Henryk Szeryng - Henryk Szeryng plays violin concertos (The SWR Recordings 1956 - 1984)

The 50s, the 60s and the beginning of the 70s were Szeryng�s golden era. Maybe the short time-span of his international career was the reason for his posthumous fame lasting not so long as that of his great colleagues David Oistrach, Yehudi Menuhin, Nathan Milstein or Isaac Stern. It was just a few years ago that his musical legacy was re-discovered and appreciated again. This precious 5-CD-box contributes to that. Szeryng�s performances of Johann Sebastian Bach�s solo works were deemed to be standard-setting (an assessment still shared by Hilary Hahn) and he was respected as the leading authority on works such as Beethoven�s and Brahms� concertos. Szeryng was not only one of the most impressive and brilliant violinists in music history but also a master of proper and tasteful balance. A special gem is the Saarbr�cken recording of Karol Szymanowski�s rarely performed Violin Concerto No.2, a piece composed at the beginning of the 1930s. In this recording with Stanislaw Skrowaczewski (1978) Szeryng made this work a real masterpiece of Polish origin. (Henryk Szeryng also was originally Polish.)