Classical music seems simultaneously very good and very
bad at documenting itself. You want David Oistrakh playing the Brahms Concerto?
Count the ways. You want a definitive list of his recordings, studio and live?
Forget it. For this is the frustration of one caught, as I am, in the grip of
an Oistrakh-hunting obsession: clues and signs and no definitive answers to
exactly what he played and quite when he played it.
More specifically, I’m trying to ascertain just how many
Oistrakh performances of Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto are out there, on
the way to writing something about the performance history of this piece.
Shostakovich wrote the piece with Oistrakh in mind in 1948; indeed, it was
while writing the concerto that the composer was denounced at a meeting of the
Union of Soviet Composers. Shostakovich tucked it away and waited for a better
climate, which came, in 1955, as the cultural thaw was beginning in the wake of
Stalin’s death. Shostakovich conceded to a few alterations suggested by
Oistrakh, and the concerto was premiered in October 1955 with the Leningrad
Philharmonic under Mravinsky. As far as I can tell, the first recorded performance
seems to have been a tape of an early concert in New York with the NYPO and
Dmitri Mitropoulos on New Year’s Day 1956, the day before the concerto’s first
studio session. The studio recording has been rereleased a number of times,
most recently by Sony, but the live broadcast seems only to have been released
in an expensive box of NYPO broadcasts which, while I’m very interested to
hear, I’m not £100 of interested.
Then there’s a 1956 live concert tape from Vienna published
a few years ago by Orfeo, followed by a more familiar studio recording with the
Leningraders and Mravinsky at the end of the year. Mravinsky and Oistrakh then
appeared at the 1957 Prague Spring Festival, this time with the Czech
Philharmonic Orchestra (a rare away match for Mra). We then jump to Edinburgh
in 1962 for a live recording with Rozhdestvensky, which has been widely available
for years via BBC Legends. I recently found a filmed performance from 1967 with
the unexpected accompaniment of Heinz Fricke and the Staatskapelle Berlin. And
then it’s to 1972 for Oistrakh’s final recorded performances of the piece –
apparently a concert with Maxim Shostakovich and the New Philharmonia and a
subsequent and easily available studio version with the same team, via EMI.
All in, if these performances all really exist, that’s
nine recorded performances of Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto by David
Oistrakh:
January 1st 1956 – Live performance with NYPO
and Mitropoulos (Released in a 10CD set from the orchestra’s own label)
June 21st 1956 – Live from Vienna with
Leningrad PO and Mravinsky (Orfeo CD)
1972 – Studio performance with New Philharmonia and Maxim
Shostakovich (EMI)
The only one I’m dubious about is the first from 1972, as
I’ve not seen any reference to any release. I’m quite sure there must be more
broadcast performances tucked away in archives and it seems very likely that
the 1955 premiere performance was taped, but what we have represents a
remarkable record of the evolution of a performer’s way with one of the great
concertos of the century. If you know any more, or can shed light on that 1972
live performance, leave a comment below.
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