Oistrakh Op. 61

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Created: Saturday, 29 December 2012 02:40

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Oistrakh's Beethoven Violin Concerto

SACD is still my favourite audiophile format.

In particular I like the SACD format for classical music like symphonies and concertos, where you get very good details on the instrumentation and sound stage even at very high dynamic. However, the SACD format seems losing the battle since both Sony and Philips gave up producing players for it. But to date there are still abundant SACDs on the market in audiophile shops. Recently I was finding repairers for my long time CD players Musical Fidelity A3 and SACD player Marantz SA-14. I am surprised to realise that here in Singapore there are many supporters for these two players. There are still parts available for them. I managed to get them serviced and with the laser head changed. There are even offers to upgrade the performance of these two CD players with components upgrade.

With the lost of popularity of classical music, now in Singapore the only shop that stocks respectable range of classical CDs is now left with HMV. But even HMV the range of classical music CDs is much less than those classical hay days. Therefore I start to look for classical CDs online in the Internet. I used to go towerrecords.com, now only to realised it has been bought over probably by Amazon, but the site is still available with the same search engine that I very much prefer. The nice thing about Internet shopping is you just need to type 'Beethoven Violin Concerto' and you get all the available albums instantly, or a specific performer. It is so much more easy compared to searching in a CD shop.

So this time accidentally I chanced upon this SACD recording of David Oistrakh's Beethoven violin concerto in stereo. My admirable soloist playing my favourite violin concerto in SACD format, so I straight away bought it online!  This 1959 stereo concerto recording of EMI Classics was supported by French National Radio Orchestra, conducted by Andre Cluytens. CD booklet was all in Japanese, I supposed the recording was specially prepared for Japanese Audiophiles.

David Oistrakh interpretation and performance of the Beethoven violin concerto without surprise was very good. He was playing with a slower tempo typical of that era. Steady performance with very warm and rich vibrato. The orchestra gave very good support to the solo violin. The recording a bit biased towards the soloist. The final chord of the third movement was decisive.

I again intoxicated in this great work of Beethoven ............