LYDIA MORDKOVITCH PAYS TRIBUTE TO DAVID OISTRAKH Classics LOCATELLI | YSAY¨ E | CHAUSSON | SHOSTAKOVICH | RACHMANINOFF Pietro Antonio Locatelli Locatelli Antonio Pietro © Lebrecht Music & Arts Photo Library Lydia Mordkovitch Pays Tribute to David Oistrakh Pietro Antonio Locatelli (1695–1764) Sonata, Op. 6 No. 7 ‘Au tombeau’* 15:16 in F minor • in f-Moll • en fa mineur Arranged for Violin and Piano by Eugène Ysaÿe 1 I Lento assai e mesto – Adagio in modo di recitativo – Recitativo ma più animato che prima – Risoluto 5:06 2 II Allegro moderato e con passione – 2:07 3 III Adagio 2:29 4 IV Cantabile. Tempo molto moderato – Maggiore – Con brio – Più largo – Lento 5:32 5 Caprice No. 23 ‘Il labirinto armonico’ 3:21 from L’arte del violino: XII concerti… con XXIV capricci ad libitum, Op. 3 for Solo Violin Facilis aditus, difficilis exitus Allegro moderato 3 Eugène Ysaÿe (1858–1931) Sonata, Op. 27 No. 2 14:26 in A minor • in a-Moll • en la mineur for Solo Violin To Jacques Thibaud 6 I Obsession. Prelude 2:50 7 II Malinconia 3:26 8 III Danse des ombres. Sarabande 5:12 9 IV Les Furies 2:55 Ernest Chausson (1855–1899) 10 Poème, Op. 25† 14:17 Arranged for Violin and Piano Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) Sonata, Op. 134‡ 29:40 for Violin and Piano 11 I Andante 9:27 12 II Allegretto 6:20 13 III Largo – Andante – Largo 13:51 4 Serge Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) 14 Daisies§ 2:42 No. 3, ‘Margaritki’, from Six Songs, Op. 38 Arranged for Violin and Piano by Fritz Kreisler Lento TT 79:46 Lydia Mordkovitch violin Nicholas Walker piano* Marina Gusak-Grin piano† Clifford Benson piano‡ James Kirby piano§ 5 From the personal collection of Lydia Mordkovitch Lydia Mordkovitch, fourth from left, with students and professors, attending a class with David Oistrakh, right, in his room at the Moscow Conservatory Lydia Mordkovitch Pays Tribute to David Oistrakh A note from the performer I was present at a concert at the Composers’ I had the luck and privilege to study with the Union in Moscow, where David Fedorovich great Russian violinist David Oistrakh. played the Sonata by Dmitri Shostakovich – The whole world knows what a great artist one of his last works, dedicated to him. It David Oistrakh was and today’s generation was a very moving performance. After David can learn a lot from his legendary recordings. Fedorovich finished, the whole audience Many famous violinists studied with him and exploded in a storm of applause, and when treasure the experience of learning from him. everybody turned to Shostakovich, he, unable Although I was sent to study in Moscow to stand up, said with a very shaky and weak from an early age, and later was invited to voice how happy he was that such a great enter the Moscow Conservatory without artist as David Oistrakh played his sonata, and entrance exams, I came to study with streams of tears were running down his cheeks. him only at the age of twenty-four, after David Fedorovich dedicated all his life graduating from the Odessa Conservatory. to music – playing, conducting, teaching, But during the two years I studied with him, listening; music was the essence of his life. I was breathing in every note he was playing, Isaac Stern said about him that he was a every word he was saying, every gesture he ‘Golden Man’ and Queen Elizabeth of Belgium, was making – I learnt so much! There was no who herself was a very dedicated violinist, place in any piece we were playing that he admired him and left him her Stradivarius. wouldn’t show us on the violin, and always Everybody who has heard David impeccably! David Fedorovich was not a kind Fedorovich will never forget his playing, and of ‘Prima Donna’ personality – he was simple all we who studied with him will remember and kind with everybody. him for ever. Many composers wrote for him – This is my modest tribute to his memory. concertos, sonatas, and other pieces – With eternal gratitude, knowing that in his hands their music would sound better than they ever could imagine. Lydia Mordkovitch (© 2010) 7 Locatelli: Caprice No. 23 ‘Il labirinto armonico’ playing very high on the violin, making a Pietro Locatelli (1695–1764) was probably special show of his facility for stopping the finest violin technician of the eighteenth notes beyond the reach of the fingerboard. century, and his achievements can easily In one particular concert Locatelli was said be compared to those of another master, to have trapped his little finger in the bridge Paganini, in the following century. Born in of his violin as a result of this virtuosic feat. Bergamo, Locatelli received his initial musical In his own lifetime, some critics called him training in the Basilica Santa Maria Maggiore, an exhibitionist and a charlatan, disliking his a historic music centre dating back to the ‘finger-heroics’. Fortunately, his reputation twelfth century. At the age of fifteen he was