He had a broad, firm, focused tone in all registers; flawless intonation; a rapid, even trill; a swift, perfectly controlled staccato; strong, immaculate harmonics; an even, clear sautillé*...
Joseph Magil, American Record Guide
“The neck of the violin is broken off, the right hand with a bow is chained with granite, the line of the pedestal smoothly goes into the grave... The life cut short”. This is how the local historian Solomon Kipnis describes the tombstone of Julian Sitkovetsky [designed by Ernst Neizvestny] at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow. It could also have the lines from the grave of Franz Schubert engraved on it: “Here the art of music has entombed a rich treasure, but even fairer hopes”.
The young musician was the admiration of his teachers from the first years of his professional development.
“If another violinist needs a day of strenuous work, Julik needs just an hour”, said Abram Yampolsky, his teacher at the Central Music School and the Moscow Conservatory.
The professor who taught Leonid Kogan, Boris Goldstein, Eduard Grach, Igor Bezrodny, Mark Lubotsky, and many others distinguished Sitkovetsky among his students. The audience, critics and fellow violinists – all of them predicted a brilliant future for him. At the age of twenty, Julian Sitkovetsky became the winner among the violinists at the All-Union Competition of Music Performers (at the same competition, Sviatoslav Richter and Mstislav Rostropovich were awarded first prizes). Two years later, he shared the first prize at the international competition of the Youth Festival in Prague with Leonid Kogan and Igor Bezrodny. Five years later, he received a silver medal at the International Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition in Poznan. At the age of thirty, Sitkovetsky took part in the biggest violin competition of the time – the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels, becoming its obvious favorite (David Oistrakh and Yehudi Menuhin, who were among the judges, unanimously considered him the winner), but was awarded the second prize.
All this could only be the beginning. David Oistrakh believed that Sitkovetsky would eventually become the premier violin of this country, but life had other plans. At the age of eight, Julian, then a student of the Central School of Music in Kiev, played in the presence of Jacques Thibaud. In 1956, he appeared for the last time before the audience with his interpretation of Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto (dedicated to Oistrakh) in the presence of the composer and earned his approval. But what he managed to do in two decades puts Julian Sitkovetsky on a par with the greatest masters of the world violin art of the twentieth century – listening to any of his recordings just would do to prove it.
Over the time allotted to him, Sitkovetsky left a fairly extensive number of studio and concert phonograms recorded between 1945 and 1956. Unfortunately, some of the tapes were lost or hopelessly damaged. Most of the recordings of this set date back to 1951 to 1955 (the Saint-Saëns/Ysaÿe Etude in the Form of a Waltz was recorded in 1945, and the Moszkowski/Sarasate Guitar in 1949). Anyway, this selection also largely reveals the artist’s individuality and demonstrates the range of his stylistic and genre interests – the age of romanticism, early and chamber music, solo sonatas, works by contemporary composers and, of course, virtuoso miniatures.
Jan Sibelius’s Violin Concerto, recorded with the Czech Philharmonic conducted by Nikolai Anosov, belongs to Julian Sitkovetsky’s highest achievements. The artist plays the large-scale epic work of the Finnish composer as a confession of a romanticist, emphasizing the dramatic episodes and sharpening the improvisational ones; the national tunes and the sprightly dance rhythms get a subtle but clear color of a heartfelt expression in the general sound picture.
The recording of this concerto might be a reflection of the most typical feature of Sitkovetsky’s personality. Everything that the artist’s bow touched, from Johann Sebastian Bach to the composers of the twentieth century, was colored with a romantic sound with plenty of overtones. This is how he reveals the majestic architectonics of Bach’s partita with its great Chaccone; raises Camille Saint-Saëns’s early concerto and Eugene Ysaÿe’s sonata (one of Sitkovetsky’s last recordings) to the true heights of the musical art; gives depth and sincerity to the theme of Rossini’s prayer in Niccolò Paganini’s variations. The romantic pathos of Kreisler’s cadenza makes the graceful lace of baroque ornamentation in Giuseppe Tartini’s sonata fade; his rendition of Sergei Prokofiev’s Five Melodies radiates soulful lyricism, and heartfelt sincerity brightens up the sarcasm of Dmitri Shostakovich’s preludes.
