Legends of the XX Century - Boris Goldstein, violin
1. Felix Mendelssohn (1809 - 1847) : Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D-Minor, composed in 1822
2. Yuli E. Konyus (1869 - 1942) : Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in E-Minor
3. Oskar B. Feltsman (b. 1921) : Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in E-minor
Boris Goldstein, violin
Chamber Orchestra of Moscow State Conservatory / M. Terian, conductor (1)
Symphony Orchestra of the Moscow State Philharmonic Society / G. Rozhdestvensky, conductor (2)
USSR State Symphony Orchestra / N. Rakhlin, conductor (3)
Recordings from 1962 (2,3), 1968 (1)
“Legends of the XX century. Russian performing art” - this series is unusual among other projects. It combines not only historical recordings of the greatest Russian musicians of the previous century. Many of these recordings will be issued for the first time on CD.
We start this project, presenting one of the outstanding violinists of the twentieth century - Boris Goldstein. Finding fame at a young age, later he faced with persecution and misunderstanding of power and was forced to emigrate. However, the trace of this musician in Russian art is great.
Here, for the first time on CD is Concerto for violin and orchestra by Oscar Felzman, popular Russian composer.
Boris Emmanuilovich Goldstein was born in Odessa in 1922. As was customary at that time in the families of Odessa intellectuals, from the age of four he was given music lessons.
Boris Goldstein was taught in the violin class of the legendary teacher Pyotr Solomonovich Stolyarsky, who had brought up a brilliant pleiad of musicians, the most notable of which was David Oistrakh. Six months after beginning his studies, little Busya (as he was called in his family) had already performed in public with a small concert program.
The name of the nine-year-old violinist becomes well-known to the broad public in the USSR after his performance of Mendelssohn’s Concerto together with the Moscow Radio Orchestra, conducted by N. Anosov. At the age of 11 Busya took part in the First All-Union Violinists’ Competition. Due to his young age he performed separately from the competition, but he played so well that he was awarded a special prize.
In March 1935 the First Henryk Wieniawski International Competition took place in Warsaw. From the Soviet Union two musicians were sent - the 27-year-old David Oistrakh and the 13-year-old Busya Goldstein.
In 1937 Boris Goldstein went to Brussels along with the Soviet delegation, for participation in the First Eugene Ysaye - the most representative musical competition of the 20th century in the make-up of its jury - where he won Fourth Prize.
In the Soviet Union he was awarded with the Order of “Mark of Honor” for his “outstanding achievements in the sphere of musical art.” The fact that Busya was “the youngest musician, holder of an order” was consistently emphasized by Soviet reference editions. From that time, from the late 1930s he had been recorded on gramophone records. However, the subsequent fate of the musician was not so successful, and this did not happen for reasons of artistry.
In 1974 Goldstein was able to leave the USSR, and the musician settled in Hannover, West Germany. There Boris Emannuilovich won an open competition and took the position of a professor of the Wurzburg Music Academy. ( Melodiya )
