1951/3 recording

Gioconda De Vito, one of the great violinists of her time, was considered a Brahms specialist.The only written evidence to date of her work with Ferenc Fricsay and the RIAS Orchestra is the above mentioned quote. Precisely this collaboration was captured in a superb monaural recording by the RIAS broadcasting company in Berlin - a stroke of luck, for De Vito had an aversion to the recording studio. The recording reveals all of Gioconda De Vito's strengths. She unfolds a large, singing tone, at once brilliantly radiant and warm.This accurate, crisply recorded performance by the RIAS-Symphonie-Orchester under Fricsay also brings out the very deliberate rhythmic organisation with which she shaped her cantilenas.

"Her performance of the Brahms Violin Concerto in the early 1950s, under Ferenc Fricsay, was pervaded by a delicate lyricism and a romantic sorcery rarely encountered elsewhere." Joachim Hartnack [contemporary critic]