I seem to have mastered the art of preparing and cooking baby squid. Delicious! And my twelve bottles of pinot noir d' Alsace (Majestic, Cirencester) turn out to be excellent. The gastronomic front looks good. Listened to Grigori Feyghin playing the Myaskovsky violin concerto. This really is a worth edition to the long list of 20th century violin concertos. Feyghin plays brilliantly, à la Oistrakh. Not much individuality, but plenty of technique and a good sound. Also, obviously, thoroughly in tune with the music. Perhaps the new generation will take up Myaskovsky (as has Repin) along with the violin concertos of Britten, Dvorak and others.

A really marvellous performance of the Brahms Violin Concerto from Janine Jansen (recorded off-air). She really is my kind of violinist! Enthusiastic, musical, and no-holds-barred. She doesn't draw attention to her lovely violin, nor to her beautiful sound but just gets on and plays like the devil. A superb performance. Only drawback is the sing-along baritone (presumably Richard Hickox, the conductor) who really does detract from Jansen's performance. Shoot him !
However, Janine Jansen certainly joins Elisabeth Batiashvili and Akiko Suwanai on my young female violinist rostrum. A major talent.

On a second hearing, I was much impressed with the début CD of Jack Liebeck (with Katya Apekisheva on the piano). One of an interesting new generation of performers. On the CD he plays the second Prokofiev sonata, Chausson's Poème (impressive and not plagued by slow playing), Saint-Saën's first sonata, and Ysaÿe's third unaccompanied sonata. A most enjoyable recital. As I have said before: violin playing seems to be in safe hands. And Liebeck, thank goodness, does not endulge in the constant "fat", rich tone that so many violinists of the Russian-American-Israeli school appear to think is de rigeur.

Very much enjoyed the violin playing of Andreas Röhn this weekend. On his DG "Début" CD, the Handel sonata is exceptional; not baroque playing, thank goodness, but highly intelligent and with an excellent feeling for dance rhythms. Then on to Spohr's Gesangszena concerto (No.8) a work that challenges intelligence and the ability to vary tone, volume and colour. No one does it quite like Heifetz, of course. But Röhn -- like Hilary Hahn -- is pretty enjoyable. The world is certainly rich in violinists.
Otherwise, it was a good double Richter CD (Chopin, Debussy, Scriabin, Prokofiev, etc). Still enjoying the G minor violin concerto of Otar Taktakishvili. Quite as good as Britten, Walton etc -- and better than many. Lots of moules marinières to eat, and a large crab. Good weekend.

Enjoyable re-listen to the F minor violin concerto by Otar Taktakishvili (probably Number 2, dating from 1976, but I must investigate. CD copy from Carlos). Highly capable soloist was Liana Isakadze (Georgia). Not all the Soviet music written and performed 1920-90 was dross. The Taktakishvili is a mixture of Mahler and Rimsky-Korsakov. Enjoyable to sit back and listen to.
Before that, I had basked once again in Patrizia Ciofi and Joyce Di Donato in Handel's opera duets. Bliss! And listened once again to Mendelssohn's Op 80 quartet, which is rapidly becoming one of my "fetish" works. From the heart, to the heart, to paraphrase Beethoven.
Weekend rounded off with an excellent dover sole, plus a rich casserole of ox tale. All is well, for the moment !

Handel and Franck / Fauré. First it was sheer bliss to listen to Patrizia Ciofi and Joyce Di Donato singing duets from Handel operas (Virgin Veritas, new release). Handel soars and dives and enchants. This really is a CD to take to Heaven (or elsewhere) with me.
Followed by the elusive Lola Bobescu (with Jacques Genty) in the Franck sonata and the first Fauré sonata. One can only boggle at the fact that semi-contemporaries such as Isaac Stern had great and glorious careers while Bobescu (who was his equal technically and his superior musically) hung around on the edges of a Belgian / Japanese career. Like Ciofi and Di Donato in Handel, Bobescu soars and dives. I must find more of her recordings. Hard to get.
Nachspeisen were Sherry Kloss playing arrangements and transcriptions (on Heifetz's own Tononi violin). CD courtesy of Carlos. Highly enjoyable. A shame no one has really taken on the large-scale arrangement work of Kreisler and Heifetz in the violin world. Anyway; well done Ms Kloss. And the violin sounds just as good as it did back in 1917 on Heifetz's original recordings.

