David Oistrakh

David Fyodorovich Oistrakh was a renowned Soviet violinist, violist, conductor, and pedagogue, widely considered one of the preeminent violinists of the 20th century. Born in Odessa into a Jewish family, he began his studies at the age of five with the famous pedagogue Pyotr Stolyarsky. He graduated from the Odessa Music and Drama Institute in 1926 and moved to Moscow shortly afterwards, where he became a soloist with the Moscow Philharmonic.

Oistrakh achieved international fame through competition victories. In 1935, he won the All-Union Contest and took second prize at the International Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition. In 1937, he solidified his global reputation by winning the Ysaÿe Competition in Brussels. During World War II, he remained active, performing for soldiers, in hospitals, and in besieged Leningrad, while also teaching at the Moscow Conservatory.

As a pedagogue, Oistrakh trained a generation of world-class violinists at the Moscow Conservatory, including Gidon Kremer, Oleg Kagan, and his son Igor Oistrakh. He also formed a celebrated piano trio with Lev Oborin and Sviatoslav Knushevitsky, which performed together from 1943 until 1963. In his later years, beginning in 1961, Oistrakh established himself as a respected conductor.

Oistrakh is celebrated as a leading representative of the Russian violin school, known for his technical mastery, virtuosity, and a characteristically warm, powerful tone. His vast repertoire ranged from Bach and Mozart to modern composers. He had close artistic relationships with major Soviet composers; Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev, Aram Khachaturian, and Nikolai Myaskovsky all dedicated violin concertos or sonatas to him. He died of a heart attack in Amsterdam in 1974.

His son, Igor Davidovich Oistrakh, was born in Odessa on April 27, 1931, to David Oistrakh and the pianist Tamara Rotareva. He began studying violin in early childhood and took up the piano two years later. He completed the Central Music School at the Moscow Conservatory in 1949, graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1955 as his father’s violin student, and completed postgraduate study under him in 1958. While still a student, he won first prizes at the International Violin Competition of the World Festival of Youth and Students in Budapest in 1949 and the Henryk Wieniawski International Violin Competition in Poznań in 1952.

From 1958, Igor Oistrakh taught at the Moscow Conservatory and was a soloist of the Moscow Philharmonic. He frequently performed and recorded with his father, both in duo recitals and with orchestras conducted by David Oistrakh. Known for an intellectual, carefully judged approach and realistic interpretations, he also appeared with Yehudi Menuhin and major orchestras under conductors including Otto Klemperer, Eugene Ormandy, Carlo Maria Giulini, Herbert von Karajan, Georg Solti, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Seiji Ozawa, and Gennady Rozhdestvensky.

Igor Oistrakh made his Western debut at London’s Royal Albert Hall and toured extensively in Europe, North and South America, Japan, and Australia. He began conducting in 1968, making his overseas conducting debut in Copenhagen that February, and led the Moscow Philharmonic soloists’ ensemble as well as orchestras in Moscow, Leningrad, London, Berlin, Vienna, and Brussels. His recordings included Bartók’s Second Violin Concerto, Bach’s sonatas for violin and harpsichord with his wife, the pianist Natalia Zertsalova, and works by Tikhon Khrennikov and Yevgeny Svetlanov.

A member of juries for leading violin competitions, including the Tchaikovsky, Queen Elisabeth, and Wieniawski competitions, Igor Oistrakh was also a longtime teacher. From 1996 to 2010 he was a professor at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, where he lived and worked with his family before returning to Russia in 2011. He and Zertsalova, whom he married in 1960, performed together for more than fifty years; their son Valery Oistrakh also became a violinist and teacher. Igor Oistrakh died in Moscow of acute heart failure on August 14, 2021, and his ashes were interred at Novodevichy Cemetery.

Organizations

• Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory
• Odessa National A. V. Nezhdanova Academy of Music