Bruno Monsaingeon’s revelatory collection ‘David Oistrakh: The Warner Remastered Edition’ is a good deal more than it says on the box. Not simply the ‘remastered’ element – which becomes obvious as soon as you start listening – but the fact that the majority of its contents, all of it having been provided by Monsaingeon himself, is new to the domestic catalogue. Dealing with the DVDs first, perhaps the most interesting is the third disc, ‘David Oistrakh, Artist of the People’, where Monsaingeon interviews Yehudi Menuhin, Mstislav Rostropovich, Gidon Kremer, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, David’s son Igor and others, his multilingual skills invaluable for accessing true opinions without the awkward impediment of outside translation.

Oistrakh was by all accounts a kindly man, a signed-up Communist who, like so many of his colleagues, feared the all-too-common knock on the door in the early hours, though fortunately for him – and by extension for us – he was spared that terrifying humiliation, though (as you’ll hear in the interviews) he came pretty close. He was surely Soviet Russia’s most musical violinist, less the Heifetzian virtuoso than his nearest rival Leonid Kogan (though a record retail manager colleague remembers Oistrakh purchasing numerous Heifetz LPs when he was on a trip to London), but matchlessly persuasive in the great repertory masterpieces such as concertos by Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Sibelius, all included on DVD 1 (‘The Oistrakh Collection’) in performances from the 1960s recorded in Moscow under one of the violinist’s favourite conductors, Rozhdestvensky. Interesting that although Heifetz was still recording around this same period, unless I missed a trick, his name isn’t mentioned once throughout the DVDs.

Oistrakh’s stoical stance (though occasionally described as a ‘big’ man, he was a stocky 5ft 6in), his evident concentration and his unique way of caressing phrases – facilitated by a gorgeously opulent tone – marked him out as one of the few violinists from the era whom you’d recognise after hearing a single phrase. Provided the tape-to-disc transfer is reasonable, that is. Two of the original Warner releases – the Beethoven and Sibelius Concertos with the Stockholm Festival Orchestra under Sixten Ehrling – were reissued by Warner in its EMI days, first on LP then by Testament on CD, using – I presume – the same horrible ‘Dolbyised’ transfer used for the LP. This new transfer by Art et Son Studio, Annecy, is as clean as a whistle, clear, immediate and with a perfectly focused solo image.

Another anomaly concerns not sound but provenance. CD 47, one of the discs of ‘Premieres, Rarities and Live Performances’ curated by Monsaingeon himself, couples recordings of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sheherazade and Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto dating respectively from 1950, under Nikolai Anosov, Rozhdestvensky’s father, and 1938 under Prokofiev himself. Reference to the latter can be found in Monsaingeon’s excellent booklet notes – so we know it exists – but comparing the recording with the one famously said to be conducted by Kirill Kondrashin finds a minimum of differences between them. The overall impression from all the Oistrakh versions – and there are plenty to choose from – is that in the belligerent first movement, as Oistrakh recalled, Prokofiev wanted the soloist to ‘play it as though you’re trying to convince someone of something’. No one achieves that effect better than he does. The Glazunov Concerto, another of Oistrakh’s party pieces, at least from the earlier part of his career, is ravishing. The conductor again (on disc 43) is Kondrashin; but rather than include the famous Melodiya recording, Monsaingeon offers us an equally seductive live recording from 1949. The Tchaikovsky Concerto from 1938 under Alexander Gauk, although brilliantly played, doesn’t probe too far beneath the surface, although the shorter pieces on the same CD do.

As to Sheherezade, we’re told that the Anosov recording is from 1950 but most sources that I have referred to quote the conductor as Nikolai Golovanov in 1946, though the orchestra – of the Bolshoi Theatre – is the one credited in both cases. And yet to these ears, the sea-swell of the conducting, its richness, dramatic impulse and vivid sense of narrative, definitely suggests Golovanov rather than Anosov, at least based on my experience of both conductors’ recordings.

Works with piano proliferate throughout the set. The DVD ‘Moscow Recitals’ selected by Monsaingeon himself is especially revealing, not only because of Oistrakh’s exquisite and often assertive playing of, for example, Schubert’s Grand Duo Violin Sonata and Beethoven’s C minor Sonata, but his unusual, almost throwaway manner on stage. Before the Schubert he stands there momentarily staring into the gods before collecting himself and launching into the music. And there’s the way he relates – or seems not to relate – to those he’s performing with. When pianist Vsevolod Petrushansky accompanies (his page turner announces the music), although the standard of playing is extremely high, the body language between the two men suggests a remote relationship. Of course, that’s in comparison with the OTT, luvvie behaviour that we in the West have come to expect as standard, but still, it takes some getting used to. Seeing David and his son Igor on stage together is another matter; there you witness real communication. My guess is that one or two sessions with the DVDs will prove enough. After that, you’ll ditch the visual element and be happy to just listen.

