The Essential DAVID OISTRAKH - Artists of the Century
series.
MOZART Violin Concerto No. 1
21.16
BRAHMS Violin Concerto
38.52
BEETHOVEN Two Romances
7.11+8.57
David Oistrakh (violin) Moscow
PO/Rozhdestvensky (Beethoven); Kondrashin (Mozart,
Brahms)
rec 1963 (Mozart; Brahms)
1968 (Beethoven).
SHOSTAKOVICH: Violin Concerto No. 1
36.27
David Oistrakh (violin) Leningrad
PO/Yevgeni Mravinsky
rec 1956 mono
SHOSTAKOVICH: Violin Concerto No. 2
29.34
David Oistrakh (violin) Moscow
PO/Kyrill Kondrashin
rec 1967 BMG CLASSICS -
RCA RED SEAL 74321 72914 2 Disc 1 76.41 + Disc 2 66.35
Any Oistrakh album is likely to be an event to celebrate rather than lament
and so it is here. Contrary to the usual pattern for the RCA-BMG 'Artists
of the Century' series this 2CD collection includes tracks not previously
released. The whole of the first disc is allotted to live concert tapes (yes,
with applause) taken down in the Grand Hall of the Moscow State Conservatoire
during the early 1960s except for the Beethoven Romances which date from
1968. The Mozart and Beethoven are imbued with a hasty and yet haughtily
romantic approach ripely driven by Kondrashin and Oistrakh alike - no sense
of conflict here! The Brahms is perhaps rather slender of amplitude in the
orchestral violins but nothing else is compromised. No doubt Oistrakh might
have given a more tempestuous reading had this been taped during the 1940s.
The music remains lit by his confident yet sensitively aristocratic approach.
The two Beethoven trifles pass by in agreeable style.
The two Shostakovich concerto Melodiya recordings are well known to collectors
from Chant du Monde and EMI (LP). The First (the only mono tracks in the
set) is excoriating, vinegary in richness (the first movement like an acrid
echo of Finzi's Introit) and a hard sparkle glints trenchantly in the finale.
The hardness is not all that surprising. 1949 was the year in which he was
expelled from his teaching posts. The booklet claims that the work is genial;
not in Oistrakh's hands. Geniality can be found in the far less profound
contemporaneous Kabalevsky violin concerto also recorded by Oistrakh (Vanguard).
The second is typically gaunt, enigmatic, profound (in the adagio steppes
of the second movement) and skull-like. There is hardly anything in the way
of concession to the popular gallery here. Oistrakh is strong and forbidding
in keeping with the music's glimmering dissonance.
A generous and contrasted pair of discs. The Shostakovich is a library staple.
It may well irk some that the first disc's attractions will require others
to duplicate their existing Shostakovich/Oistrakh CDs.
Reviewer
Rob Barnett
