Pheasant Quartet

Today sees the last of the quartet of pheasants I bought from the local butcher for £9.99 the four. Casseroled in a strong vegetable court-bouillon, with a couple of glasses of red wine, a few cloves, lots of thyme and bay leaves, salt, pepper, mushrooms, bacon. Pretty delicious. And that is the end of pheasants for six months or so, until they come back into season. Some of the world's cheapest food; four pheasants provide the meat for at least 12 meals.

Two Baroque Sopranos

Into my postbox came Anna Prohaska singing airs and arias by Vivaldi, Purcell, Handel and a couple of others. And Dorothee Mields singing Telemann arias. Two German sopranos, repertoire from a similar time period (late 17th century, early 18th – an excellent era in music). Prohaska is with a “baroque” orchestra directed by Jonathan Cohen; Mields with a similar group led by Michi Gaigg. One on Archiv Produktion. The other on Deutsche Harmonia Mundi.


Georg Philipp Telemann rose in my esteem once I discovered his vocal music (cantatas, and operas). Until recently, I had him pigeon-holed as old Herr Tafelmusik, but his arias are a different kettle of fish, and most attractive music. Ms Mields has a gentle, very feminine voice that fits the pieces on this CD like a glove. She also has splendid diction; if you lose your place in the texts in the booklet, it is easy to pick it up again. The Austrian band under Michi Gaigg makes a positive, thoroughly professional contribution. Listening to this CD is an excellent way to spend a Sunday morning.

Then on to Anna Prohaska. The Mields CD has two photos of the soprano; Ms Prohaska's has at least ten photos of its soprano, most in the guise of a wanton woodland nymph (for some reason or another, the disc is billed as “Enchanted Forest”). The vocal music of Handel and Purcell is always a sure-fire winner with me, though I am less keen on the two early verbose Italians tacked on to the end of the CD – Cavalli, and Monteverdi. My musical garden begins around the end of the 17th century with Purcell, and ends around 250 years later with Britten and Shostakovich. I have yards of Monteverdi's music in my collection, and it all sounds pretty much the same to my ears. Ms Prohaska's voice is more brilliant than Ms Mields and, recorded well forward as here, it can often sound rather strident. Playing the music at a volume where the soprano does not blow your socks off has the unfortunate effect of reducing much of the instrumental contribution to the background; the many violin solos by the ever-talented Stéphanie-Marie Degand (who leads the band) are very distant, a great pity in Purcell's “Oh let me weep”. I am also occasionally uneasy about Ms Prohaska's intonation, and her diction is not in the class of Dorothee Mields; lose your place in the text when Ms Prohaska is singing, and you are lost until the next aria.

So Dorothee goes on the “keep to hand” pile; Anna is filed on the shelf in the vocal compilation section.

Deborah Nemtanu

I recently enthused over the music of Camille Saint-Saëns (disc by Fanny Clamagirand). Suddenly I am faced with more Saint-Saëns, played this time by the unknown (to me) Deborah Nemtanu (with the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris conducted by Thomas Zehetmair, another fine violinist).

Nemtanu plays the well-known Introduction & Rondo Capriccioso, the first violin concerto, and an enchanting Romance, Opus 48. She also throws in Fauré's familiar Berceuse. The orchestra under Zehetmair plays the suite from Fauré's Pelléas et Mélisande. A lovely CD. Ms Nemtanu plays with intelligence, clarity and impeccable technique and has a real feeling for this music that is never vulgar, never trite, always tasteful. The violin is well recorded, the orchestra a little on the dim side. Another CD to keep near at hand for dipping into when I feel like a little dose of civilisation. We live in good (violinistic) times.

Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst

The 1930s, 50s and 60s were marvellous years for recording; for a few top artists, and for mainstream repertoire. Not so great if you were looking for Handel operas, or for the violin music of Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst. The music of Ernst is little known and has been much neglected. But he wrote large quantities of tuneful and enjoyable salon music for the violin – much like Pablo Sarasate in a later period – and I have enjoyed catching up with him, at last. Josef Spacek (who?) plays a thoroughly listenable selection of Ernst on a recent CD (Naxos, of course; what would lovers of the violin do without St Naxos?) Spacek is just right for this music, and is well recorded -- in Monmouth, like the recent Naxos CD of Fanny Clamagirand.

