André Gertler may have become better known had he not been such an avid advocate of new compositions. This, though, was to the advantage of all as it allowed insight into much contemporary repertoire, particularly the works of Béla Bartók and Alban Berg, for which Gertler was an advocate to many conductors, orchestras and audiences during his career.

Through a scheme where older students taught very young pupils, Gertler entered the Liszt Academy in Budapest at the age of six. Here the legendary Jenő Hubay—a former pupil of Joachim—taught, developing, as described by Carl Flesch, a ‘specifically Hungarian school’. It was this tradition that so influenced Gertler, who also studied composition with Kodály. Also on the staff was Bartók with whom Gertler formed a firm friendship, going on to give many violin and piano recitals with him and learning at first hand the composer’s performance intentions for his own music. This association continued until 1938 and has given us a comprehensive audio documentation of Bartók’s works for violin.

During the 1950s Gertler became well known in the UK, particularly for his performances of Berg’s Violin Concerto. During the 1955 BBC Proms season he played this work with Sir Adrian Boult, in a concert also featuring Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7. According to Sir Malcolm Sargent this symphony, receiving its second performance that season, was included to ensure Berg’s work had an audience!

Gertler’s interest and prowess in twentieth-century music is reflected in his recordings. His performance of Bartók’s Solo Sonata (1953) immediately pushes forward a committed sound with a powerful, if relatively tight, vibrato and some degree of brutality, especially in his well-projected E-string tone, contrasted with roundness of resonance on lower strings. Gertler’s technical command is displayed in his scurrying opening to the finale and the well-judged balance of fugal voices in the second movement, qualities he retained in the late recording of Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 2 under Karel Ančerl (1985), which is remarkably assured for a player in his late seventies. The Berg (1953) is perhaps his finest interpretation, balancing exquisite post-Romantic gestures with passages of ghoulishness, and evoking an often febrile atmosphere in spite of some rather cutting tone (which may equally well be the fault of the recording technology).

In Bach’s Violin Concerto in A minor Gertler is less successful, at least from today’s perspective: pedestrian and heavy with little variety of phrasing. His Tartini concertos (such as the F major, recorded in 1961) are rather more lively, however, and represent that curious phase of twentieth-century Baroque performance in which entirely modern string playing is juxtaposed with use of the harpsichord.

© Naxos Rights International Ltd. — David Milsom (A–Z of String Players, Naxos 8.558081-84)