KREISLER: VIOLIN MUSIC, VOLUMES 1 & 2 - Oscar Shumsky, William Wolfram, Milton Kaye

Shumsky Kreisler Liner Notes

As to sequence and order of presentation, the two main divisions of Kreisler's output are: the original works and the transcriptions. These groupings can be further subdivided into the "Viennese" category and those works which were attributed tosuch composers as Pugnani, Couperin, Padre Martini, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach and others. (This latter innocent deception need not be gone into at this point, save to mention that when the "plot" was uncovered, it caused a minor scandal throughout the music world of the '30s.) The transcriptions seem to congregate most happily into ethnic divisions relating to the birth- places of the composers (Russian, German, Spanish, etc.). There are also natural groupings by violinist-composers (Paganini, Wieniawski) and pianist-composers (Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Paderewski, Godowsky), as well as a few examples of pieces by friends - American Vice President (under Coolidge) Dawes, and the theater organist Elmer Owens, for whom I am quite sure that Kreisler rendered far more than mere yeoman service in his recompositions.