JAN KUBELIK plays the DUDZIARZ MAZURKA, 3rd July 1911.

The Czech violin virtuoso JAN KUBELIK (1880 - 1940) signed a contract with HMV in 1911, and for the next four years, he recorded for that company, even playing violin accompaniment on a couple of Nellie Melba’s records. This item is one of his better recordings, by all accounts. His passion - and tempo - reaches sufficient breathlessness that it leave his accompanist some paces behind in this extraordinary 1911 performance. The Dudziarz Mazurka, Opus 19, No. 2 was by Henryk Wieniawski, and was published at some time prior to 1872. The ’dudziarz’ is a Polish form of the bagpipes, which may explain some of the ’drone’ in musical chord structure in this piece. This is the first time that I’ve applied the ’waterfall’ audio spectral analysis to determining proper equalisation and frequency response correction on recordings by a prominent Edwardian instrumentalist. Considering that the recording was cut 106 years ago, I think the result is fairly good, showing off Kubel