Franck. Ravel. Schumann. Szymanowski - Various Works

David Oistrakh vn Vladimir Yampolsky pf

Testament SBT1442 Buy now

(70’ · ADD)

Franck Violin Sonata Ravel Tzigane 
Schumann (arr Kreisler) Fantasie, Op 131 Szymanowski Three Myths, Op 30 

Here we have a fabulous unpublished programme that not only offers us new David Oistrakh repertoire but, in the case of the works we do already have from him, delivers performances that are sufficiently distinctive to warrant the duplication.

Take César Franck’s Sonata, where Oistrakh’s vibrato is more expressively intense than it often is on disc and where Vladimir Yampolsky transcends his familiar ‘accompanist’ role to assert an individual musical personality with playing that in its freedom and grandeur at times reminded me of Cortot, no less. Ravel’s Tzigane is another winner – witty, spontaneous, incisive in its attack and, near the end, dangerously fast. Other available Oistrakh Tziganes also deliver, musically speaking, but none sounds quite so thrillingly off the cuff.

And then there are the newcomers to Oistrakh’s discography, all of them fine works. The Szymanowski Myths ‘Narcissus’ and ‘Dryads and Pan’ extend the experience we already have of Oistrakh in the opening ‘Fountain of Arethusa’ with seductive tone production, filigree passagework and a sense of play that perfectly matches Szymanowski’s fantastical imagination. The late and rather discursive Schumann Fantasy in  C, presented here with Fritz Kreisler’s rich piano reduction, is a true tour de force, bittersweet one moment, boldly virtuoso the next and graced by a uniquely rounded musical sensibility that left the world the day David Oistrakh died.

Happily we still have the records, with this 1958 Bucharest recital being one of the finest of all. The sound is fairly good, the balance variable but never skewed. Utterly unmissable.