Herman Krebbers - Herman Krebbers Edition (2023) [Hi-Res]

The most comprehensive collection ever issued of the recorded art of Herman Krebbers (1923–2018) featuring the great Dutch violinist as concerto soloist, chamber musician and concert master and issued to mark the centenary of his birth. An original jackets collection of a much-loved musician, with an introduction by Bernard Haitink, written shortly before his death.

For many years, the concerto recordings made by Herman Krebbers were staples of the Philips LP catalogue. The critical praise and popularity awarded to them was all the more remarkable in view of the fact that Krebbers never pursued the path of an international soloist. Instead, he put his family first and chose the vocation of as an orchestral concertmaster, firstly with the Hague Philharmonic under Willem van Otterloo. With them he made his first recordings in the early 1950s, of Bach and Beethoven and Vieuxtemps.

Around this time, Philips also recorded Krebbers in duo-violin repertoire with his fellow student and lifelong friend Theo Olof. The albums of Bartók Duos and the Double Concertos by Bach and Henk Badings are among several recordings in the collection receiving their first international appearance on CD in this collection, which also includes recordings of the Bruch and Dvořák concertos made in 1973, on the occasion of Krebbers’s 40th anniversary as a soloist.

In 1962 Krebbers became leader of the Concertgebouw Orchestra under Bernard Haitink, and went on to make celebrated second recordings of the Beethoven and Brahms concertos, as well as the taxing peaks of the ‘concertmaster’ repertoire, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade and Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben. The box also include the Benedictus from Beethoven’s Missa solemnis, with its long and sublime solo-violin part, in two Concertgebouw recordings made in the 70s with Eugen Jochum and Leonard Bernstein, as well as ‘Erbarme dich’ from Bach’s Matthäus-Passion also with Jochum. Krebbers brought to these parts a soloistic finesse and temperament which was central to the success of the interpretations as a whole.

Krebbers’s parallel career as a chamber musician is represented by a Philips collection of Mozart, including the Oboe Quartet with Heinz Holliger. Further rarities in the set include a second, Swiss-made Bach ‘Double’ Concerto with Arthur Grumiaux, and a Dutch radio recording of Brahms’s Double Concerto with the Concertgebouw’s longstanding principal cellist, Tibor de Machula.

More than 40 years on from Krebbers’s premature retirement after a boating accident, the aristocratic poise and golden warmth of tone to his playing retains its appeal. This comprehensive tribute features a survey of the violinist’s career, and valuable behind-the-scenes insights into many of these recordings, by the Dutch writer Niek Nelissen.