Alfredo Campoli has featured promiently in the Beulah catalogue since we started releasing compact discs in 1993. A few tracks are currently not available but most are and some can be downloaded from iTunes.
Campoli was born in Rome. His first teacher was his father - a professor of violin and leader of the St.Cecilia Conservatoire. His mother, a dramatic soprano, had toured with Caruso and played young Alfredo recordings of the great tenor Mattia Battistini who later acknowledged as a major influence on the bel canto style of playing which gave him an early reputation as a singing violinist and evinced praise from many conductors. He made his London debut in 1911 when he was only 5 and by the age of 10 was regularly playing recitals. Two years later he was temporarily banned from entering violin competitions because he always walked away with first prize! However, as early as 1919 he won a gold medal for his performance of the Mendelssohn Concerto which was presented by HRH Princess (later, Queen) Mary. At 15, he appeared at the Wigmore Hall and toured the British Isles with possibly the greatest women singers of the day, Dames Nellie Melba and Clara Butt.
In the difficult economic situation following the first war Campoli was forced to extend his musical activities to earn extra money and he formed his own highly successful light orchestra. It made him famous. For several years his was the resident orchestra at the fashionable Dorchester Hotel and his recordings on HMV, Columbia and Decca labels sold in thousands, although he still toured nationally as a classical artist when circumstances permitted. Campoli disbanded the orchestra in the second war to work untiringly for ENSA and CEMA, visiting forces training camps and playing in hospitals and munitions factories, where the enthusiasm of the public prompted him to enlarge his concerto repertory. Consequently, a Prom under Sir Henry Wood in 1944 saw him dazzling audiences with the Brahms Concerto, followed the next year by the Tchaikovsky.
Britain's four leading conductors - Beecham, Boult, Barbirolli and Sargent all adored him. After one BBC Home Service broadcast of the Brahms from Maida Vale Studios, Boult and his players cheered and applauded for a full three minutes, much to his delight and embarrassment. His performance of the Elgar Concerto with the Hallé Orchestra under Barbirolli at the Royal Festival Hall still lives in the memory of all who were privileged to see it, but Barbirolli refused to record the work for EMI as he had never forgiven them for not asking Kreisler to make the premiere recording. Over the years Campoli owned and played a Landolfi, a Rogarius and a Guadagnini violin. A most self-effacing, modest artist who hated to be labelled a virtuoso, he would come quietly onto the platform, acknowledging the audience with a simple bow of the head and a smile. Wedging his violin under his generous double chin with a voluminous white silk handkerchief he would tune discreetly and speedily and be ready to play in seconds. The purity, simplicity, clarity and intonation of his playing were legendary as was his fabulous spiccato - achieved by lifting his fourth finger to enable the bow to rebound more easily. This became his trademark, instantly identifying him. Young violinists today could learn much from the recording.
4PD10 The Art of Campoli
Alfredo Campoli performed the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto over 900 times during his career as a soloist. On this disc we release his 1949 recording with the London Philharmonic conducted by Eduard van Beinum. It is coupled with his 1954 recording of the Elgar Violin Concerto under the baton of Sir Adrian Boult.
Rob Cowan in Gramophone for February 2006 writes:
The reappearance of the Beulah label brings with it a number of old friends, none more welcome than Alfredo Campoli's consistently sympathetic 1954 account of Elgar's Violin Concerto with the London Philharmonic under Sir Adrian Boult. You might say that Campoli's urbane and warmly felt account is the nearest thing we have to a Kreisler Elgar Concerto. The coupling is equally valuable: Campoli, the LPO and Eduard van Beinum in the Mendelssohn Concerto, a nicely transferred 1949 recording impressive as much for van Beinum's incisive conducting as for the smiling demeanor of Campoli's interpretation.
Jonathan Woolf at Music Web International writes that Campoli has withstood the ravages of time, technological advance and successive critical judgments with lasting assurance. Read his full review.
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5PD10 The Art of Campoli II
Alfredo Campoli plays
Beethoven Violin Concerto in D
London Symphony Orchestra conductor Josef Krips
Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in D
London Symphony Orchestra Orchestra conductor Ataulfo Argenta
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6PD10 The Art of Campoli III
Alfredo Campoli plays
Hubay Zephyr Op.30 No.5[Listen]
with Eric Gritton, piano
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7PD10 Ultimate Campoli
Alfredo Campoli plays
Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E minor
Bruch Scottish Fantasy
London Philhramonic Orchestra conductor Sir Adrian Boult
Saint Saens Havanaise
Saint Saens Introduction and rondo capriccioso
London Symphony Orchestra Orchestra conductor Anatole Fistoulari
In March 1953 Decca's chief engineer Arthur Haddy engaged Roy Wallace who had worked for ten years on binaural sound for Lawrence Savage ( a pioneer of binaural recording). Wallace developed a technique using three microphone, left, centre and right, mounted in a triangle on a Dexion frame. Roy Wallace recalled that it was a crude attempt to recreate the artificial head that he spent about a year making. When Arthur Haddy first saw the array, he remarked: "It looks like a bloody Christmas Tree!" Ever since the array has been known as a "tree". Since Wallace used three microphones but only two recording channels he adapted Decca's six channel mono mixer to two sets of three. In an effort to keep the work on binaural recording secret early recordings were made in continental Europe. Decca's tape library filed binaural tapes in a new BN (for binaural) series. We have therefore described these recordings as binaural rather than stereo.
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Alfredo CAMPOLI at Beulah Extra
"Campoli makes a beautiful thing of the Max Bruch; he has the right idea about it and the power to express that idea. The spacings of the rubatos is admirable-- never overdone and always affecting. Bruch was associated much of his life with choral singing, and Campoli brings out the singing quality in his romantically musing piece. The performance is entirely convincing. From the point of view of recording, the violinist is given favoured-nation treatment ; most of the time it is good that he should dominate the music, but the positioning leads to a slight excess of vibrato in the slow movement (though the orchestral balance here is good) and to an almost isolated prominence in parts of the finale. The New Symphony Orchestra comes out well if not brilliantly as the accompanying medium. Its tone as reproduced here leans towards the reedy, but is variable; even the warmer-toned passages are never full-bodied, and this facts tends to minimise the proportions of the Concerto. The bass seems a little more remote than the rest of the orchestra. The whole work as thus presented is very enjoyable." H. F. writing in the Gramophone August 1951
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