On the other emotional pole is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s sonata, recorded with his wife Bella Davidovich. Their duet is a rare example of an ideal ensemble of outstanding musicians (the student of Konstantin Igumnov and Yakov Flier, and the winner of the Chopin International Competition in Warsaw in 1949, Davidovich was known in those years as a prominent interpreter of romantic music), which, unfortunately, did not last long. But here, both performers seem to restrain their romantic temperament; their calm and sensitive musical dialogue is distinguished with purity of the lines and an impeccable sense of style.
A number of works highlight yet another of the performer’s figurative spheres, which is scherzo-ism. The sharp nature of intonations and the precision of a small stroke take on a different color with Sitkovetsky: intensely dramatic in Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s piece, springy rhythmic in Bela Bartók’s sonatina and the “Spanish” pieces by Pablo Sarasate and Moritz Moszkowski, magically fantastic in Antonio Bazzini’s Dance of the Goblins, and sadly ironic in Shostakovich’s preludes. Scherzo-ism gives special acuity to the performance of Paganini’s La Campanella, in which Sitkovetsky was unmatched even among the greatest violinists of his time – like a close-up view of a festive carnival extravaganza, it unexpectedly shines with tears of joy and sadness as bright as pearls.
The fact that most of Julian Sitkovetsky’s recordings (as well as the recordings of the other violinists of the 1930s to 1950s) are violin miniatures is due to the technical possibilities of production – small pieces could fit on one side of a gramophone record. Impeccable violin technique of any kind on the verge of possible, combined with a full-blooded “succulent” sound and elegant artistry – all this can be heard in his chronologically first recording (Etude in the Form of a Waltz, 1945) that was made, most evidently, soon after the All-Union Competition. The twenty-year-old violinist confidently and imperiously “sculpts” the relief composition of the piece, making us wait for each culmination with bated breath. Sitkovetsky’s fantastic mastery, the artist’s performing courage, reminiscent of the true roots of the concept of virtuosity (virtus means valor), and the romantic performer’s inspiration makes any piece, even the most unpretentious “trinket,” a faceted masterpiece, presenting the listeners with an act of genuine aesthetic pleasure.
The Fountain of Arethusa, an (unfortunately) rarely performed masterpiece by Karol Szymanowski, conveyed in all the luxury of impressionistic colors, deserves a special mention.
We do not know how much Sitkovetsky’s disappointment with the result of the Brussels competition influenced his condition. Lung cancer took him to the grave in less than three years. The live recording of the Shostakovich concerto made at the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall, capturing the violinist’s last performance (this set includes the first two movements), symbolically reveals his own vision of the tragic antinomy “Man and Time”: the soloist’s lonely voice retreats under the aggressive pressure of the orchestral mass doing a doomed dance in the infernal bacchanalia of Scherzo. Mortally ill, he escaped from the hospital for the funeral of Abram Yampolsky, but outlived his teacher just for a short time.
They started to speak about the art of Julian Sitkovetsky in earnest no sooner than the late 1970s, after the release of a set of records on Melodiya. For many, these recordings, which have not been re-released for more than two decades, were a true revelation. “People did not understand at all how it happened”, Bella Davidovich recalled, “a young handsome man on the cover, a great violinist – and he is no longer there”. The Sitkovetsky violin dynasty is continued by his talented descendants – his son Dmitry. But without its founder, Julian Sitkovetsky, the rich and multifaceted tapestry of the twentieth century violin art would not be complete. The time has come to remind today’s generation of listeners about it.
Boris Mukosey
* Sautillé – is a bowing technique used for fast notes of string instruments.
