Ginette Neveu : The First RecordingsJosef Hassid : The Complete Recordings
Ginette Neveu (1919-49) and Josef Hassid (1923-50) both died tragically young: Neveu in an air crash (with her pianist brother Jean) and Hassid in hospital, of meningitis following brain surgery. Neveu, of course, had a distinguished career, brief though it was, and left a legacy of recordings which HMV reissued in a four-LP box-set reviewed by me 12 years ago (9/80—nla). Hassid, on the other hand, made only four 78s (three 12-inch, one ten-inch), all devoted to lollipops'—short pieces, most of them lasting less than four minutes. They were made in June and November 1940, the year of his London debut, with a recital in the Wigmore Hall and a concert in Queen's Hall (where he had a memory lapse in the Tchaikovsky Concerto), and only months before his mental illness forced him to give up playing for ever.