This weekend it was Otto Klemperer again; he seems to be becoming my House Conductor. This time it was the 1957 concerts with Claudio Arrau at the Royal Festival Hall, and the piano concertos Nos. 3, 4 and 5 (I was actually in the audience in September 1957 for the fourth concerto!)
I am perfectly happy with these performances and recordings. Don't need any others. Somewhat to my surprise, I particularly enjoyed the third concerto. In the fourth concerto, the orchestral sound is a bit backward. But good, evergreen classics.

Gloroius Bernard Haitink! At 75 years old, his 3 September Promenade concert with the Dresden Staatskapelle Orchestra saw an exemplary performance of Mozart's Jupiter symphony, and a truly marvellous performance of Bruckner's 7th symphony. Listening to this Bruckner performance, it is quite clear that the work demands an orchestra with the sonorities of Central Europe, and a conductor who concentrates on the paragraphs rather on than the sentences. A great, classic account. It's fortunate I captured it on CD.

Another Britten violin concerto! This time played by Frank Peter Zimmermann (broadcast March 2004 from Paris, courtesy of Ronald de Haas). Confirms my love of this concerto. I had never really considered Zimmermann before, but he is revealed here as a major violinist. His encore, Paganini's variations on God Save the King reveals quite incredible virtuosity (unlike the Ricci live recording I have of the piece, with intonation there all over the place).
I must brush up on Zimmerman recordings. I have him playing the Beethoven concerto (with Jeffrey Tate) but it never really registered. Goodness only knows how I am going to find it, in the bowels of my collection, somewhere.

This evening was Akiko Suwanai evening. She really is a very fine violinist -- perhaps the current violinist I would take to a desert island with me. Impeccable technique, of course, but also a passionate and highly intelligent player. I listened to her in three Wieniawski pieces, in Rachmaninov's Vocalise, in Walton's violin concerto, and in Prokofiev's second concerto (the latter two with Sakari Oramo).

Confirmed my view that I don't really like the Walton concerto (the Britten concerto of the same year is turning out to be very much superior). Walton is clever, with great craftmanship. But it's not a work of passion, feeling or expression. A bit like a violinistic Façade.

Started the evening with Sibelius (first symphony in 1952 with Anthony Collins, with my father in the LSO's double bass section). Also took in the fifth symphony (Colin Davis). But the evening belonged to Akiko.

Thoroughly enjoyable performance of Britten's violin concerto from Theo Olof and John Barbirolli (1948, and first recording of the work before it was revised in 1950). For some peculiar reason, Britten seems to have vetoed its issue, so it didn't hit the streets until over 50 years later. An excellent performance (and a perfectly decent recording rescued from 78 rpm test pressing by EMI). Olof was a considerable violinist. Another mystery; why did he not achieve worldwide fame?

Not a good Sunday evening. I listened to Leila Josefowicz playing the Bach B minor sonata (with piano) and found it somewhat skimmed over. The performance of Bach's violin works appears to be undergoing something of a crisis, as classical violinists abandon one school of practice and haven't yet found another that does justice to this music. Too fast, too superficial, no love. From the Josefowicz disc (off-air of a Wigmore Hall concert in April of this year) I found myself preferring John Adams' Road Movies piece.
Then on to Herbert von Karajan in 1949 with Brahms' German Requiem. I don't think I have ever really liked this piece (except for the alle Fleisch movement). And I didn't like it much here, either, though Elisabeth Schwarzkopf sings beautifully during her small amount of music. Most of the stuff is choral, however.
Then Shostakovich's fifth symphony (Rostropovich conducting the LSO in a recent off-air recording). I love so much of Shostakovich's music. But I really struggle with the symphonies. I think that I like him best in more intimate music -- the second piano trio, the piano quintet, the string quartets, the first violin concerto. I didn't enjoy the fifth symphony and suspect it will now remain on the shelf for a good long time.

