ‘The Beauty & the Bow’, as does the Dvorák Concerto (two versions, one where we also hear Walevska interviewed by conductor André Vandernoot, the other under Carlos Païta), the Beethoven Triple with Henryk Szeryng and pianist Monique Duphil, Hindemith’s Third Concerto under Dean Dixon, William Schuman’s A Song of Orpheus with the distinguished violinist and quartet leader Henri Temianka conducting and a deeply moving account of Bloch’s Schelomo where Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt is on the rostrum. We also hear three Bach Cello Suites (Nos 1‑3), as well as duo pieces by Haydn, Brahms, Prokofiev (his Cello Sonata) and Chopin (his Introduction and Polonaise brillante). In her prime Walevska was one of those players who virtually became her instrument and I’m happy to report that in addition to some exceptional music-making, Rhine Classics’ collection is very well annotated (by Gary Lemco) and richly illustrated.

16 January 2025 | Jonathan Woolf | MusicWeb International

The admirable cellist Christine Walevska traced over 50 years of performances and recordings. [JW]

[...] The broadcasts, rare LPs and other material in this box reveal a formidably equipped performer across the span of the repertoire. In those Philips discs she was paired with conductors Eliahu Inbal, Alexander Gibson, Edo de Waart and Kurt Redel for a tranche of concerto recordings, and there are a few examples of repertoire duplication – the Dvořák concerto and Schelomo for instance – but very little else. [...] an excellent performance of Pierre Sancan’s test piece Sonata of 1961. She catches precisely its taut, sullen but finally cheerful qualities. Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations are heard with the piano accompaniment of Robert Parris – lyrically impressive and dextrous. There’s also the first exposure of her playing of Bolognini’s Serenata del Gaucho (there are four altogether throughout the box), a spicy pizzicato-and-legato study played with tremendous brio. Pièce en forme de habanera is here too and was one of Maréchal’s favourite encore pieces. [...] Dvořák’s Concerto, heard complete this time, with the Orchestre national de France directed by Carlos Paita in 1976. The orchestra is immeasurably better than the one in Brussels eight years earlier. Walevska plays eloquently throughout and one can hear why Josef Suk was so attracted to her playing and invited her to perform in Prague. [...]

22 December 2024 | Gary Lemco | KZSU Music - podcast | Christine Walevska

The Music Treasury celebrates Christine Walevska, master cellist
“The Cello Has Its Goddess: Walevska. Walevska is a Venus who plays the cello divinely. Music takes possession of her entirely. Her sound is simply precious. It has refinement, subtleties, filigrees, which boggle the mind."  –Jornal do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro
 
"It is rare for a critic to feel the icy fingers of an instrumentalist’s playing on his spine, but I did when listening to this recording of the Schumann and Shelomo by Christine Walevska. The effect of being moved deeply is in a way an icy experience…There is that masterful technique of hers that leaves nothing to be desired; there is that marvelous bow arm; there is that pure, warm, melting tone that can bite and cut when needed. There is a creamy caressing in here tone and yet there is an unforced inner intensity that few instrumentalists can muster. The romantic Schumann Concerto engages her extraordinary elegance of projection, besides her virtuosity. And her playing of the elegiac parts is so full of heart and dignity that you get the shivers listening to them."  –Boris Nelson, president of American Critics Association
 
“Fascinating Playing by Christine Walevska. Her tone was extraordinarily beautiful, engrossing from start to finish. Her playing was captivating. Visually her playing is of the utmost simplicity, the trademark of her performance."   –Twentsche Courant, The Hague
 