Julia Lezhneva

Reflecting recently on listening to Handel's Alessandro, I commented: “Of the two female rivals, Julia Lezhneva (Rossane) struck me as exceptional, with a voice that is attractive, accurate and that appears to mean what she is singing”.

Well, today the postgirl brought a new solo CD sung by Lezhneva, the 23 year old Russian from Sakhalin Island. What a voice! Few musicians in their early 20s, especially singers, can have had such an inpact. Ms Lezhneva goes on to my “auto-buy” list for the future, a list inhabited by few 23-year olds apart from Tianwa Yang.

Quibbles? I have the impression that the CD started with a concept: “we'll call it Alleluja, so we need four works for soprano ending with Alleluja”. Always bad to start with a concept, and then to hunt around to fill out the concept. The CD contains cantatas for solo soprano by Vivaldi, Handel, Porpora and Mozart. Of the four, only the Vivaldi could be classed as first-class music. The other three works are somwhat second class, including the motet by the 16-year old Mozart. That is the problem with starting with a concept. Four first-class works for soprano by Vivaldi, Handel, Porpora and Mozart present no great challenge; it's just when you stipulate they all have to end with Alleluja that the problems begin …

Almost certainly not Ms Lezhneva's fault; it's those loser modern marketing gurus again. Let me hope that next time Ms Lezhneva records, she gets to choose the music, and the marketing gurus just have to fit in with her choice

Fanny Clamagirand plays Saint-Saëns

Camille Saint-Saëns had a long life (1835-1921) and wrote a great deal of music of all types. His music is melodic, well-crafted and highly agreeable to listen to. No great emotional depths are explored; but so what? It is a bit ridiculous that apart from his “organ” symphony and a few other bits and pieces, his music rarely sees the light of day in the concert hall. I have just spent 68 enjoyable minutes listening to a CD recital of some of his music for violin and piano, including the 23 minute long first sonata that was a favourite of Jascha Heifetz (and is also a great favourite of mine). The violinist of my new Naxos CD is Fanny Clamagirand, not yet 30 and a violinist I have always liked. The world is pulsating with first-class young violinists (many of them female).

Ms Clamagirand plays the first sonata, and also offers ten other shorter pieces by Saint-Saëns, all of them good to hear. She plays extremely well and with obvious feeling for the music, and does not even wilt in comparison with Heifetz in the sonata, partly due to her excellent pianist, Vanya Cohen, and partly to the entirely admirable recording by “Producer, Engineer & Editor” John Taylor; balancing violin and piano, particularly in louder music, is no easy task, as countless failures demonstrate. All praise to Mr Taylor. I spend much time in this blog criticising recording balance. Good to be able to express satisfaction, for a change.

Another good Naxos, then. What a remarkable company, particularly for lovers of violin music. I find it difficult to understand why Saint-Saëns' music is not programmed more often. Could we not at least have the refreshing first violin and piano sonata, rather than yet another rendition of the Franck sonata / Kreutzer / Brahms / Ravel sonata?

Frank Peter Zimmermann and Enrico Pace in Bach

The set of six sonatas and partitas that Johann Sebastian Bach wrote for solo violin are well known, much played and recorded, and in the repertoire of every violinist of stature. The six sonatas for violin and keyboard BWV 1014-19 are less well known and less often played.With the solo works, the violinist does not share the spotlight with a pianist or an orchestra. With the duo sonatas, he or she has to play with a keyboard player, and play second fiddle much of the time, since the keyboard part is dominant in these works. Similarly, a keyboard player here has to share the limelight with a violinist.