After my recent disappointment with Nina Beilina, it was good to be able to wax lyrical about a new (2004) Arte Nova solo CD from Mirijam Contzen. Contzen's playing holds the interest, with a truly excellent dynamic range, a lightness of bowing and a quite extraordinary accuracy of intonation that shows itself in some exemplary double stopping. She plays Bach (E major sonata), Bartok solo sonata, and the fourth Ysaye sonata. In Bach, the Beilina disc showed some of the drawbacks of the "Russian" school, with its high coefficient of solidity and sonority. Contzen is a product of Tibor Varga, and her sensitivity and tonal variety show one of the strengths of the "Central European" school. An excellent CD (and cheap, too!)

Listened to Nina Beilina playing Bach (public performances from 1989). She was Russian -- Moscow Conservatory -- but now seems to be based in New York. Russians appear rarely to be successful in Bach (Milstein was one exception). Beilina sounds goods and plays accurately, of course. But for 63 minutes everything appears to be played mezzoforte; I have rarely heard so little in the way of varied dynamics. Not a CD I shall be spinning often. The largo of the D minor concerto for two violins is taken as andante con moto, and this is a pity. In general, "historically informed performance" style has ruined so much Bach playing by mainstream violinists who sacrifice classical violin playing without gaining some of the advantages of the baroque violin. Disc came to me from the US in exchange for a copy of my much-in-demand Boris Goldstein CD of the three Brahms violin & piano sonatas.

A thoroughly enjoyable recital by the exhilarating Magdalena Kozena (Radio 3, Wigmore Hall) made a good pair of CDs (86 minutes). I am not normally a fan of particular singers, but I will always make an exception for Kozena. She has a lovely voice but, more importantly, her singing sounds both intelligent and natural. Her recital embraced Kozeluch, Schumann, Moussorgsky, Janacek, Debussy, Novak and Mahler. Well worth recording and listening to.

I am becoming increasingly fond of the violin concerto by Benjamin Britten. I really cannot understand why it is not played or recorded more often. The 2004 off-air performance by Janine Jansen (BBC Orchestra, Gianandrea Nosada) seems to me exemplary: suptle, melodic, passionate and played with zest and conviction. It's a complex concerto and needs concentrated and frequent hearings. But it repays the effort. As the saying goes: it is rarely off my turntable at the moment. I also have a 1961 recording by Bronislaw Gimpel that I must hear again. But it didn't seem to leave much impression the first time I heard it. Jansen, however, is something else.

As a long time follower of James Ehnes, it was good to find a new recording from him that I really enjoyed. Usually, he has impressed with his incredible and effortless technique, but there has often been something missing, for me. His new Smetana / Dvorak / Janacek CD is superb, however. The music moves; no lovingly stretched out sections that bog things down. Ehnes has an excellent and appropriately wide dynamic range for this music, and there are plenty of nuances of colour. The phrasing is usually excellent, though I might query the fourth of the Dvorak Four Romantic Pieces. Although his playing of these four pieces doesn't quite pip Akiko Suwanai, his version is right up there with hers. And his Janacek sonata is also good.

Kippers, koftas and Château de Belle-Coste rosé. Not bad. Then Camilla Wicks in Wieniawski, Ravel and Kreisler, plus Oistrakh and Haitink in the Prokofiev first violin concerto, a CD rescued from the anonymous morgue. Listened to the new off-air recording of Vadim Repin playing the Tchaikovsky violin concerto (yet again -- LSO, Rostropovich). A typical good recording. Listened to Albert Spalding in 1948 playing -- carefully -- Bach, Corelli, Chausson, etc. Neat, careful, immaculate. I can't help feeling that Spalding's main claim to fame was that he was the first American to be able to play the violin. Good fruit season -- rasberries, pineapple, apricots, peaches. My pile of "to be listened to" CDs is shaming me. Time for a little brutality.