David Oistrakh Honors Fritz Kreisler

Fritz Kreisler (photographer unknown, available on Wikimedia Commons from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division, public domain)

There remains one CD in the Warner Remastered Edition box set collection of recordings of performances by Russian violinist David Oistrakh that I have not yet taken into account. The title of the album is Kreisler, and it is devoted to both compositions by virtuoso violinist Fritz Kreisler and arrangements, which he probably prepared for encore selections. For those that have followed my “side-by-side” approach to examining these Kreisler recordings, only one of the works by Kreisler himself can also be found among that “generous number of encore selections that were recorded by Jascha Heifetz.” This was the “Sicilienne and Rigaudon in the style of Francœur” (which Kreisler falsely attributed to the early eighteenth-century composer François Francoeur).

Personally, I did not find this a particularly compelling album. However, my years of experience have taught me that recital audiences are more interested in personalities than in the program that has been prepared, and enthusiasm only begins to kick in for the encores. Sadly, no information has been provided other than who the accompanists were and when the tracks were recorded. Furthermore, where those dates were concerned, only five of them accounted specifically for year, month, and day. Just as disappointing were the eight of the fifteen tracks that were annotated as “Recorded live,” which yielded no information about the venues.

To be fair, I do not think that Warner should “take the rap” for this muddle of background information. The fact is that, while Bruno Monsaingeon may had been a well-intentioned curator, he was not necessarily a well-informed one. Mind you, the fault may lie more with Warner than with Monsaingeon, since, in a box set of this size, the producers probably wanted to avoid flooding customers with “too much information.” This is unfortunate, since repertoire can be a significant element in musicological studies; but I doubt that musicology matters very much when Warner is more interested in its revenue stream (which it probably should be)!