The Oistrakh Hindemith/Bruch album has an interesting back story. Oistrakh only did two albums for Decca, and the latter only occurred because of a problem in the former. The plan for the first album was for Hindemith to conduct the LSO with Oistrakh playing the violin in Hindemith's Violin Concerto. The other side of the album was to be Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Violin K364, with Hindemith playing the viola part. The recording session took place on September 13-14, 1962 with Erik Smith producing and Art Lilley doing the engineering at Decca's West Hampstead Studio 3. However, Hindemith, who was a fine violist, was disgusted with his own playing and rejected the recording of the Mozart. So Decca was left with only the Hindemith. They quickly engaged Jasha Horenstein for another session with the LSO and Oistrakh, this time recording the Bruch Scottish Fantasia. This session took place ten days later at Walthamstow Assembly Hall with Alan Reeve engineer. So the Bruch, the more famous of the pieces, was really side B of the album, although on release, it became side A.
Oistrakh finally recorded the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante a year later, but with his son, Igor as the violinist, and father David as the violist (he was adept at both violin and violin). Kiril Kondrashin was the conductor of the Moscow Philharmonic and the recording was made at West Hampstead Studio 3, with Erik Smith and Ray Minshull producing and Ken 'Wilkie' Wilkinson engineering.
I prefer the wonderful Hindemith on the recording to the Bruch, although both are fine. (If you get a chance to hear Hindemith's Viola Concerto, it is also very fine.) If you listen carefully, you can hear the difference in the sonics between the two recording venues.
I have both the Tape Project release and an early London pressing of the record. The Tape Project tape is wonderful, while the record is still very fine. The original Decca album (SXL6024) is very pricey, with some copies over $1000. Tape Project's license for the recording and their other Decca album, Suite Espanola (Decca SXL6355), were both limited in number of copies and time. So, unlike the rest of their releases, they will not be issuing any more tapes of these two albums.
Tape Project was able to license these two Decca albums with the assistance of Winston Ma who first licensed the albums for his FIM label (on CD, mastered by Paul Stubblebine). The story of the album is in my Decca book published by FIM (Decca Supreme Stereophonic Legacy) and excerpts of both the Bruch and the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante are included in the four CD's included with the book (remastered by Michael Bishop and Robert Friedrich of Five/Four Productions.
Larry
