Customer Reviews

Recorded Violin, Vol. ll

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an extremely valuable recording for anyone interested in the different schools of violin playing in the early 20th century. So many violinists are represented and it is awe-inspiring to realise you are listening to the great masters! The program notes by Tully Potter are very detailed and they make very interesting and informative reading, with equal dedication to each violinist (some smaller names are included with the bigger ones). On the down side, there are problems with some of the noisiness of the actual recording, but that is to be expected with such old material. I think some of the performances don't carry well in the recording process - seeing these people perform would have been very different. Nevertheless it makes for thought-provoking on how performance practices and styles have changed in such a short amount of time. I thoroughly recommend this historical document.

It's always interesting to listen to old violin recordings. You

get violin history in sound bytes and can hear for yourself how

violin playing has developed. You can also see how fiendishly difficult violin playing can be even for the best representatives of their respective eras. But was it really fair

to the rest of the pack to include Fritz Kreisler? Once he arrives on the scene everyone else becomes a dark backdrop to his

effulgence. Even the modern violinists included suffer in comparison when all he did in this collection was to play one of his trifling ditties. The suavity of his performance make so many others sound like mechanical creaking engines. I would buy this just for historical reasons, though I already own most of the 78s already. Notably missing in this collection are Mischa Elman, Max Rosen, Efrem Zimbalist, Jacques Thibaud and many others. Vasa Prihoda, Tossy Spivakovsky, Ruggiero Ricci, Oistrakh the elder, and Zino Francescatti complete Kreisler's court and are worthy to bear his arms in this set. Buy it before it goes OOP.

Although interesting from an historical point of view, I found these CD's almost unlistenable due to the quality of the recordings (old). There is also an unrelenting hiss in the background.