Zino Francescatti Violin Recital

Cover design by Alex Steinweiss
(restored by Peter Joelson)

A modest offering for my first upload following the Mediafire debacle, but one very dear to my heart.  I first owned this set in 1974, when I was 11, having purchased it from Clark Music, the mom-and-pop store that I spoke about in this post.  As I recall, the cost was $3.94, and it was something of a revelation to me that classical music could be found on ten-inch discs in album sets!  I associated the smaller format with popular and children's records.  Here are the details:

Violin Recital
1. Tartini: Variations on a Theme of Corelli
2. Shostakovich: Polka from "The Age of Gold"
3. Debussy: La Fille aux Cheveux de Lin
4. Debussy: Minstrels
5. Schumann: The Prophet Bird
6. Wieniawski: Caprice in A minor
Zino Francescatti, violin; Max Lanner, piano
Recorded April 12 and 25, 1946
Columbia Masterworks set M-660, three 10-inch 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 43.6 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 26.7 MB)

I believe this album contained the first piece I had ever heard by Shostakovich (at the time, I thought it sounded pretty weird!), as well as by Tartini and Wieniawski.

All files going back to May 2012 are now up and running.

Dances by Bronislaw Gimpel

Bronislaw Gimpel

A happy Chanukah to all my Jewish friends (as well as everyone else)! Here's a little present for the sixth day: an album of dances played by the Polish-American violinist Bronislaw Gimpel (1911-1979), one of which, Joseph Achron's Dance Improvisation, is based on the Yiddish folk tune "Chanukah, Oh Chanukah." (Another bit of serendipity, that I would realize this while working on this transfer!)  This set was made for the fledgling Vox label, founded in 1945 by George H. de Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, a descendant of the composer, and still in operation 67 years later.  Vox was dedicated to presenting unusual repertoire from the very start, as well as introducing less established artists to perform it - pianists like Leonard Shure, Shura Cherkassky, and Jakob Gimpel, and violinists like Jakob's brother Bronislaw Gimpel and Ruggiero Ricci all made 78-rpm records for Vox.  I believe this album, reviewed in the Nov. 22, 1947 issue of Saturday Review, was Bronislaw Gimpel's debut recording:

Dances:
Bartók: Rumanian Folk Dances (arr. Szekely)
Stravinsky: Petrouchka - Danse Russe (arr. Dushkin)
Wieniawski: Mazurka in D, Op. 19, No. 2 ("Dudziarz")
Achron: Hebrew Dance, Op. 35, No. 1
Achron: Dance Improvisation on a Hebrew Folk Tune, Op. 37
Sarasate: Jota Navarra (Spanish Dance No. 4), Op. 22, No. 2
Bronislaw Gimpel, violin; Artur Balsam, piano
Issued in 1947
Vox album 616, four 10-inch 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 75.18 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 41.63 MB)