Rehearing yesterday’s violinists

Perhaps the chief unintended benefit to music lovers of the CD revolution has been the recent profusion of discs containing excellent digital transfers of pre-1950 78 RPM recordings. The first beneficiary of these new-old CDs was the extraordinary vocalism of the great age of singing in the first thirty years of our century.[1] Now, it seems to be the turn of the great violinists of the recorded past.[2] English specialty labels, as always alert to the glories to be found on 78s, are currently making available samples of the playing of worthy violinists, all of whom were famous in their day and remain somewhat familiar in the present; many more of the violinists newly available on CD seem destined to remain nothing more...