I was intrigued last week when the BBC programme “Building a Library” picked Frank Peter Zimmermann and Enrico Pace as the top recommendation in the six duo sonatas; intrigued, since the BBC is usually ultra musically correct and follows fashions, and the Zimmermann-Pace set is with grand piano and non-baroque violin (a Stradivarius of roughly the same date as these sonatas).

I know these six sonatas pretty well, having played them often many decades ago when I lived in Germany (with an Australian pianist). I love the works, and really enjoyed the Zimmermann-Pace set. It is the only set I have without a harpsichord (an instrument to which I am not partial); to my ears, a harpsichord brings nothing to the works that one cannot have eight times more melodiously with a good pianist. There is music that is written for particular instruments, or instrumental combinations – most string quartets, for example, do not transfer to orchestral massed strings. Most of Bach's music outside the organ works does not seem to have been written with a particular instrumental colour or capability in mind; Bach rarely hesitated about borrowing his own, or other people's, works for different instrumental colours. Sitting back with J S Bach, Frank Peter Zimmermann and Enrico Pace, one is guaranteed an excellent 90 minutes or so of music. The recorded balance is correct for a change, with the piano being dominant, as the music requires. All the tempi sound fine to me, and the music has a strong element of dancing throughout.

It is regrettable that these duo sonatas are not better known. Within their 25 movements there are magnificent riches, and nothing is less than by a great composer. I love the solo violin works, but they do have their weaker sides: I have never felt that the three fugues are enjoyable and magnificent music (as opposed to major compositional and technical tours de force). The first partita can go on rather too long (especially as played a while ago by Lisa Batiashvili, who played deliberately and made every repeat it was possible to make – the piece lasted over half an hour. Milstein, when he played the first partita in public, wisely missed out all the repeats). And the final partita, after its brilliant prelude, can come over as everyday dance music of the early 18th century without too much originality.

Catherine Manoukian plays Elgar

The violin concerto by Edward Elgar has been a lucky one in the recording studio, with comparatively few really weak versions (excluding that by Igor Oistrakh, that I cannot take). My supreme favourite remains Albert Sammons recorded in 1929 (but with a somewhat indifferent Queen's Hall orchestra under Henry Wood).

My latest acquisition sees Catherine Manoukian playing the violin, with her husband, Stefan Solyom, conducting the Weimar Staatskapelle. Manoukian does well, and gives a nice performance. Her sound is “modern” with rich, seamless lines to her playing (why do so many modern violinists want to sound like clarinetists? Don't they realise that one reason there are so few concertos for woodwind, as opposed to strings or piano, is because super-suave tone can pall after a few minutes?)

The main problem with this recording, however, is that it sounds very much like a “concerto for violin, with orchestra”. The soloist is recorded well forward. The orchestra sounds somewhat in the background, and the two never really dialogue as in “concerto for violin and orchestra”. The last movement cadenza, in particular, suffers from the soloist's forward balance; there is none of the mystery and lightness that the cadenza usually portrays. The Elgar concerto ideally needs a good, on-the-ball orchestra, a supreme soloist, a good rapport between soloist and conductor, and a good recorded balance. One reason I really like Thomas Zehetmair with the Hallé Orchestra under Mark Elder. Ms Manoukian joins the ranks of the many fine versions that do not quite make the top echelon.

Clara Haskil and Arthur Grumiaux

“And of course there is also Arthur Grumiaux” ends practically every survey of the peak of violin recordings. Grumiaux was not a great international traveller but, from his base in Belgium, he made innumerable recordings for the Dutch Philips company. Almost all his recordings are truly excellent, above all when it comes to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and the Franco-Belgians of Franck, Vieuxtemps, Fauré, Debussy, etc. You want a safe recommendation? Go with Arthur, even 40, 50, 60 years on.

