Michael Rabin was a virtuoso of the highest order, one of the most talented violinists of the twentieth century. A child prodigy, he performed in...

Michael Rabin was a virtuoso of the highest order, one of the most talented violinists of the twentieth century. A child prodigy, he performed in public for the first time aged only eleven. From the early 1950s, Rabin gave concerts across the globe and made numerous recordings, including the complete Paganini Caprices. He worked himself into a state of exhaustion, going through a crisis in the 1960s which temporarily compromised his playing. However, Rabin managed to recover and return to his former glory. These recordings, made by the RIAS and released here for the first time, document his comeback in an impressive manner. The live recording of Max Bruch's First Violin Concerto, made in the Berlin Philharmonie, is of particular interest as Rabin never made an LP recording of it. In the short virtuoso pieces, the violinist - who died at a tragically young age - demonstrates himself to have been a romantic virtuoso par excellence: he displays a sensuous tone and an enthralling technique.