Leonid Kogan plays Beethoven's Violin Concerto in 1966

Gone too early, the Russian prince of the violin recorded in Paris a memorable performance of a Beethoven concerto.

As a child, young Leonid could not go to sleep without his father Boris, a professional photographer and amateur violinist, coming to play for him. Fascinated by the sound of the instrument, he also wants to play and his father teaches him the rudiments. At the age of ten, he attends the classes at the Moscow Conservatory of Abraham Yampolsky, a disciple of the famous pedagogue Leopold Auer. For him to do so, his parents had to move with him from Ukraine to Moscow. He makes very rapid progress and in 1936, the violinist Jacques Thibaud, on a visit to Moscow, predicts a prodigious future for him.