David Oistrakh

Together for the first time, three acclaimed concertos performed by the soloists who made them famous: dedicatees and performers David Oistrakh and Mstislav Rostropovitch, and then Leonard Bernstein himself, in the Concerto Op.102. All were at the peaks of their careers.

Bernstein plays as well as directs the second piano concerto, dedicated to Maxim, the composer's son, in a performance that helped further Dmitri's standing in the western world. The violin concerto is a live performance; all three enhanced by remastering in DSD technology and immortalised.

David Oistrakh and Mstislav Rostropovich perform concertos by Shostakovich with distinguished accompaniment given by the Leningrad Philharmonic and Philadelphia Orchestras respectively. Both performances are benchmark recordings against which all newcomers are judged. Available at super budget price.

David Oistrakh is generally considered to be one of the very finest violinists of the 20th century. Born in the Ukraine of Jewish parents in 1908, Oistrakh received his musical training in his home town of Odessa. He made his first public appearance at a concert in 1914 and gave his own first recital in 1924. He moved to Moscow in 1928 and successfully developed his career both in Russia and abroad until the start of the Second World War, during which he played tirelessly in hospitals and factories and gave many concerts to entertain the Russian troops. After the war, he was one of the first Soviet musicians regularly allowed to visit the West and, despite the bureaucratic difficulties involved in making recordings abroad, Oistrakh began recording for EMI in 1953. He continued to make outstanding recordings for the company, both with his own regular accompanist, the pianist Lev Oborin, and with leading international orchestras and conductors up till the time of his death. He was the recipient of many awards and honours, and his great talent and genial nature enabled him to become one of the principal cultural ambassadors for the Soviet Union to the West. He died of a heart attack in Amsterdam in 1974.

The first CD opens with a complete performance of one of the great masterpieces of the violin repertoire, the Violin Concerto in D by Brahms, which Oistrakh performs with the famous Cleveland Orchestra under George Szell. This is followed by the slow movement from Beethoven’s Triple Concerto in which Oistrakh joins his two eminent Russian colleagues, the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and the pianist Sviatoslav Richter, with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Herbert von Karajan in one of EMI’s all time best-selling classical recordings. The CD ends with Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No.2, recorded in London with the Philharmonia Orchestra under Alceo Galliera in 1958.

The second CD opens with an example of Oistrakh as a consummate performer of chamber music in the opening movement of Schubert’s Piano Trio No.1. Oistrakh is heard here with his pianist colleague, Lev Oborin, and the cellist Sviatoslav Knushevitsky, who all performed regularly together as a piano trio. Next comes Tartini’s ‘Devil’s Trill’ Sonata with the pianist Vladimir Yampolsky, followed by a group of attractive short ‘encore’ pieces by Kodály, Wieniawski, Ysaÿe and others, mostly arranged for violin and piano from compositions from other genres including piano solos like Debussy’s ‘Clair de lune’ and Tchaikovsky’s ‘Valse-Scherzo’. The CD finishes with the lively second movement ‘Scherzo: Allegro’ from Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No.2, written in 1967and dedicated to Oistrakh, and the finale ‘Tarantella: Presto’ from Taneyev’s colourful ‘Suite de Concert’.

Along with his friend Caruso, Fritz Kreisler (1875–1962) was one of the superstars of the early gramophone era. He was “the master musician among the violinists of the day” (New York Times); he died 50 years ago (29 January 1962). As a composer, he is famous for his Viennese-style melodies, such as Liebesfreud and Liebesleid, for his notorious pieces “in the style of” various 18th-century masters (which he passed off as their original works, claiming to have rediscovered them in old manuscripts), and for his arrangements of well-known works by other composers.

We remember one of the world’s greatest violinists with an enticing 2CD set that includes a first time release on CD of a tribute LP from 1961, original Kreisler recordings, and an array of great modern violinists playing his works.

Kodály's orchestral scores are full of what Bartók described as ‘the most perfect embodiment of the Hungarian spirit’. There's fierce virtuosity of his Sonata for Solo Cello, and haunting writing for voices in his choral works – the expression of his belief in the universal musical value of singing.

The Sabre Dance and the Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia may be Khachaturian’s most familiar works, but his colourful style and orchestral flair comes out in all his music, from the virtuoso concertos with their rhapsodic oriental-flavoured slow movements, to the satirical glitter of the Masquerade Suite.

Aram Khachaturian was born in 1903 into a poor Armenian family in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, which was then part of Imperial Russia and later the USSR. After moving to Moscow he took up studies with Myaskovsky at the Conservatoire, eventually becoming a professor there. In spite of having been an enthusiastic communist he was, in 1948, severely denounced by the Soviet authorities (along with Prokofiev and Shostakovich) for writing what they termed 'formalist' music: music that did not appeal to the masses. Khachaturian's works include some of the best-known music in the 20th-Century repertoire, most notably the ballets Gayaneh (from which comes the ever-popular Sabre Dance) and Spartacus, the Adagio from which was used in Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Suites from both of these works are contained in this set, along with a fine recording of the Piano Concerto that is making it's first appearance on CD, and David Oistrakh's incomparable recording of the Violin Concerto conducted by the composer.