David Oistrakh on Warner: Late Romantic Period

1972 photograph of David Oistrakh (from the Fotocollectie Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau of the
Dutch National Archives in The Hague, downloaded from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Netherlands license)

One week ago today, this site began its examination of the Warner Remastered Edition box set compiling all the recordings that Russian violinist David Oistrakh made for Columbia and HMV. As many readers probably expected, the first article focused on First Viennese School composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Franz Schubert. This amounted to thirteen full CDs and one shared with Giuseppe Tartini.

When one advances to the nineteenth century, the repertoire is far more modest. Johannes Brahms is represented by four CDs, accounting for two performances each of the Opus 77 violin concerto in D major and the Opus 102 double concerto in A minor. George Szell is the one conductor accounting for both of these compositions, leading the Cleveland Orchestra with Mstislav Rostropovich as cellist for Opus 102. The other cellist is Pierre Fournier in a performance by the Philharmonia Orchestra led by Alceo Galliera. (That CD also includes a final track of the Opus 81 “Tragic Overture.”) The other recording of Opus 77 is led by Otto Klemperer conducting the Orchestre national de la Radio-télévision française (formerly known as the Orchestre national de la Radiodiffusion française) in 1960. There is also a recording of Édouard Lalo’s Opus 23 “Symphonie espagnole” with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Jean Martinon. The only chamber music CD couples César Franck’s A major sonata and Karol Szymanowski’s Opus 9 sonata in D minor with Vladimir Yampolsky on piano.

Oistrakh was clearly more in his comfort zone in the preceding century. Nevertheless, both Szell and Klemperer could not have been better guides in leading him through the Brahms repertoire. Where the other nineteenth-century composers were concerned, I have to confess that my attention was never seriously piqued. I happen to have a soft spot for the Franck sonata because I got to listen to my Santa Barbara neighbor preparing it and then performing it in recital. Since then, I have never really risen to any recordings of that sonata but definitely enjoyed Daniel Hope’s take on it when he visited Chamber Music San Francisco at the end of this past April.

The fact is that any revisiting of this portion of the collection is likely to lead me to Szell’s leadership of the Brahms double concerto, leaving me with better choices for the other selections.