David Oistrakh
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David Fyodorovich Oistrakh (Russian: Давид Фёдорович Ойстрах, David Fiodorovič Ojstrah; September 30 [O.S. September 17] 1908 – October 24, 1974) was a Jewish Soviet violinist who made many recordings and was the dedicatee of numerous violin works.
His recordings and performances of Shostakovich's concerti are particularly well known, but he was also a performer of classical concerti. He worked with orchestras in Russia, and also with musicians in Europe and the United States. Oistrakh's recording of Beethoven's Triple Concerto with Sviatoslav Richter and Mstislav Rostropovich is also well known, and the violin concerto of Aram Khachaturian is dedicated to him, as are the two violin concerti by Dmitri Shostakovich.
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[edit] Early years
He was born in the cosmopolitan Russian city of Odessa on the Black sea (now in Ukraine) into the family of the second guild merchant Fishl Oistrakh and his wife Beyle (nee Stepanovsky) [1]. At the age of five, young David began studying violin and viola seriously with the local teacher Piotr Stolyarsky, Oistrakh's first and only teacher. Stolyarsky also taught Nathan Milstein, with whom Oistrakh was to share his first concert appearance in 1914, when Milstein graduated from the Conservatoire. Having made his debut in Odessa at the age of 6, Oistrakh entered the Odessa Conservatory in 1923 where he studied until 1926 - here he played the Bach A minor Concerto. His 1926 graduation concert consisted of Bach's Chaconne, Tartini's Devil's Trill Sonata, Rubinstein's Viola Sonata and Prokofiev's D major Concerto. He appeared as soloist in Glazunov's Violin Concerto under the composer's direction in Kiev in 1927 - a concert which gave him an invitation to play the Tchaikovsky violin concerto in Leningrad with the Philharmonic Orchestra under Nikolai Malko the following year.
[edit] In Moscow
In the same year, Oistrakh decided to move to Moscow where he gave his first recital and met his future wife Tamara Rotareva, a pianist, who he was to marry a year later. In 1931, their only child Igor was born, a son who was to follow in his father's footsteps and would be heard later playing violin with his father in works such as the Bach Double Concerto and Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante. From 1934 onwards he received a position teaching at the Moscow Conservatoire where he was made professor in 1939 where he was among such greats as Yuri Yankelevich and Boris Goldstein. Oistrakh also taught many prodigies such as Gidon Kremer.
[edit] Oistrakh's political controversy
The consensus within the Soviet musical caste was that Jascha Heifetz and his teacher Leopold Auer were traitors to their home country. This was primarily due to the fact that they had emigrated from Russia to the US during the time of the revolution. The Soviets were inclined to brand any American collaboration as infidelity due to the political circumstances following World War II and the ensuing Cold War. Thus Oistrakh, the communist supporter was seen as a compatriot, whereas with Jascha Heifetz he was viewed by many as a traitor. Jascha Heifetz also greatly criticized the Soviet regime; he condemned the Tchaikovsky Competition for being biased against Western competitors. In fact, David Oistrakh had come to Erick Friedman, Heifetz's star student, and tried to persuade him to enter the Tchaikovsky Competition, of which Oistrakh was the principal juror. It appears that Oistrakh had been officially 'instructed' to persuade him. Hearing this [[Jascha Heifetz strongly advised against it and warned Friedman, "You will see what will happen there". Needless to say, the real reason behind getting Friedman to Moscow was to embarrass Heifetz's most celebrated pupil. Oistrakh himself as an adjudicator had personal political interests; to lend additional lustre to Soviet violin pedagogy by discrediting that of these internationally acclaimed emigrés, or perhaps to advance the fledgling career of his son Igor who might profit from a poor showing by Friedman. In any case, Friedman was placed sixth in a contest which was evidently set-up to disadvantage Westerners. (Josef Szigeti later informed Heifetz himself that he had given his student top scores.)
[edit] Awards
Oistrakh found international fame by winning several national and international competitions including the 1935 Soviet Union competition. Oistrakh won second prize at the Wieniawski Competition in Warsaw of the same year, losing to the 16-year-old prodigy Ginette Neveu. However, in 1937 he captured top prize in the Queen Elisabeth Competition (then known as the Eugene Ysaÿe Competition) in Brussels. During the period he also began a lengthy friendship and partnership with the great Lev Oborin, as well as coming under the influence of Jacques Thibaud.
[edit] During WWII
During World War II, he was active in the Soviet Union, premiering the new concertos of Nikolai Miaskovsky and Khachaturian as well as the two sonatas of his friend Prokofiev and winning the Stalin Prize in 1942. The final years of the war saw the blossoming of a friendship with Shostakovich which would lead to the two violin concertos and the sonata, all of which were to be premiered by and become firmly associated with Oistrakh in the following years. Oistrakh's career was set from this point, except for one small hitch - the Soviet Union was protective of its people and refused to let him leave. He continued to teach in the Moscow Conservatory, but when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, he went to the front lines, playing for soldiers and factory workers under intensely difficult conditions.
[edit] International travel
The end of the war allowed Oistrakh to travel abroad to countries in the Soviet block and even to the West. His first foreign engagement was to appear at the newly founded "Prague Spring" Festival where he met with enormous success. In 1951, he appeared at the "Maggio Musicale" Festival in Florence, in 1952 he was in East Germany for the Beethoven celebrations, France in 1953, Britain in 1954 and eventually in 1955 he was allowed to tour the United States. By 1959, he was beginning to establish a second career as a conductor and in 1960 he was awarded the coveted Lenin Prize. His Moscow conducting debut followed in 1962 and by 1967 he had established a duo with the celebrated Soviet pianist Sviatoslav Richter.
[edit] Later years
1968 saw wide celebrations for the violinist's sixtieth birthday which included a celebratory performance in the Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory of the Tchaikovsky concerto, one of his favourite works, under the baton of Gennady Rozhdestvensky. Oistrakh was now seen as a companion to the great violinists of his time such as the Romanian Enescu and the British Menuhin.
For around ten years, Oistrakh played the 1702 Conte di Fontana Stradivarius that he traded for the 1715 Ex Marsick Stradivarius in June 1966.
Oistrakh suffered a heart attack as early as 1964. He survived and continued to work at a furious pace. He had already become one of the principal cultural ambassadors for the Soviet Union to the West in live concerts and recordings. After conducting a cycle of Brahms with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, he died of another heart attack in Amsterdam, in 1974. His remains were returned to Moscow where he was interred in Novodevichy Cemetery.
The asteroid 42516 Oistrach was named in his (and his son Igor's) honour.
