Soviet couple take sonata seriously
Daily Comfort ZoneThis is a priceless performance of Leclair’s sonata for two violins by husband and wife Leonid Kogan and Elisaveta Gilels.
He is officially the second-best violinist in the Soviet Union, after Oistrakh. She is the sister of pianist Emil Gilels.
Not a smile of a nod passes between them in this 1963 Paris performance.
Those artists regarded music as a matter of life and death.
“Leclair’s sonata for two violins”
He left two books of six.
And they are all wonderful pieces, fun to play but with enough moments that really need work between the two players to bring out. My teacher and I would start some lessons with Leclair duos just to warm us both up but soon he’d get carried away with working on details and then he’d get (mock) angry that so little time was left to work on the actual goals of the lesson. They are a bit addictive.
It’s not so that not a nod passes between them. For example, last moments of the second movement, Elisaveta has all eyes on Leonid and his bow arm to make the final change of bow and last note perfectly coordinated. Earlier in that movement I though Leonid was about to give a demonstration of the infamous “one minute bow” but the camera cut away to her.
And her bow arm is no slouch either!
They don’t look as though they are having much fun; maybe they had a minder in the room, but what a sound from him! Even on my iPhone.
“Soviet couple”?! Please, let’s stop politicizing everything – the world is divided enough. Heifetz never smiled while playing. It didn’t mean he “regarded music as a matter of life and death.”
Hilary Hahn doesn’t look like someone I’d like to go out for a beer with, but she has chops.
Gorgeous! Smiles and nods? They use their ears rather than their eyes and mouths. Life and death? They are engaging in concentrated music-making.
Off note, JFK was assassinated the next day…
Kogan was an outstanding artist. His dazzling recording of Khachaturian’s Violin Concerto with the Boston SO under the baton of Monteux is second to none. I bought the LP when I was a teenager; it was a Victrola bargain-price reissue and I was keen to explore less well-known works within the limits of pocket-money available. I took a punt on it and I was mesmerised by the performance; not only could Kogan do dazzling but also seductive, as in the second movement and the coupling – Saint-Saëns’ Havanaise.
This November will mark the centenery of his birth. I hope that this will be celebrated by a bumper box of CD re-issues; Brilliant Classics issued a 10-CD box in 2016 but there is much more than was contained in that. I doubt that this event will be commemorated on Radio 3; if it is, it will probably be just a short snippet.
Insofar as his nationality does matter, ‘Soviet’ is, as mentioned, merely a political descriptor. He was actually Ukrainian.
Wonderful! Totally agree on the Khachaturian, mesmerising, lifting the work far higher than expuct. That Victrola was my (bargain-price) intro to the work and no others have come close.
You can hear the Khachaturian with Kogan and Monteux on YouTube. It’s terrific!
When Leonid Kogan plays, I don’t hear KGB. I hear something entirely different. To partially quote another great violinist, Isaac Stern, who dared to say at the 1978 Kennedy Center Honors before playing music by Leclaire with Itzhak Perlman and in celebrating a great pianist among the 1st group of artists chosen as honorees of this special event: a chocolate eclaire.