I have just been re-listening to the ten Beethoven violin and piano sonatas Grumiaux recorded with Clara Haskil in 1956 and 1957. Sixty years on, this old world, civilised playing by two supreme artists still holds its own. This is chamber music at its best, with neither artist striving for effect, both listening closely to each other, both supreme stylists in this music. Beethoven's works here have a welcome transparency and lucidity, far removed from the furious grandstanding that some artists try to bring to them; for a change, I even enjoyed the Kreutzer sonata, which I often find somewhat hectoring when performed by high-powered duos. Not here; Grumiaux's restrained opening solos, and Haskil's response, set the tone for a most enjoyable traversal.

To end: a word of praise for Clara Haskil. A legendary figure with a tragic life that only came into its own for the last ten or so years of her 65 years (she died after a fall at a Brussels railway station on her way to a concert with Grumiaux). Apparently also a truly excellent violinist (just as Grumiaux was also an excellent pianist) she brings a precision and clarity to her playing, qualities that made her almost unrivalled in Mozart, Schubert and Beethoven. Sometimes she and Grumiaux swapped roles, with Haskil on the violin and Grumiaux on the piano; that is chamber music making!

Wagner's Orchestral Music

An enjoyable evening wallowing in Wagner's orchestral music -- overtures, preludes, etc. Why does so little Wagner now appear on concert programmes? Is it the dogmatic belief that only "whole works" should be played? Or is it part of the modern concert scene that has seen overtures and short orchestral works banished into limbo -- unless they are "contemporary" in which case many Brownie points are earned? The only problem with the admirable practice of programming contemporary works is that the same work never seems to appear more than once. Do not audiences and orchestras clamour for second and third hearings of remarkable modern pieces?

Or maybe it's a conductor problem. The pre-1960 or so conductors cut their teeth on chunks of Wagner. This evening I wallowed in Otto Klemperer conducting the Philharmonia (1960-61). But it could have been Boult, or Beecham, or Knappertsbusch, or Keilberth, or Toscanini, or Walter, or Furtwängler, or Schuricht, or Krauss. Anyway, Klemperer is great in this kind of music. In 1960 the Philharmonia was still in top form, and the EMI recording team at its peak. Nothing like filling the room with Wagner to banish the cobwebs and pessimistic thoughts. The latest EMI Klemperer box has four Wagner CDs out of the five (the fifth being Richard Strauss). My home will reverberate for many evenings to come.

Yuja Wang and Claudio Abbado

When commenting recently on Earl Wilde playing the Rachmaninov concertos, with Jascha Horenstein conducting, I remarked how rare it was to be admiring both conductor and soloist in works such as these. I had the same thought yesterday listening to Yuja Wang playing Rachmaninov's second concerto, and Paganini Rhapsody, with Claudio Abbado and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. I was constantly admiring Abbado's contribution!

Not that Miss Wang could be overlooked. She seems to have taken lessons from Rachmaninov's own recordings, where the great pianist plays the works “straight” without all the slobbering and molto can belto that lesser pianists impose on the music; Rachmaninov's music, like Mahler's or Tchaikovsky's, does not need extra angst, agony and emotion lavished on it by the performers. The net result of the highly talented Miss Wang playing with Abbado and the (young) orchestra is an admirable freshness to these familiar works, both of them coming over almost as chamber works for large forces, such is the give and take between orchestra and soloist. Yuja Wang does not displace previous favourites, but her (live) performances here with Abbado put these versions in the highest echelon when I come to make a listening choice. The recording and balance reinforce the soloist plus orchestra character of the performances. Entirely admirable, and gives one hopes for music making in the 21st century.

Little Known Artists

An interesting article in the current issue of the American Record Guide comments on the fact that big-name performers in the world of classical music are not always better than unknowns, and that often little known performers are far superior to Artist X who trundles round the world playing and recording the same few pieces, charging vast amounts of money that are paid because he or she is a “star” and can charge premium prices. Those who pay premium prices for recordings or concert tickets are unwilling to admit to themselves that their auditory experience was less than good. In this, the world of classical music is no better than that of the popular music world.

