concert Leonid Kogan plays Beethoven's Violin Concerto Orchestre national de l'ORTF, Louis de Froment

Thibaud was right. But death, which took Leonid Kogan at the age of fifty-eight in a train accident, prevented him from fulfilling all of his dreams of music. Insatiable, not to say bulimic, Kogan lives several lives: those of a performer of chamber music, a concert violinist (he is able to play as many as three concertos per concert), an explorer of new repertoires (he is the first Soviet violinist to play the concertos of Berg, Barber and Jolivet), a family man (he is married to the sister of Emil Gilels) and of a... car collector!

To live such a life, Kogan, a Jew in the USSR under Stalin, had to overcome many obstacles. His First Prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Belgium, with David Oïstrakh and Jacques Thibaud in the Jury, opens doors for him. In 1955, he makes his debut in London and Paris before triumphing in the United States with the Brahms Violin Concerto conducted by Pierre Monteux in Boston: the public give him a ten-minute ovation.

In 1966, Leonid Kogan is in Paris and interprets Beethoven's Concerto for violin and orchestra in D Major with the National Orchestra of the ORTF conducted by Louis de Froment: first of all it is the purity of his sound that appeals, then the extreme elegance of his playing and his contained sensibility. After the Beethovian fresco Kogan follows with a representation of Bach's Partita n°2 in D Minor, offered as an encore to the audience.

A way of measuring the perfect balance attained here by this prince of the violin.