Mischa Elman Mystery Disc

One of the highly acclaimed violinists of the first half of the 20th century was Mischa Elman, born 1891 in the Kiev region of Little Russia (today Ukraine).  Elman studied violin at the Royal Academy in Odessa and joined the burgeoning ranks of Russian-Jewish violinsts who came to dominate the classical music world his time - think Jascha Heifetz, Nathan Milstein, Yehudi Menuhin, Isaac Stern... the list goes on.  Elman was considered almost without peer in the romantic 19th century violin repertory, and had a particular soft spot for music with Jewish roots, but somehow he was never considered quite the equal of Heifetz in technique or Menuhin in intellect.  He did not get to record as much of his repertory as the other big names did.

Towards the end of his life he made an attachment to Vanguard Records and recorded a few recital discs that have been largely absent from the catalog.  Now Vanguard Classics has put out a budget CD titled "Elman Plays Hebrew Melodies" and it is a real beauty.  With sensitive piano accompaniment from Joseph Seiger and decent early stereo sound, Elman works his way through such standards as Bloch's Nigun, Bruch's Kol Nidre, Achron's Hebrew Melody, and less well-known pieces that will sound strikingly familiar.

But there's a mystery about this disc.  The inlay card and booklet both list 9 tracks, and the notes discuss only the 9 pieces listed.  The total running time is not given, but adding up the track timings suggests a short-running 45 minute disc.  Pop it in the CD player, however, and your readout will say 13 tracks and total playing time over 65 minutes.  Ah, sweet mystery of American capitalism.

Vanguard - which has proven incompetent in the past when transferring its back catalog to CD - has struck again!  Evidently somebody was thinking that a 45 minute CD is not necessarily going to be a good seller, reached into the back catalog and stretched the content with four more items, only one of which fits the title of the disk as  being a "Hebrew melody."  But whoever did this didn't bother to talk with the folks responsible for the packaging.  What good is putting out a 65 minutes disc when the consumer looking at the back and doing some quick math comes up with 45 minutes?  (The best clue that you have a short-running disc in hand is that the total time is not listed on the outer packaging.)

So - the mystery.  What are these 4 pieces?  An attempt to find Vanguard's website to see if there is information there was futile - it seems Vanguard Classics has allowed its website to "expire."  And the website of its corporate owner, Artemis Records, provides no enlightenment.  Then the brainstorm occurred - the ipod software, which will read out the encoded information on the disc.  Sure enough:  Here are the four extra tracks:

10.  Joseph Sulzer - Sarabande (4:27)

11.  Cesar Espejo - Airs Tziganes (5:31)

12.  P.I. Tchaikovsky - Melodie, Op. 42, No. 3 (4:22)

13.  Tchaikovsky - Russian Dance, Op. 40, No. 10 (4:38)

Mystery solved!  And each of these tracks is very much worth hearing.  A hearty recommendation for the disc...