# notes on my recordings of Shostakovich's 1st violin concerto



## science

If you are only going to have one Shostakovich violin concerto #1, get the one by Oistrakh that is paired with Rostropovich playing the cello concerto.










#1 choice for historical reasons. Excellent performances, I think everyone agrees, but not modern sound.

If you are going to have two, then your other one should probably be in the best modern sound, and there are many options but I can only evaluate three: Batiashvili, Hahn, and Vengerov.










Batiashvili has an odd selection: Shostakovich's Lyric Waltz, Part's Spiegel im Spiegel (Mirror in the Mirror), Kancheli's V & V, and Rachmaninov's Vocalise. I bought this disk for V & V, and I think it is only available here. If you want it, your decision is made.

You'll get a Vocalise elsewhere (it's filler on lots of disks), but for Part's Spiegel im Spiegel, you want the "Alina" disk from ECM:










And you might as well get the Lyric Waltz along with the whole jazz suite it came from, such as on Chailly's entertaining disk "Shostakovich: The Jazz Album."










Moving on:










Hahn's comes with the Mendelssohn's violin concerto - you will have that already, though Hahn plays it wonderfully and it is in great modern sound.










Vengerov has Prokofiev's 1st violin concerto, rarer than the Mendelssohn but still there are lots of good options ranging from Heifetz, Milstein, Stern to Fischer or Shaham.

In the end, I guess I would suggest Hahn for the #2 recording, because I can't decide whether I like Hahn's Shost 1 or Vengerov's better, but I prefer either of them to Batiashvili (IMO the orchestras sound better on Hahn and Vengerov, and for whatever reason the music moves me more in their recordings than in Batiashvili).

I chose Hahn as #2 because her Mendelssohn is more valuable to me than Vengerov's Prok 1. I wouldn't want to miss Vengerov's Prok 2 though:










But with Prok VC 2, as always, there are options....


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## Lucifer

do you know of any site,that has classical covers-back and front also cd labels?
Any help is welcome.


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## Lucifer

do you know of any site,that has classical covers-back and front also cd labels?
Any help is welcome.


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## science

Sorry, I don't know. I get my images from amazon.com - I think that's fair, since I'm basically advertising for them!


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## Guest

I like more Oistrakh's live with Mitropoulos and NYPH, 1-1-56 (day before the famous Studio recording)


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