One of the most significant violinists in gramophone history, Alfredo Campoli enjoyed tremendous success in the 1930s as a purveyor of light music, both in concerts with his own salon orchestra and on Decca. A series of six 2CD reissues from Eloquence focuses on the violinists postwar reinvention of himself as Campoli, the classical soloist. The sixth volume of The Bel Canto Violin gives a first international CD release on Decca to the violinists final recording for the label after half a century of best-selling albums. This features the music of the Polish violinist-composer Henryk Wieniawski, whose star has fallen since the passing of Romantic-style violinists such as Campoli. Almost 72 years old when he made this record for LOiseau-Lyre in August 1978, but often practising for seven hours a day, he could still turn on the charm for a wistful tone-poem such as the Lgende, wear the grand manner in showpieces such as the Souvenir de Moscou and present transcendent virtuosity in the Polonaise brillante. This collection opens with another LOiseau-Lyre album made late in his long career, and of another violinist-composer, Pablo de Sarasate. This offers not the usual run of Carmen Fantasy and Zigeunerweisen but the once fashionable set of eight Danzas espaolas. Like Sarasate and Wieniawski, Campoli recognized no boundary between high and popular art: Although I enjoy doing the lighter stuff, he told Gramophone in 1939, my heart and soul are in the music of the finer type. I am convinced that one can make a success of both. So he did; the third album reissued here is a Decca recital of encores, recorded while Campoli was touring Japan in July 1966, after three months performing across Australia. Thus, alongside display items such as Bazzinis Ronde des Lutins dispatched with inimitable finesse there are two arrangements of Japanese folksongs, Red Dragonfly and The Rain on Jogashima. All the recordings in this series of Alfredo Campoli: The Bel Canto Violin have been given new remasterings from original Decca sources. Invaluable context on both artist and repertoire is provided by new booklet essays from Campolis biographer David Tunley.
