Diana Tishchenko Re-visited

I had a re-listen to the CD by Diana Tishchenko. I was enthusiastic the first time round; I am enthusiastic on subsequent listenings. What greatly impresses me on this CD is that I find my listening is concentrated on the music, not on the violin playing. The playing takes care of itself; technically immaculate and, as a friend remarked, her violin makes a lovely sound, but she does not thrust the sound in your face, as many violinists do. In the Ravel sonata, she does not ham-up the blues movement, and in the third Enescu sonata, she does not ham-up the Romanian folk element.

Maybe I was a little too lukewarm about the pianist, Zoltan Fejervari last time. He and Tishchenko play beautifully together and it's a good partnership. For a change, the recorded balance between piano and violin -- always a difficult one -- is excellent, with the pianissimo high passages in harmonics in the Enescu sonata clearly audible, for once. My only sniff is about the silly title for the CD: Strangers in Paris would have made some sort of sense, but Strangers in PARadISe just looks cheesy.