According to Ates Tanin’s notes, Leonid Kogan and his brother-in-law, Emil Gilels, played together in Moscow and elsewhere, yet they never recorded anything in the...

According to Ates Tanin’s notes, Leonid Kogan and his brother-in-law, Emil Gilels, played together in Moscow and elsewhere, yet they never recorded anything in the studio. DOREMI has made available three Beethoven Violin Sonatas from one of their live performances. The engineers seem to have placed the microphones close to the players—but closer to Kogan than to Gilels. Kogan’s sound may be all the edgier as a result, but the proximity also magnifies already colossal Beethoven: stormy even in the Third Sonata, thunderous in the “Spring” (the Scherzo’s trio spawns a virtual tornado), and volcanic in the “Kreutzer.” Some have dismissed Kogan as a bland technician, conceding that his technical wizardry’s worthy to be mentioned in the same breath as Heifetz’s and Milstein’s but insisting that he didn’t project the same kind of individuality. Those detractors might do well to listen to him playing Beethoven violin sonatas with Gilels. Although the earlier works (and even the “Kreutzer” itself) may be designated as sonatas for piano and violin, Kogan holds the stage as though he were playing the Violin Concerto. Yet Gilels swells in stature to such a magnitude that he simply can’t be overwhelmed. Engineering alone could never have accounted for this effect. Sometimes, as in the “Spring” Sonata and in the “Kreutzer” Sonata’s theme and variations, the close miking gives the impression that the duo never relaxes; and there may be some truth in that observation. But the “Kreutzer” ’s final adrenaline-drenched cadence having arrived, there’s little temptation to quibble. Anne-Sophie Mutter tried to introduce a novel, strongly personal view of Beethoven (in both the sonatas and the Concerto) and produced instead a reflection that many will not find cogent. David Oistrakh’s performances of the work that I’ve heard, though profoundly and powerfully conceived, don’t generate Kogan and Gilels’s crackling voltage. Among the great violinists of the preceding generation, perhaps Francescatti came closest to the sheer energy of these readings. But even after the effects of the unusually close recording and the potentiating effect of the live audience (which must have inspired both Kogan and Gilels) have been filtered out, the residual supercharge could light a city for a year.

It’s tempting to conclude that these wouldn’t be optimal choices for anyone who doesn’t already know the works, but that caution would undervalue the ability of the program’s sheer communicative power to attract new devotees to Beethoven, to the violin sonatas, or even to music in general. Acquisition of DOREMI’s re-mastering, therefore, should be as urgent a priority for those who know nothing as for those who know everything; it should be especially attractive to those who wish to experience Beethoven in the pit of the stomach.

Robert Maxham, FANFARE