Friday, April 03, 2009

Dead violinists society: Zimbalist!



I've never seen any film of Efrem Zimbalist before. Here he is playing the variations from Beethoven's Kreutzer sonata, filmed in 1926. Like Heifetz and Seidel, he was a Russian-born student of Leopold Auer; like them, his sound inhabits a world that is entirely its own, and the tone here comes through with astonishing power, beauty and sensuality, despite having been recorded 84 years ago. Glorious. Hope you love it as much as I do!

There's now so much amazing old-school violin stuff on Youtube that it could keep us happy on JDCMB for a year at least!