Aulos is certainly excavating the Melodiya string back-catalogue with assiduous intelligence. Alongside their big Shafran retrospective they have turned their eye to David Oistrakh and now to one of his most prestigious pupils, the maverick Gidon Kremer. Often seen as a Huberman de nos jours it’s particularly appetising to listen to the young violinist in his Soviet years. He was born in 1947 and was therefore twenty-three when he made the first sides here; there are two sessions, made five years apart and they chart the young musician until 1975 and the threshold of his international career.

There are few more contentious string players in the world than Kremer and one can hear from these earliest recordings how, despite his studies with a tonalist as volcanic and generous as Oistrakh, Kremer’s own tonal resources were very much more limited. He had something of a vogue for playing baroque sonatas at around this time but his Locatelli is compromised by an insistent thin tone with scratchy Allegros. Maybe he was slightly too close to the microphones – and in passing it’s a shame the movements weren’t separately banded. Maybe this kind of playing better suits the ascetic temper of our times in its leanness and relative detachment. His Kreisler-Beethoven isn’t very exultant though it is good to hear the unfamiliar March. His Fibich is not simply tonally reserved it’s positively deadpan and an indication of why Kremer can hardly be considered at all as an exponent of any Romantic repertoire.

His Dinicu is technically fine but has no verve. The chosen Paganini suits his panache-resistant musicianship rather better; there’s nothing intrinsically captivating about it violinistically. His Tchaikovsky Mélodie is neat and tidy and it’s certainly welcome to hear the Russian repertoire in his hands – he even utilises some piquant finger position changes and adds a dash of colour. The Chandoschkin is, pace the sleevenote, for solo violin – and well sustained.

Documentation is to the point; the English translation needs work. The DSD (Direct Stream Digital) transfer, so conspicuously successful in the Shafran series works well again here; access to the master tapes is a huge advantage and Aulos has capitalised on it very well indeed. Kremer has many admirers of course and they will welcome the chance to track him to his discographic lair and encounter his youthful self.

Jonathan Woolf

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