There are not too many violinists whose violinistic voice one can recognise within seconds; Heifetz, Rabin, Kreisler and Elman come immediately to mind, and then one has to think a bit. It was good to hear Mischa Elman again this evening, in a BBC studio recital from 1961 when he was 70 years old. Immediately one smiles at the plaintive sound of his violin, and the deliberate articulation with his bow. Technically he was all there even at this age, and it's good to have this additional souvenir of him. Elman always complained about the fact that he found it difficult to get recording contracts; his sound was too dated, and too out of fashion. The first recording I have by him dates from 1906. The last from 1966. His playing didn't change much over those 60 years. I have always had a soft spot for Mischa Elman and his link with the old fiddler way of playing back in the Russian lands in the nineteenth century. His rendition here of Vitali's Chaconne is an object lesson in violin technique. The recording quality is surprisingly mediocre for its date; the German radio networks did a lot better than this much earlier on.