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 than names in old musical encyclopedias.

Such, at least, must be the verdict on perhaps the most ambitious set of CD reissues of old violin recordings yet released. Assembled by Pearl, the well-known reissuer of 78 RPM originals, these six CDs[3]contain the playing of no fewer than ninety-five violinists. These artists range in time from Joseph Joachim (1831-1907), who as a child came under the personal tutelage of Mendelssohn, to Jascha Heifetz (1901-1987), who was more responsible than any other individual for the state of violin playing today. On these discs are all the other fabled violinists, artists such as Fritz Kreisler (1875-1962), Jacques Thibaud (1880-1953), Bronislaw Huberman (1882-1947), Efrem Zimbalist (1889-1985), Mischa Elman (1891-1967), Zino Erancescatti (b. 1902),