Music: Wait Till You Hear Kogan

TIME

January 27, 1958 12:00 AM GMT-5

When the Boston Symphony toured Russia two years ago, the members of the string section heaped praise on Russian Violinist David Oistrakh, who had played with the orchestra during his U.S. tour. Russian musicians countered with a standard response: wait until you hear Leonid Kogan. In Manhattan’s Carnegie Hall last week Violinist Kogan turned up with the Boston to demonstrate what his countrymen were talking about.

When he threaded his way through the orchestra, his 1707 Stradivarius at his side, 5 ft. 5 in. Violinist Kogan looked as though he could never work his short arms through the pyrotechnic bowings the music called for. But when he started to play Brahms’s Violin Concerto, he proved that, like the other Soviet soloists who have visited the U.S. since the war, he had all the technique he needed and some to spare. The familiar music poured from his bow in purling, honey-sweet ribbons of sound. His inflections were a marvel of etched sensitivity, his pianissimos feathery light, his fortissimos bold and clear, with no hint of blurring. Kogan played the concerto with no apparent effort, smiled shyly to a thunderous ovation, which brought both audience and orchestra to their feet. Said he modestly: “The piece has plenty of technical difficulties to entertain the audience.”

Violinist Kogan, 33, started tangling with technical difficulties as a seven-year-old prodigy in Dnepropetrovsk, was soon tagged as a good cultural investment, entered the Moscow Conservatory to study under Abram Yampolsky. In 1951 he burst spectacularly on the international musical scene by winning Belgium’s Queen Elisabeth Concours against the best young talent of the West. Now married to Elizabeth Gilels, younger sister of famed Pianist Emil Gilels and a fine violinist in her own right, Kogan is something of a musical hero in Russia. To the impressed men of the Boston string section last week, he seemed to lack some of the interpretive maturity of 49-year-old Violinist Oistrakh (with whom he studied briefly), but all agreed that Kogan was playing in the same rarefied league. “He’s among the top alltime performers on the instrument,” said Concertmaster Richard Burgin. “He ranks with the best.”

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