In the acoustic era, recording the violin was always a challenge. Even as the technology improved, the results didn’t always work out the best. In the 1890s, very few recordings of the violin were commercially available, and its difficulty to reproduce caused this. It was often stated that Fred Hager’s first batch of violin recordings in 1898 were the first to be successfully reproduced and put on the market. The story of these and other early attempts at recording the instrument are fascinating.
If you go back to the very beginning of commercial recordings, around 1889, the violin wasn’t a high priority in terms of solo experimentation. Back in 1889, Edison and North American were recording some duets of violin and piano. The violinists were George Schweinfest and A.T. Van Winkle (one of the musicians in Edward Issler’s orchestra). These records have yet to surface. Despite that, they would in fact be the first commercial violin recordings. We have yet to know how successful they were.
It was also around the time these were recorded, that Schweinfest and Issler recorded piano duets. There certainly were some experimental recordings that date between the Issler records and the end of the decade. There likely are some violin parts on orchestras recording
