His loyalty was such that, even though on
many occasions we spoke and I said “Look, you could settle in
the West quite easily and be as well off”... “But no!”, he said,
“I owe this regime, whatever its faults, my life. They gave
me my musical upbringing and that’s where I am. I’m loyal to
Russia, to the land, to the people, and to whoever was [sic.]
in power”... He’d have been just the same to the Tsar. [Yehudi
Menuhin]
Reputation is a fickle thing. While that of
the “violinist of the century” Jascha Heifetz has generally
fallen since his death, that of his great Cold War rival, the
Soviet Union’s premier fiddler David Oistrakh, has remained
rock solid. Indeed, as more and more “unofficial” and off-air
recordings have come to light, the latter’s stock has risen
seemingly inexorably.
Bruno Monsaingeon’s film looks at Oistrakh’s
life and career, focusing in particular, as he tells us in the
booklet notes, on four themes: What is a “great” violinist?;
David Oistrakh, “homo Sovieticus”; The family man;
and The teacher. The last two of these are relatively
straightforward topics, while the first has since been addressed
by Monsaingeon at rather greater length in his film The art
of violin (available as an NVC Arts DVD 8573-85801-2).
Perhaps inevitably, therefore, the main interest in this earlier
documentary is on its subject’s relationship with the Soviet
authorities.
Twentieth century artists, faced with working
under the aegis of totalitarian states, have chosen to cope
in a variety of ways. Toscanini refused utterly to compromise
and not only ceased working in, but became a vocal opponent
of, both Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Others – Furtwängler,
Richard Strauss, Shostakovich – kept any disapproval internalised
while continuing to work, in varying degrees, with the governing
regime. And while many musicians of lesser ability curried
favour with brutal regimes in the hope of advancing their careers,
there was also a handful of major talents who appeared supportive:
Mengelberg, Kabasta and Mravinsky come to mind, while the jury
remains out in the cases of, among others, Karl Böhm and Herbert
von Karajan. [See the fascinating Bel Canto Society DVD Great
conductors of the Third Reich: art in the service of evil BCS-D0052.]
Oistrakh’s attitude was very cautious. On this
film Rostropovich recounts an episode where his friend suggested
they go for a walk – hence moving out of range of any bugging
devices – before telling the cellist that he admired his libertarian
attitudes but was simply too frightened to display them openly
himself. According to Rostropovich, Oistrakh had been traumatically
affected by an episode where every single male living in his
apartment block was arrested one by one by the secret police,
so that he and his wife would lie awake at night in terror waiting
for the dreaded knock at the door.
Apart from sheer fear, Oistrakh’s conformity
and political docility was reinforced by his need for money.
Appearance fees and prize money were, as the film shows, themes
running constantly through his letters home to his family, especially
early in his career when he was actually allowed to keep them
(the rules were quickly changed, however, so that the cash went
to the Russian state which then gave its artists back a meagre
allowance.) With the Soviet state controlling, thereafter,
his and his beloved family’s very livelihood, Oistrakh was not
going to be a man to make unnecessary waves.
But if money was as important to him as all that,
could not Oistrakh have moved permanently to the West as Yehudi
Menuhin, quoted at the head of this review, tells us he often
suggested? Well, quite apart from the practical difficulties
likely to ensue (Rudolf Nureyev was prevented from seeing his
family again for nearly 30 years after defecting to the West),
Oistrakh was also by all accounts a great patriot with a love
of his country so marked that it overcame any perception of
its faults. He was not alone in that. Orlando Figes’s masterly
study The whisperers: private life in Stalin’s Russia (London,
2007) details several such instances where people chose not
to take advantage of the opportunity to abandon their homeland,
in spite of all the horrors being perpetrated there, simply
because it was their mother country.
So can we, after all, describe David Oistrakh
as a true “artist of the people”. He certainly – in spite of
a wall covered with awards and a chest covered with medals -
seems to have been an unpretentious and, indeed, quite homely
soul. It is quite clear, too, that he was an immensely popular
artist within Russia. And the Soviet authorities certainly
claimed him as a model of socialist achievement in all their
propaganda – not least to home audiences. But I imagine that
the question-mark in Monsaingeon’s title is supposed to make
us ponder whether Oistrakh’s apolitical public stance really
did serve the Russian people’s real long term interests
in the way that the openly-displayed dissident attitude of,
say, Rostropovich did.
We are left, at the end of the film, without
a clear answer – if, indeed, it is possible to reach one at
all in such morally murky waters. But what we are left
with is a wealth of film clips demonstrating David Oistrakh’s
sheer artistry.
Admirers of great playing will no doubt already
have some of this material on their shelves. An EMI Classics
double DVD set DVB 5996859, for example, usefully collects together
the Brahms, Sibelius and Tchaikovsky concertos as well as works
by Lalo, Beethoven and Locatelli, while the classic 1965 account
of the Brahms double concerto with Rostropovich and the Bach
concerto for two violins with Menuhin are to be found on DVB
4904499. But Monsaingeon has been an eager toiler in the archives
and has come up here with a great deal of rarely-seen material,
all of it adding to our appreciation of Oistrakh’s technique
and his art.
My own favourite is a brief extract from what
appears to be a completely bizarre – not to say utterly bonkers
– bit of Soviet newsreel. It begins with a lavish fireworks
display over Moscow that suggests some sort of lavish national
celebration (and although it would be wonderfully satisfying
to fantasise that it might be marking that murderous monster
Stalin’s death in 1953, it’s more likely to have been something
like his birthday). We then enter a large concert hall where
we find about a dozen of the Soviet Union’s leading violinists,
led by Oistrakh with his chest full of glittering medals, and
a similar number of lady harpists who presumably also represent
the crème de la crème of their own profession. Together
– helped by a wildly enthusiastic conductor and a most energetic
percussionist – they attack a completely over-the-top arrangement
of one of Rachmaninoff’s op.23 preludes as if there really were
no tomorrow. A superb example of the use of art as propaganda,
it really does have to be seen to be believed and manages to
tell us, in just 70 seconds or so, far more about the mad society
in which David Oistrakh was forced to live and perform than
any words could possibly do in its stead.
Rob Maynard
MEDICI
ARTS DVD 3073178 [c.75:00] 
