History has now consigned
Elizaveta Gilels – ‘Elizabeth Gilels’
in the West - to a dual role, neither
of them directly to do with her violin
playing: wife of Leonid Kogan and/or
sister of Emil Gilels. Born in 1919
she’d formed a youthful duo with her
brother before taking a prize at the
Ysaÿe competition in Brussels in
1937 – that famous constellation of
talents. Ahead of her were Oistrakh
and the winner, Neveu. Her teacher was
Yampolsky. It wasn’t until after the
War that she formed her duo with Kogan
– their Bach Double Concerto was famous
– and they managed to find and perform
some more out-of-the-way pieces, as
well as works dedicated to them such
as the Weinberg sonata. But it’s symptomatic
of the weight of historical judgement
that the Melodiya booklet devotes nearly
a page out of four to a long and telling
unidentified quotation extolling Kogan’s
playing. Of Elizaveta’s playing there
is unfortunately no such critical analysis
beyond the observations of her duo performances
with her husband.
Fortunately we have
evidence throughout this slim-line double
disc that goes some way to establishing
her position. Certainly when one considers
how a lesser talent such as Galina Barinova,
nine years Gilels’s senior, could have
flourished in the Soviet Union it does
make it all the more surprising that
Gilels’s career was largely subsumed
or subordinated to that of her husband
(see a review of Barinova’s Melodiya
disc here).
The genre pieces offer
an entrée into her playing. Her
Hora staccato is less glamorous
and fiery than that of the master, Heifetz,
whose 1937 disc remains a beacon. She
goes in for less dynamic variance than
he does and doesn’t play the pizzicato
at the end. Still it’s a splendid performance.
Her Kreisler is quite slow but has electric
trills and sleek portamenti but she
lacks the sense of authority and relaxation
that marks out a master of this genre
– Shumsky perhaps, who has it in spades.
The Moscow studio in which she recorded
the Rameau-Ysaÿe was very cold
and dead-sounding and doesn’t flatter
her tonally. The aggressive shrillness
that sometimes becomes part of her armoury
is most likely an aural product of the
studio; the playing itself is highly
accomplished. The rest of the first
disc is devoted to the duo recordings
with Kogan. Their matching of tones
and vibrato, much less colour and technical
address is powerful indeed – surely
some of the best duo playing of its
kind on disc. The diminuendi in the
Allegro finale of Leclair’s G major
sonata are stunning. The hints of tone
blanche in the sliver of an Adagio
of the C major point to their cultivation
of colour. The c.1914 Ysaÿe sonata
is enlivened by splendidly pointed fugal
passages and by a bucolic-folkloric
finale. The two violinists play this
with superb élan and sweep.
Oddly the Vivaldi,
Mozart and Cui sonatas are absent from
Creighton’s Discopaedia of the Violin.
But I’m certain that they, or some of
them, have appeared before on Multisonic
310235-2. They date from 1950-51 according
to Melodiya’s admittedly sparse documentation.
Beware the track-listing in the booklet
though – there are thirteen not twelve
and track four has been repeated in
the text - but the actual disc running
order is fine. The Vivaldi is buoyant
and clean, naturally rather Old School
in orientation but without any ill-considered
portamenti. The Mozart sonatas are robust
with highly expressive slow movements
that remain the heartbeat of these performances.
The recordings are again rather cold
so both players have to work hard to
evoke colour. I was taken most by the
brisk and eager youthfulness of the
finale of K547. The Cui is a seldom-performed
sonata. It’s ripely romantic full of
rich double-stopping and sounding what
we may think of as rather Brahmsian.
The slow movement is played with discreet
melancholy by both brother and sister.
It’s a pity that these
sessions weren’t more precisely documented
and that a properly researched note
on Gilels wasn’t prepared. I’d say the
latter is a distinctly missed opportunity
given the specialist nature of the enterprise.
But in Melodiya’s defence we would all
surely have this material released than
mouldering in the archive. Collectors
will know that the duo sonatas with
Kogan have been re-released on Testament
1227 with other works played exclusively
by Kogan.
Jonathan Woolf
for
details
Elizaveta Gilels (violin) 