redeemed by later musicologists, one of moved to Rome, presumably to study with whom reported that: Corelli, who died two years later. Locatelli The celebrated Locatelli… had more hand, remained in Rome for ten more years before caprice and fancy than any other violinist travelling around Europe as a violin virtuoso, of his time. He was a voluminous composer finally settling in a large house in Amsterdam, of music that excites more surprise than where he taught, published his own music, pleasure. and gave concerts. The distinct absence of The ‘Labyrinth’ Caprice is the twenty-third his influence on the following generation of of twenty-four contained in his Arte del violino, violinists may be attributed to the fact that by a collection of twelve violin concertos of a this stage Locatelli had developed a peculiar high level of virtuosity. In spite of the technical wariness of other professional musicians. An focus of the concertos, they display beautiful Englishman who attended a private concert musical material. Every concerto consists of at Locatelli’s house remarked: three movements, with an unaccompanied Locatelli is so afraid of people’s capriccio inserted between movements, to be learning from him that he won’t admit a played as an optional extra by the soloist who [professional] musician into his house! feels he can master its technical difficulties. Apparently, he also would only teach The twenty-four caprices have been edited amateurs, as he did not want more advanced for modern performance and are available violinists to learn the secrets of his trade. He in a book of technical studies. It is clear that made his name primarily as a phenomenal Paganini paid homage to Locatelli in his own technical virtuoso, and was known for his Twenty-four Caprices, published in 1820, 8 admitting that he had learnt much from the name Le Tombeau (The Tomb) because of its master, whose influence by then was fading. grave character, three of its four movements Of L’arte del violino, Paganini commented: having a slow tempo. Ysaÿe’s arrangement, It opened up a world of ideas and devices which appeared with the title Au tombeau that never had the merited success (At the Tomb), is a masterpiece, imbuing because of excessive difficulties. the sonata with great liveliness, sensitivity, Paganini went so far as borrowing the brightness, and virtuosity. opening idea from Locatelli’s seventh Caprice Much of the work of Locatelli still awaits for his own first Caprice. Directly or indirectly rediscovery in our time, but possibly the most Locatelli’s influence extended also to the famous appear on this recording. Both David French composer and violinist Jean-Marie Oistrakh and Leonid Kogan recorded Ysaÿe’s Leclair (1697–1764), but not many French arrangement of the Sonata Au tombeau, and violinists of the following generation are Oistrakh sometimes performed the ‘Labyrinth’ known to have performed Locatelli’s work. Caprice as a concert encore. Only André Pagan, a student of Tartini, © 2010 Edward McCullagh was rumoured to have performed one of Locatelli’s concertos, in 1749. Leopold Mozart Information taken from Boris Schwarz, Great Masters recognised Locatelli finally in 1787, in the third of the Violin (New York, Simon & Schuster, 1983; edition of his violin method. London, Robert Hale Ltd, 1984) Locatelli: Sonata ‘Au tombeau’ Locatelli also composed eighteen sonatas, Ysaÿe: Sonata No. 2 which appear in two collections, of 1737 and Eugène Ysaÿe was born in Liège, in the Walloon 1744. The first set (Op. 6) of twelve sonatas is area of Belgium, in 1858, the son of one of a considered to be of the greater importance. long line of violin players. His talent on the family The sonatas are technically demanding, with instrument showed itself at an early age, and double stops, long staccato runs, and intricate while still only seven he entered the Liège passages, but are less virtuosic than the Conservatoire. Nine years later he went to concertos. The seventh sonata – of which the Brussels to study privately with the celebrated great Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe made the violinist-composer Henri Vieuxtemps, and then arrangement recorded here – was given the with his successor at the Brussels 9 Conservatoire, Henryk Wieniawski. With several solo and concerto appearances as well as prizes to his name, Ysaÿe, now in his late teens, chamber and orchestral works, and an opera began to tour around Europe, first to Paris, in Walloon dialect. But very little of this body where he met the great Russian of compositions is played today. About the pianist-composer Anton Rubinstein (an only works to have maintained a place in the important influence upon his interpretative repertoire since Ysaÿe’s death are the six identity), then to Berlin, where he became a sonatas for unaccompanied violin, written in founder-member of the Berlin Philharmonic 1923.