David Oistrakh

On September 30, one of the greatest violinists in history of the instrument, David Oistrakh, will turn 100.



David Fyodorovich Oistrakh was born in 1908 in Odessa, and violin was one of his earliest memories. In his autobiography, My Way, Oistrakh wrote that, at the age of three and a hall he received a toy fiddle as a present. When he took the toy into his hands, he imagined himself a fiddler (a "sad" occupation widespread in Russia at the time). It seemed to him at that age that there could be no greater happiness than to wander the world playing the fiddle.



As it was, Oistrakh, who was a student of Pyotr Stolyarsky, the legendary teacher of many famous Russian violinists, made his debut at the age of just six. By the time he was 20, in 1928, he had performed very successfully in Leningrad. He moved to Moscow the same year and began to appear in joint concerts with leading soviet pianists (Konstantin Igumnov, Alexander Goldenveizer, Genrikh Neigauz). Since 1934 he taught at the Moscow Conservatory. His fame went international when be took prizes in the Warsaw (1935) and Brussels (1937) violin competitions, besting 59 violinists from 19 countries.



During WWII, Oistrakh sent his family into evacuation. He stayed in Moscow, enduring the heavy bombings and frequently playing for the soldiers who defended the capital. After the war, he toured Bulgaria, Romania, Austria and Yugoslavia.



Oistrakh was first heard in western Europe and the United States through his recordings of 20th-century Russian works as well as the classical violin repertory. In the 1950s, he ventured west, performing in Great Britain, Japan and the United States. After his 1955 performance in Carnegie Hall, the newspapers proclaimed him to be the best violinist of our era.



Oistrakh was one of the first soviet musicians to tour several western countries, among them West Germany, Argentina, Uruguay, Spain, Australia and New Zealand. As he traveled the world, his acclamations accumulated. He was called "The King of the Violin" and "King David." Oistrakh once joked that he traveled so much that he often felt more like a businessman on a trip than a musician on a concert tour--tickets, schedules, suitcases, cars, airports, meetings, planes, concerts, ovations, flowers, again tickets and schedules .



Oistrakh was the first to perform works flint had been written for him (and dedicated to him) by Dmitry Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev and Aram Khachaturyan. Prokofiev was in fact a close friend, sharing a passion for chess. In 1937, Prokofiev and Oistrakh faced off in a Moscow chess tournament, agreeing that the one who lost would give a public concert. The participants took the match very seriously, so much so that Prokofiev later confessed that his opera, "Duena," was delayed in its completion because of their chess tournament.



As Oistrakh grew older, it became more and more difficult for him to live such a busy life, especially because, in the 1960s, he had taken up conducting. Oistrakh suffered a heart attack as early as 1964. He survived and continued to work at a furious pace. On October 24, 1974 after conducting a cycle of Brahms in Amsterdam with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, he died of another heart attack in. His remains were returned to Moscow where he was interred in Novodevichy Cemetery.