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FRITZ KREISLER
Budapest Strings · Béla Bánfalvi
For decades, Fritz Kreisler left the music world under the
misapprehension that he had found compositions by Cartier, Couperin, Dittersdorf,
Padre Martini, Porpora, Pugnani, Stamitz or Vivaldi in monasteries and castle archives and arranged these himself for violin and piano. He left questions as to the original sources unanswered. A number of friends knew all about how the public had been misled, but did not consider this to be deceitful or ruthless and had kept quiet: Efrem Zimbalist, Jascha Heifetz, Georges Enescu, and chiefly Kreisler's accompaniment on the piano, Franz Rupp, were some of these.. For they all knew the nature of this charming, almost casually relaxed violinist, who, for David Oistrach, was the "summit of violin art“. At sixty, he then publicly and freely admitted that he had played a superb joke around thirty years before: he had concealed most of his own works behind the names of masters of the 17th and 18th centuries (he had generously omitted to draw the royalties payable to the author). The piano-accompanied miniatures (arranged here for strings) which caused offence to many a duped critic sixty years ago are part of the relaxing "Encores" of every great violinist today.
