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Staying with historic concerts and radio studio recordings for now – this week it’s the legendary Henryk Szeryng with Carl Schuricht and Orchestre National de la RTF, recorded in Montreux Switzerland on September 21, 1955 playing Brahms Violin concerto op. 77.
Henryk Szeryng was born in 1918 in Zelazowa Wola, Poland, the same Warsaw suburb in which Chopin was born. He began his study of the violin at the age of seven, soon moving from Poland to Berlin to study with violinist Carl Flesch. Szeryng made his first concert tour of Warsaw, Bucharest, Vienna and Paris in 1933 at the age of 15 and received the Paris Conservatory “Premier prix” for violin in 1937.
Szeryng’s promising career was interrupted by World War II when, in 1941, he went to London and was appointed a liaison officer and interpreter for the Polish government. During the war he not only gave more than 300 concerts for Allied troops in Europe, Africa and the Americas, but also went to Latin America to find homes for 4,000 Polish war refugees.
His wartime association with Mexico and his appreciation of the country’s acceptance of the refugees led to his return there after the war. He was named director of the String Department at the National University of Mexico in 1945 and was granted Mexican citizenship shortly thereafter. In 1956 he was named Mexico’s Cultural Ambassador of Good Will and enjoyed the title of ambassador for many years thereafter.
Szeryng’s international concert career was revived in 1954, when Artur Rubinstein heard Szeryng play in Mexico and immediately contacted impresario Sol Hurok and other agents on Szeryng’s behalf. In the years that followed, Szeryng performed in 65 countries on five continents.
His recordings include two complete sets of the solo sonatas and partitas of Bach, as well as Mozart and Beethoven sonatas and an extraordinary number of violin concertos from the Baroque to the modern era. His ties with Mexico led to his active promotion of several Latin American composers as well, such as Manuel Ponce, Cristobal Halffter and Reynaldo Hahn.
Enjoy the concert.
