For sheer joy of musical collaboration, enjoy this fine video record from 18 March 1970, when two great Soviet artists, David Oistrakh (1908-1974) and Sviatoslav Richter (1915-1997), played Beethoven and Brahms at Alice Tully Hall in New York City.
The performance marked their debut together on world television. The audience is as inspired as the two musicians, clapping enough at their initial entry to warrant two separate bows. The Beethoven A Major Sonata begins with Oistrakh’s rich, warm tone matched against Richter’s pearly details.
The Brahms D Minor Sonata #3 merely extends the amazing atmosphere that these two artists project. When Richter hits the solo chords after the opening Allegro’s, Oistrakh responds with ever more rasping intensity. The rapt concentration of each player manages intimacy and ensemble at once; Brahms may never again receive such loving treatment.
That Richter can blend into Oistrakh’s sounds is the very definition of musical partnership. The silence after the opening movement is like the solemnity of a church.
The Adagio then proceeds, half love-song, half noble song.
The playful, sentimental presto relaxes the tension only momentarily; the throes of passionate eruption soon overwhelm the levity of the occasion.
The encore, a simultaneously enchanting version of the Scherzo from Beethoven’s F-Major Sonata, teases us into thinking that, were these two men politicians, the evils of the Cold War could never have existed. The kiss Richter bestows on Oistrakh says it all.
Here are these two musical giants in their recorded concert:
