Prokofiev, Sergei, and Dmitri Shostakovich. Violin Concerto No. 1; Violin Concerto No. 1. Daniel Matejča, vn.; Tomáš Netopil, cond.; Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra. Supraphon 4370, 2025. WAV download, 44.1 kHz/16-bit, 56:42. https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/artists/9343/browse
A 20-year-old Czech violinist walks into the studio to record two of the hardest, most psychologically freighted violin concertos of the twentieth century. The reasonable expectation is: impressive for his age, a name to watch. What you actually get is something else. In the Prokofiev No. 1, Matejča refuses to load on the Russian schmaltz—no thick-gravied Sternian portamento, none of the heavy nationalist accent that turns this gorgeous, slippery score into a folk pageant. Instead it’s lean, quicksilver, bitingly witty where Prokofiev wants wit and genuinely sinister where Prokofiev plants his poisoned darts. Conductor Tomáš Netopil and the Prague Radio Symphony are in complete lockstep, which matters because this music depends on a clockwork synchrony between soloist and pit.
The Shostakovich No. 1 is where you hold your breath. Oistrakh owns this concerto the way Ruth owned home runs—he helped edit the solo part, premiered it, and recorded it with Mitropoulos in 1956 in a performance that has functioned as the benchmark for sixty-nine years. Strong competitors have come along (Batiashvili, Khachatryan, Skride’s fascinatingly cool outsider reading), but none has closed the gap with Oistrakh by this much. Matejča plays the opening Nocturne with a haunted, out-of-body remove—not Oistrakh’s total immersion but something stranger and arguably more frightening, a ghost reporting from the scene rather than a survivor reliving it. The Scherzo is not entertainment; it is animatronic terror. The Passacaglia builds its dread with extraordinary patience, and the cadenza—taken slower than usual, tension ratcheted up by degrees until the rapid-fire eruption—is simply staggering. The velocity, the intonation, the absolute coordination of fingers and bow at that speed: you don’t believe it while it’s happening. In 2025, Oistrakh has company. A
Reviewed March 2025.