Returning to the purely sound documents, my favourites among Warner’s own recordings include Taneyev’s atmospheric Suite de concert (presented here in stereo) – also a rare recording of Taneyev’s Sonata in A minor – and a coupling of Tartini’s Devil’s Trill Violin Sonata in G minor with Mozart’s Sonata No 32 in B flat, both recordings issued in mono and – for the first time – in stereo, though in the stereo version the Mozart loses its first-movement repeat.

Concertos played with piano accompaniment might seem like a difficult concept to swallow until Oistrakh’s bow engages the strings of his instrument, and then most doubts vanish. Best of all is Vieuxtemps’s Fourth Concerto of around 1850, which includes a treacherous Scherzo that the great and usually plucky Czech violinist Vá≈a P∑íhoda dropped from his recording. Oistrakh goes for it like there’s no tomorrow; even Heifetz would surely have stood aside in admiration. Other ‘concertos without orchestra’ are by Bach (No 1 in A minor), Bruch (No 1 in G minor), Dvo∑ák, Mozart (No 4 in D) and Sibelius. There’s also a screen clip of Oistrakh as soloist/conductor rehearsing the Mozart, the emphasis being on articulation.

The original David Oistrakh String Quartet (Oistrakh, Piotr Bondarenko, Mikhail Terian, Sviatoslav Knushevitsky) offers a sonorous and broadly paced account of Brahms’s First Quartet, Tchaikovsky’s First, Beethoven’s Harp Quartet (there my only reservation is the group’s rather over-emphatic reading of the Scherzo’s Trio), the theme-and-variations second movement from Schubert’s Death and the Maiden Quartet and the Mozart and Brahms Clarinet Quintets with clarinettist Vladimir Sorokin. Even more suited to Oistrakh’s introvert temperament are Schumann’s A minor Violin Sonata (so beloved of the great Adolf Busch) and E flat major Piano Quartet (with pianist Alexander Goldenweiser, Terian and Knushevitsky), the First and Second Piano Trios (with Knushevitsky and Goldenweiser) and Ernest Chausson’s autumnal Concert (with pianist Lev Oborin and the Borodin Quartet), all played with a sense of dedication, as are Medtner’s 45-minute E minor Violin Sonata (with Goldenweiser again) coupled with Weinberg’s Second Sonata, the three Grieg violin sonatas (though the second movement of No 3 is incomplete), an all-Szymanowski programme (Violin Sonata, Mythes, Nocturne and Tarantella and the First Violin Concerto under Karol Stryja, possibly the best recording ever of the work, like a shower of diamonds), and an equally entrancing Ysaÿe selection. Then there are the numerous encore and genre pieces, many performed live, including pieces by Oistrakh’s beloved Fritz Kreisler (music that I’ve never heard him play before) and a magical sequence from Prokofiev’s ballet Cinderella arranged for violin and piano – recorded in concert (the version we know isn’t live).

So much more in addition – oh, I mustn’t forget the deeply moving Bach Double Concerto with Georges Enescu, a six-strong sequence of Brahms Hungarian Dances and Weinberg’s Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes. Monsaingeon’s documentation is masterly, though there are some curious but ultimately insignificant slips as to what’s ‘new to the discography’, ie Debussy’s ‘Clair de lune’, a 1968 Moscow recording of a piece that also opens the Columbia disc of encores. And things I’m not mad on? The over-refined versions of the Beethoven Triple Concerto under Karajan in Berlin and the Brahms Double and Violin Concertos with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra, the Violin Concerto conducted by Otto Klemperer, which sounds as if soloist and conductor are from separate universes, and orderly but uneventful Mozart concertos with the Berlin Philharmonic. But I know there will be many who disagree with those appraisals. Oistrakh just occasionally harboured the fear that he was a boring player, and I sense just a hint of caution in some of these performances. Not, however, in the DVD of the Brahms Concerto under Rozhdestvensky, where he’s on fire.

For the most part, David Oistrakh combined a rarefied intelligence with an enviable naturalness of expression, a sense of universal feeling and a total command of his instrument: there’s bite to his playing as well as tonal bloom. There’s no one to compare with him nowadays; and to say that this set is a worthy tribute is to seriously undersell it. If you’re a musician in the first instance and a fiddle buff in the second, invest with confidence.

The recordings

The Warner Remastered Edition – The Complete Columbia & HMV Recordings; Premieres, Rarities & Live Performances

David Oistrakh (Warner Classics)