King David

On September 30, celebrated violinist David Oistrakh, one of the founders of the Russian violin school, soloist of the Moscow Philharmonic Society and Professor of the Moscow Conservatory, would have turned 95.

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 half, 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 he took first 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. 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 that 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. He often performed with his son Igor Oistrakh, a well known violinist.  He died on October 24, 1974, in Amsterdam.