Essential Historical Recordings

Pablo Casals was a towering figure in the history of cello playing—at once artist, exponent, exemplar, and liberator.

The French violinist Ginette Neveu was 30 when her plane crashed in the Azores. Conductor Eugene Ormandy called her "one of the greatest interpreters on the violin of our time.”

His repertoire was enormous, comprising practically every major piece written for the instrument, but certain Heifetz recordings are especially iconic.

For the first half of the twentieth century, the Frenchman Jacques Thibaud (1880-1953) was one of the world’s most beloved violin soloists.

For several decades in the mid-twentieth century, Piatigorsky was the cello’s greatest international star.

In a mid-twentieth-century music world dominated by male stars, Morini, a woman steeped in more sober Central European violin traditions, carved out a career as a top soloist.

Francescatti was one of the 20th century’s great soloists, with interpretations that were unfailingly gorgeous, often original, & never less than thrillingly virtuosic.

What Milstein brought to the music he performed was total clarity, when it came to both interpretive intent and violinistic articulation.

His playing is instantly recognizable for its rhythmic freedom, its heightened emotional engagement, and especially its extraordinary palette of colors.

Together, Joseph and Lillian fostered the culture of chamber music in America, in particular elevating the violin-viola duo repertoire.

What most shaped Szigeti’s career were more human characteristics: integrity, curiosity, and sheer dedication to the hard work of practicing.

Menuhin scaled the most exalted artistic heights, producing tones of unparalleled purity and nobility from his fiddle. Said Einstein upon hearing him, “Now I know there is a God in heaven."

By Sasha Margolis Zara Nelsova was born to play the cello—almost literally. The woman who, in the 1950s, would be dubbed “Queen of the Cello” and come to be celebrated for her voluminous, molten-gold tone, started life as the missing…

Oistrakh was one of the most-recorded violinists of all time; as with Heifetz, half the violin repertoire could be included among his essential recordings.

The English quartet, humorously nicknamed the “Wolf-gang,” was intimately associated in the public imagination with the music of Viennese quartet masters.

With his virtuoso technique, richness of sound, and coloristic imagination, he was more than up to the job of establishing the viola as equal to its string siblings.

Blessed with subtle and spontaneous rhythmic instincts, he was also committed to the idea that performance should be a theatrical endeavor.

Four great jazz violinists were born int he first decade of the 20th century. Together they put jazz violin on the map, leaving an incredible legacy of recordings along the way.