Christine Walevska has been center stage in the cello world ever since her first international concert appearances at the age of eighteen. Those early triumphs inspired the sort of accolades normally reserved for star performers of mature years. Typical of the tributes was the comment by the Los Angeles music critic Patterson Greene: "She parallels on the cello the singular persuasiveness of Fritz Kreisler on the violin."
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Her first teacher was her father, a dealer in rare violins and cellos.  It was he who set her on the path at the early age of 13 to be the first private student with the famous Gregor Piatigorsky.
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That was only the beginning. When she was 16 she won a French government scholarship to study with the great Maurice Marechal at the Paris Conservatoire. Two years later she became the first American ever to win first prize in cello and in chamber music.
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Her rise was meteoric, beginning her career in Germany where in her second season she played 45 concerts in that country alone. Following a series of international triumphs, including heralded appearances at Buenos Aires' famed Theatro Colon, where she performed a Recital, the Brahms double concerto with Henryk Szeryng and the Dvorak cello concerto in the same week to rave notices, there soon followed a round of appearances that sounded like a roll-call of the great European cities.

Over four decades of concertizing across the globe she has played with orchestras throughout Germany, the United States, France, in every corner of Spain, Poland, Mexico, Central and South America,(where she has brought music to every big city or small, wherever there is a concert hall with an orchestra or piano to accompany her) in Holland with the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Hague, in the Concertgebouw, the Stockholm Philharmonic, the Israel Philharmonic, Vienna, Italy, Prague, Cuba, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Dresdener Philharmonic, concerts in Japan, Hong Kong, China and Taiwan.
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In 2015 the Museum of Chimei in Taiwan, with a generous grant, sponsored her latest recording recorded in Montreal. The five CD boxed set titled " The Legendary Recordings of Christine Walevska," which now exist on the Decca label, has all seventeen cello concertos, which were originally produced by Philips.
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Her playing was greatly admired by Jascha Heifetz and Arthur Grumiaux.
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Arthur Rubinstein said of her. "... Christine Walevska has the most sensuous tone I have ever heard on the cello... She is the only cellist, who takes my breath away..."
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Claudio Arrau, yet another from the ranks of great pianists, said: "... Christine Walevska is the world's greatest cellist."
 
Many composers have dedicated works to her, including Aram Khachaturian, Ferde Grofe (title: "Christine"), Jose Bragato and Ennio Bolognini, who wanted her to be the only cellist to continue to play his compositions.
 
The violinist, Josef Suk, Dvorak's great grandson, wrote to her and stated that her interpretation of Dvorak's cello concerto was the greatest he had ever heard. He invited her to play it at the Prague Spring Festival and she since played several times with the Suk Chamber Orchestra at the "Jewels of the Prague Castle."
 
The recording she made with the London Philharmonic of the Dvorak concerto was celebrated in a book by Prof. Fabio Uccelli: "ll commiato di Anton Dvorak," (Dvorak's Farewell), published in Florence. Entirely devoted to analyzing this work in depth. The book analyzes phrase by phrase her interpretation with that of Rostropovitch. Because of this book, during the Dvorak anniversary year, 2004, she had a wave of invitations to play the concerto everywhere from Beijing to Brazil. She played the concerto three times with the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Orchestra. The book is dedicated to Christine Walevska as: "the world's greatest interpreter of Dvorak's cello concerto.

This book with multimedia excerpts can be read and heard at: https://musicaeconoscenza.it/newp/index.php/english-books/anton-dvoraks-farewell/ .

(Gary Lemco, Ph.D., Host of The Music Treasury)

PROGRAM (derived from the Rhine Classics set: “Christine Walevska: The Beauty and the Bow”)
 
BOLOGNINI: Serenata del Echo; Serenata del Gaucho (6:50)
COUPERIN: 5 Pieces en Concert (11:00)
NIN: Chants d’Espagne (8:00)
HAYDN: Divertimento in D Major (8:20)
SCHUMAN: A Song of Orpheus w/H. Temkianka, cond. (20:05)
CHOPIN: Introduction and Polonaise brillante, Op. 3 (9:30)
BOLOGNINI: Cello’s Prayer (5:03)
WEBER: Adagio and Rondo in F Major (5:00)
BACH: Solo Cello Suite No. 6 in G Major: Prelude (5:05)
HINDEMITH: Cello Concerto No. 3 w/D. Dixon, cond. (27:00)