Leonid Kogan - The Italian and Spanish Music auf CD

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Leonid Kogan and his recordings The legendary violinist Leonid Kogan presents a phenomenon of violin performers, who could not be classified according to any frameworks, definitions or schools of performance. Was Kogan a great virtuoso? Undoubtedly he was. His recordings of the works of Niccolo Paganin and that scenic image which he adjusted to on the television screen not long before his untimely decease presents only one testimony of this, the most memorable for many. The passion and openness, combined with the highest perfection of technique – this is what makes Kogan’s renditions of virtuoso violin music so distinct. Was Kogan a serious, tasteful and talented musician? To obtain an answer to this questions it is not necessary to listen to his recordings of Alban Berg’s and Dmitri Shostakovich’s Violin Concertos – it is self-evident there. It suffices to listen once again to the same works by Paganini and to feel how Kogan gives a unique meaning and a distinctly original sound to each note of these rather unpretentious compositions, which, moreover, are quite over-played by his colleagues. In addition, Kogan’s gramophone recordings, most likely, transmit the essence of his performing art much more fully than they do in many other instances. Everything which comprises the essence of his performing skills, everything that he wished to convey to us – all of this is contained exclusively in those sounds which were communicated out to us by his famous Guarneri. It suffices to see the film and television recordings of his concerts to marvel at how in the most difficult technical spots or during movements of lyrical, passionate confessions not a single muscle would move on his face. The outward artistry, the effective gesture and playing “for the public” were all alien to the great musician. His exceptional seriousness, his demand toward himself, his pupils and partners in ensemble – Kogan had the experience of playing with almost all of the outstanding musicians of his time, including Rostropovich, Luzanov, Gilels, Barshay, Oistrakh, Shapiro, Schering, Ivanov-Kramskoy and Carlo Richter – made his musical interpretations as if carved out of stone. However, the iron logic, the exceptional constructive qualities of Kogan’s renditions, have never served as an obstacle to the sensation of the live embodiment of the musical text in front of the audience. In comparing the different versions of his recordings from various years, we become convinced that the great violinist constantly reexamined the details and nuances of conveying the musical text, transferred the semantic accents and even changed the customary tempi.

This was expressed by Kogan himself in his interview, given by him in 1964, when answering a question about his attitude towards the gramophone recording: “I have a very positive attitude towards recordings, and I am certain that it is necessary to develop in all possible means our gramophone industry… However, a recording which was made not from a concert hall presents a sort of artificially “preserved” production. It is, in essence, a model, albeit one very close to technical perfection, but still a model. It is possible to make use of “preserved” products. However, I am more in favor of the type of music which unfolds as part of the living process of a concert performance”. It is no coincidence, therefore, that among Kogan’s recordings there is such a large percentage of those recorded during live performances. These proportions changed in due time, but only in favor of the broadcast recordings.

At the present day the recordings of Leonid Kogan, unfortunately, are still not released in their full quantity. However, even those recordings that are available to the public suffice for a full perception of the artistry of the great violinist and of his life, which began on 14 November, 1924 in the city Yekaterinoslavl (presently Dnepropetrovsk) in the family of photographer Boris Semyonovich and Sophia Lvovna Kogan and which ended in a car of a train during the route of Moscow-Mytischi on 17 December 1982, when he was going to Yaroslavl for a benefit concert, where he was going to perform the same program as the one he was preparing for the Grand Hall of the Conservatory. As far back as during his years of study in the Music School affiliated with Moscow Conservatory with the great pedagogue Abram Yampolsky, in 1941 Kogan recorded his first record which has never come out because of the start of World War II. Recordings were resumed in 1945, already at the time of his years as a student. After Kogan’s triumph at the competition in Prague, the artist’s records, at that time still at 78 rpm, started to be enumerated in dozens. At that time Kogan’s repertoire included a mass of virtuoso pieces, which were subsequently excluded from his repertoire. As the artist had confessed to musicologist V. Grigoriev, presently with the increase of a demand of the audience for greater quality, such pieces must inevitably be dropped”. All the more valuable and interesting for us are these recordings from his early period. His triumph at the Queen Elizabeth Competition in Brussels in 1951 presents the beginning of Kogan’s international recognition and along with it – of recordings together with celebrated foreign musicians, carried out during the artist’s concerts abroad as well as in the most prominent recording studios. During that same time – namely, the 1950’s – the recordings of Kogan’s ensemble performances with Gilels, Rostropovich and Barshai were produced of such works as Gabriel Fauré’s Quartet, Trios by Tchaikovsky, Schumann, Schubert and Haydn, as well as duos together with his spouse, Elizaveta Gilels. The recordings from the 1960s and 1970s, which preserved the performances of Kogan, who by that time became one of the world’s celebrated musicians, demonstrate a repertoire of a stunning breadth – from early sonatas together with harpsichord to one of the most technically and musically complex masterpieces of the Second Viennese School: Berg’s Violin Concerto; from the music of Paganini for violin and guitar to the newest compositions of that time: Khachaturian’s Rhapsody and Weinberg’s Violin Concerto. On the title pages of these compositions, as well as of numerous others, there are inscriptions with dedications to Kogan.

However, the different standards of recording, succeeding each other numerous times during the forty years of the artist’s musical career, the rapid progress of the latest times in the sphere of sound systems, with each new achievement of technical progress have taken away from Kogan’s fans a certain part of the imprinted artistic image. After Kogan’s death, the “Melodiya” record firm decided to ameliorate this injustice by releasing forty double sets of long-playing records, which included the greater part of the recordings made by the violinist. However only ten years afterwards, at the turn of the century, during the age of compact-discs, Kogan’s recordings have once again become virtually unavailable to the Russian listener. Presenting this new release of Kogan’s recordings on CD “Melodiya” offers a new digital restoration of all the best and the most interesting that the great violinist left behind him.

The editorial board of the classical programs of “Melodiya” would like to express its heartfelt gratitude to Leonid Kogan’s widow, Elizaveta Grigorievna Gilels and to his daughter Nina Leonidovna Kogan for their vivid participation in compiling the programs of this series.