The existing recordings of Vivaldi’s Concerto Grosso in A minor op. 3/8 and Bach’s Concerto for two violins in D minor BWV 1043 came into...

The existing recordings of Vivaldi’s Concerto Grosso in A minor op. 3/8 and Bach’s Concerto for two violins in D minor BWV 1043 came into being in April 1957 at Leipzig’s Kongresshalle. Since their joint debut in 1947, the Bach Double Concerto was the central work in the joint repertoire of David and Igor Oistrakh, which they performed in numerous concerts before David’s death in 1974. The then Eterna boss Dieter-Gerhardt Worm reminisces: “David Oistrakh was a very kind and approachable person. You can hear this in his recordings. His playing is so unbelievably accomplished yet nevertheless so humanly accessible. He was seized with the ambition to be at least as good as Menuhin, whose Bachian style he greatly admired. During the recording of the Bach Violin Sonatas in Dresden’s Lukaskirche, he constantly disappeared from the studio with his little tape recorder in order to listen to excerpts of Menuhin’s recording. And yet he had a much better technique, in fact the recordings with Oistrakh moved along very quickly.” – The recordings from 1957/58 were remastered in original monaural reproduction quality.