Rubinstein - Violin Concerto in G / Cui - Suite Concertante for Violin and Orch

"Once again these characterful but still woefully under-represented works impress in a program that, back in the mid-1980s (when both performances first appeared) seemed to denote a key strand of the Naxos agenda--to provide rare or previously un-recorded repertoire at bargain price. Works for violin and orchestra by Rubinstein and Cui, played by Takako Nishizaki (wife of Naxos supremo Klaus Heymann) feature on this reissue, and they sound as fresh and vital as they did back then...here's a well-schooled performance, full of agreeable touches of imagination (the Andante shows Nishizaki's fine-spun tone to particularly good effect) delivered with crisply economical urgency that makes good musical sense even of the work's plainer and less idiomatic passages...A warm welcome back to the catalog for both works!"
- Classics Today (Michael Jameson) May 20, 2001


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As a child, Takako Nishizaki studied with her father, Shinji, the co-founder of the Suzuki Method and with Shinichi Suzuki himself.She was the first student to complete the now famous Suzuki course and was awarded a teacher's diploma at the tender age of nine.

She started performing in public at age 5 and, before she was 10, had already played for artists such as Isaac Stern and Sir Malcolm Sargent as well as the French author, Georges Duhamel, who wrote about this experience in his book about Japan.

Subsequently, she studied with Broadus Earle and Hideo Saito at Toho Conservatory in Tokyo. In 1964 she went to the United States and first studied with Broadus Earle at Yale and then with Joseph Fuchs at Juilliard. Other teachers at the time included Louis Persinger (sonata classes) and Aldo Parisot (chamber music).

While at Juilliard, Takako Nishizaki was awarded the Fritz Kreisler Scholarship, established by the great violinist himself. Among her sponsors was Alice Tully.