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The Russian violinist, Oleg Moiseyevich Kagan (Russian: Оле́г Моисе́евич Кага́н), worn in Sakhalin, and brought up in Riga following his family's relocation to the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1953. He began studying at the Latvian State Conservatory in Riga at age 8 under Joachim Braun; 5 years later, he was taken to Moscow by the well-known violinist Boris Kuznetsov to study at the Central Music School and upon Kuznetsov's death, he began studying with David Oistrakh at the same institute; the completed his his training at the Moscow Conservatory. During the 1960's, he won top-five prizes at the several important competition: 4th Prize at Enescu Competion Bucharest (1964); 1st Prize at 1st International Jean Sibelius Violin Competition in Helsinki (1965); 2nd Prize at International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow (1967); and 1st Prize at Bach Competition in Leipzig (1968).
Then Oleg Kagan began touring as a soloist with orchestras, a recitalist, and a chamber music artist. In 1969, he began playing chamber music with Sviatoslav Richter. He developed a highly eclectic repertoire, from Baroque (J.S. Bach, Antonio Vivaldi), through Classical (J. Haydn, W.A. Mozart, L.v. Beethoven) and Romantic (Schubert, Felix Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Johannes Brahms, Robert Schumann, Grieg, Camille Saint-Saëns) works to 20th century masterpieces (Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Jean Sibelius, Paul Hindemith, Olivier Messiaen, Anton Webern, Alban Berg, Igor Stravinsky, Dmitri Shostakovich, Karol Szymanovsky, Nikolai Medtner, Sergei Prokofiev, Fritz Kreisler, César Franck) and contemporary Russian music (Alfred Schnittke, Vasily Lobanov, Sofia Gubaidulina, Edison Denisov). Fortunately most of these are documented on record. With Leonid Kogan, Tatiana Grindenko, Alfred Schnittke and others he was involved in performances of music deemed ‘un-Soviet’ by the Ministry of Culture, often in remote locations. In more mainstream repertoire his collaborations with the pianist Sviatoslav Richter and the cellist Natalia Gutman, his wife, were especially well received.
A keen exponent of W.A. Mozart, Oleg Kagan recorded a rich and thoughtful performance of the K. 378 Sonata in 1974 that also testifies to Sviatoslav Richter’s chamber music prowess, accompanying and inter-weaving with Kagan in a consummately sensitive manner. The duo also recorded Johannes Brahms's Op. 78 Sonata eleven years later, but this a less unified performance with a ponderous slow movement.
In 20th-century music Oleg Kagan excels on record. This includes the Sibelius Violin Concerto (live at the 1965 Sibelius Competition) which testifies to conventions of the time, being rather fast, somewhat inflexible in tempo and yet tightly-wound and restless - the finale is especially exhilarating. His famous 1985 Alban Berg's Violin Concerto ("To the memory of an angel") recording exhibits his well-known love for this work. There is an aptly distant quality to the opening with a delicacy of texture from both Kagan and the Wiener Symphoniker, rendering the nightmarishly Expressionist gestures later in the movement even more effective and arresting. The drama at the opening of the second movement is highlighted by Kagan’s expressive manipulations of tone, such as a degree of extempore sul ponticello. This sympathy with compositional nuance is mirrored in his performance of Szymanovsky’s Mythes (1982), whilst his 1984 Messiaen's Quatuor pour le fin du temps (from the 1984 Kuhmo Festival) shows a certain vulnerability where appropriate, even if some of Kagan’s rather wide vibrati on accentual notes constitute gestures of saccharine decadence in a work of such astringent and esoteric aspirations.
Oleg Kagan also appeared frequently with the pianist Vasily Lobanov, who would later dedicate a piece to him. Kagan and Lobanov recorded all of Tchaikovsky’s violin and piano works at Finland’s Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival in 1989, of which the Op. 42 Souvenir d’un lieu cher stands out. The earliest recording of the third piece (Mélodie) was by the originator of much modern Russian violin practice, Leopold Auer, in 1920. Kagan follows suit with careful consideration: a constant but not excessive vibrato but, of course, no discernible portamenti, which means that Tchaikovsky’s regular widely-spaced leaps make less sense than they would have done in a performance of his own time. Nonetheless, there is lightness in Kagan's Mélodie with some quasi-flautando bowing, suitably contrasted with a tidy and percussive Scherzo.
As Oleg Kagan seemed to be approaching the zenith of his career he became seriously ill with cancer in 1989. He had several surgeries, but struggled to remain active, touring Europe when he could and arranging festivals. Though his doctors at a hospital in Lübeck, Germany declared him too sick to be released, Kagan discharged himself to appear at his final festival, in Kreuth am Tegernsee, Bavaria. Shortly after giving two W.A. Mozart concerts there, where he had to be helped on-stage, he died on July 15, 1990, not yet 44.
Although Oleg Kagan’s basic sound world seems unremarkable from today’s perspective, it is the energy and vitality he brought to performances of twentieth-century music that will be missed the most, in a tragically curtailed career. |
