Review: Ricci's Virtuoso Legacy Revised on Eloquence

Two boxes, 29 CDs in all, give us the complete Ruggiero Ricci on Decca and American Decca (now DG), courtesy of Australian Eloquence. As usual, the production values are top-notch, with excellent notes, original jackets, and the like. These are sets for hard-core violin mavens, let's be honest, but Ricci was a great musician (he basically reclaimed the Paganini Caprices for future generations) and his contributions are generally first-rate.

[@greggoryrice7046]

Thanks, Dave, you're right, Ricci was a fantastic, underappreciated violinist. He was the equal of any of the other greats. His Mendelssohn concerto is in the top five. He wasn't all technique, he was a great artist too. He had a rich sound like a dark red wine.

[@wortleyclutterbuk7347]

Thanks for this. I'm not a violin maven by any means but really enjoy the sets. I didn't know the Villa-Lobos Suite for Voice and Violin with its kooky vocal effects (in the 3rd movement) and strenuous violinizing. Sometimes just one piece can make a whole box worth the price of admission.

[@copleysq]

My favorite Tchaikovski concerto recording.

[@olinwilliams]

My grandfather's name was George Washington Herndon and his brother was Benjamin Franklin Herndon. No one was a musician, however...

[@robertdandre94101]

two interresting ,curious,and beautiful recording i have with ruggiero ricci...the beethoven violin concerto with.....in extra 14 cadenzas written by different people ( david,joachim ,laub,busoni etc ) for the first movement of this concerto on biddulph label....and so the 3 violin concertos of saint saens recorded for the vox box label....with,orchestre de radio-télé luxembourg.

[@JAMESLEVEE]

Let me guess on the Saint-Saëns: the conductor was Pierre Çao.

[@joemahlerng]

I designed posters for Ricci’s concerts at least 4 times, I was one of the audience of course. I don’t have too many of his recordings, his technique was extremely well but lack of warm and sweet tone, no matter on records or live concerts.

[@JAMESLEVEE]

When I was in high school, I played double bass in the school orchestra. One of the violists had a low opinion of Ruggiero. He called him "Screechy Ricci". As I recall, I only had one LP by him. It was on Vox, IIRC, and it was another one of those insufferable Mendelssohn/Bruch 1 couplings that were a dime-a-dozen in those days. I forget the orchestra and conductor (it night have been the Ramon Gamba recording you mentioned), but there was nothing particularly wrong with the performances. The engineering and acoustics were less than impressive, however, but those were always rather iffy on Vox (Turnabout, I think it was).

[@richardfrankel6102]

Wrong Gamba! You're thinking of Rumon Gamba, who is a currently-active conductor. The conductor for Ricci was Piero Gamba, who gained fame more than sixty years ago when he began conducting while still a child; on his early Decca records he was billed as "Pierino Gamba".

[@JAMESLEVEE]

@@richardfrankel6102 thank you for the refresher. I do know that Vox had a conductor named Varga, but I can't remember his first name. I think he was the conductor on the LP I had of Schumann's string concertos. The soloist in the Violin Concerto could even have been Ricci.

[@JAMESLEVEE]

@@berlinskysmith4782 it's starting to come back to me. Yes, Varga was the cellist, Ricci the violinist. That was the LP.

[@dickwhite977]

I heard him play the Paganini caprices at Abbotsholme school in the 70s. Just thought I’d put this on record.

[@DavesClassicalGuide]

And you lived to tell about it!

[@markmiller3713]

The only violin box I want is the Grumiaux set that was issued for what, 5 minutes then completely disappeared. That truly annoyed me that I couldn't get it.

[@hwelf11]

I'd like to add another to your list of "foreign sounding" names: one of my esteemed professors was a student of the pianist Ethel Leginska, who was born in England, and whose family name was Liggins. I don't know why she didn't go whole hog and change "Ethel" to "Elena" or some such, but she was a fine pianist, although, judging from the impression I got from my teacher, she could make Madame Sousatzka seem like a pussycat . Ivory classics put out a CD of her recordings from the 20's called Leginska: Columbia Masters.

[@jackburgess8579]

YT is full of performances and recordings by Ricci in his later years (post 50) that are absolutely execrable.
I presume it all went wrong. But when, and why?