Medtner, Catoire - and David Oistrakh

Concert programmes by violinists and pianists have become pretty stereotyped, with the same old two dozen or so sonatas being paraded, particularly Beethoven's “Spring” sonata, the Ravel sonata, the César Franck, the Brahms sonatas .... and a small score of other warhorses. Less frequently heard are the admirable violin and piano sonatas by George Enescu, Guillaume Lekeu, Leos Janacek; and the third sonata of Nikolai Medtner who was born in Moscow in 1880 and died in London in 1951. I first met Medtner's genial sonata in a 1996 recording by Vadim Repin, and I went on to collect four other performances of the work. This time round I re-sampled it played by David Oistrakh, with Alexander Goldenweiser playing the piano part.

I have never been too enthusiastic about Oistrakh as a violinist. He had a fantastic technique, but his warm, rich, Russian sound always sounded somewhat foreign to me in the German and, particularly, French repertoire. However, his sound and approach take to Russian music like a duck to water and I greatly enjoyed his playing of the Medtner. The two-CD set is completed with Oistrakh and Goldenweiser tackling sonatas and a couple of short pieces by another Russian, Georgy Catoire who was born in Moscow in 1861 and died there in 1926 and, again, Oistrakh sounds quite at home in the melancholy sonorities of Catoire's music. My CD set also includes an excellent performance of Catoire's trio in F minor, recorded in 1949 by Goldenweiser with Kogan and Rostropovich, another thoroughly Russian occasion and another opportunity to sample Kogan and Rostropovich playing together.