On June 30, at the age of 91, the violinist Ida Haendel passed away.
Born in Poland, she lived for many years in Montreal before settling in Miami. But she was truly a citizen of the world, appearing with famous orchestras and famous conductors throughout Europe, the Americas, and Asia.
During the time when she resided in Canada (1952-1989), she made regular appearances with all the major Canadian orchestras. And that time period, in Toronto, is where she crossed my musical path, and left an indelible impression.
The first time I heard her playing in Massey Hall was in the Sibelius violin concerto, a work which was forever associated with her after she had first played it. On that occasion, she received a letter from the composer which read, in part:
"I congratulate you on the great success, but most of all I congratulate myself, that my concerto has found an interpreter of your rare standard."
About her Toronto performance of the Sibelius, I most remember that I was captivated by the rollicking cross-rhythms of the finale, and by the energetic bite of Haendel's down-bow on the repeated sforzando notes.
Although my memory is less clear, I'm reasonably sure I also heard her playing the Brahms concerto, and possibly the Tchaikovsky.
The concerto that remains forever associated with her, and her only, in my memory came to me from the occasion when she joined with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in the first violin concerto by Shostakovich.
At that time, the composer's music was an unknown quantity to me. Ida Haendel's interpretation of that concerto was so powerful, so immediate, so emotive, that Shostakovich instantly rocketed onto my list of favourite composers, and has remained there ever since. The wandering solo lines of the first movement found her in meditative mood, with the energy building up to the heavy-duty up-and-down intervals at the climax. The second movement scherzo and the finale both drew from her playing a distinct edge of savagery amidst the raucous shouts of the orchestra.
It was the dark passacaglia of the third movement that took me into another world altogether. I've heard other soloists since then in this remarkable music, but Ida Haendel found something there that I've never heard from anyone else: a deep, universal sadness for the world's tragedy. It may have arisen from having lived through the horrors of the twentieth century, not least the Second World War, but wherever the place from which she drew that emotion, it hit me with all the strength and power of someone who has experienced the dark night of the soul to its very depths. The long, wandering cadenza leading to the rousing finale then became a quest, a search for some way out of this bleak pit of despair.
I might not have used those words at that time, but this is how I remember that amazing concert, all these years later (that would have been in the mid-1970s).
Haendel was an artist of the broadest emotional range, perhaps one of the last of the great Romantic violinists. She could be, by turns, cool and aristocratic, wildly energetic, deeply passionate, or withdrawn into an inner meditative self, but with her technique always at the service of the music as she felt it. Other violinists may have played the great concertos with more fireworks, with more panache, with more flourish, but Ida Haendel inhabited the music, living every piece she performed to the full.
The world can never have too many musicians of her rare standard.
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