This thought occurred to me listening to a 1965 recording of Paganini (including the first violin concerto) by Aldo Ferraresi (who?) This is wonderful Paganini playing; Ferraresi makes us realise that Paganini was Italian, and that he grew up in the world of provincial Italian opera houses. The playing here is audibly different from the mainstream Russian approach that one finds (played marvellously) by violinists such as Leonid Kogan. Ferraresi's violin sings and swoons, and he plays Paganini like a true provincial Italian tenor, rather than like a Russian T34 tank. I enjoyed it all immensely. Ferraresi belongs to that vast world of near-forgotten great musicians who, for one reason or another, never had recording contracts and never sought to conquer the world stage. Ferraresi never played professionally often outside Italy (just as Albert Sammons, another superb violinist, never played outside Britain).

Yuja Wang is not an unknown name, and she is heavily recorded by DG. But she is young, and hardly (yet) a well-known international star. I was so impressed yesterday listening to her playing Rachmaninov, Liszt et al that I leapt up and clicked my mouse to order another Yuja Wang CD (Rachmaninov). What she communicates is freshness and vitality; under her fingers the music is not stale and over-rehearsed, as it can so often sound when played by Big Names. And to this short list I would add Soo-Hyun Park, who so impressed me with a recent CD of concertos by Wieniawski, Conus and Vieuxtemps. Long live the legions of the Little Names!

Tom Yum, and Christian Tetzlaff

Made an excellent "Thai" soup today. I used some tom yum powder (sachets) I bought in a Kuala Lumpur supermarket last year. And lots and lots of fresh ginger. And lots of galongal. Lots of lime juice and kaffir lime leaves. Lots of lemon grass. Some crushed chillies. Lots of mussels, with some squid and shrimps. Quite delicious; but spicey ! The tom yum paste was different from the Thai one I buy locally. But it all made for an excellent dish.

Then on to a re-visit with Christian Tetzlaff playing the Sibelius violin concerto. Tetzlaff comes from Hamburg, and plays here with a Danish orchestra conducted by Thomas Dausgaard. To sum up with one word: idiomatic. I currently have 51 recordings of this concerto, but Tetzlaff and the Danes place it firmly in Scandinavian Northern Europe (a remarkable area, despite its food and climate). Listening to the recording -- admirably balanced -- you feel yourself transported to the north; too many performers try to pretend the music is wannabe Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninov, which it is not. And I greatly admire Tetzlaff's violin; Tetzlaff ditched his Strad in favour of a modern German violin, and the latter sounds just wonderful. Makes you think about the snobbery / financial ramifications surrounding 300 year old Italian violins -- not all of which are remotely better than the best modern ones.

Renaud Capuçon and Frank Braley

Ludwig van Beethoven wrote ten sonatas for violin and piano, most of them during the earlier period of his life. As a set, they contain many genial movements and provide well over three hours of happy listening. They are chamber works, written mainly around 1800 and were designed for performances in palace rooms, rather than Carnegie Hall. They succeed best when played as chamber works by a violinist and a pianist of equal artistic stature. In the main, the piano part leads and predominates, thus the importance of the pianist. Sets that really succeed musically include Joseph Szigeti with Claudio Arrau, Arthur Grumiaux with Clara Haskil and, nearer our own time, Isabelle Faust with Alexander Melnikov, and Alina Ibragimova with Cédric Tiberghien. During the 1930s EMI wanted to record the set with Kreisler and Rachmaninov – that would really have been something – but because of cost, opted for the gifted Franz Rupp instead of the expensive Rachmaninov.

To my mind, the prime prerequisites of a satisfactory set are a) a first class violinist with a first class pianist and b) an ideal recorded balance between piano and violin. Often, particularly in the past, the violinist was over-favoured. Sometimes, the piano is so loud and so dominant that the music becomes unbalanced. This is chamber music, not virtuoso music, and it is the chamber music approach by Renaud Capuçon and Frank Braley that is giving me so much pleasure on my most recent acquisition. For most of the movements, 55% of the importance goes to the pianist, and 45% to the violin; that is how it sounds here (and how it certainly does not sound with Jascha Heifetz and Emanuel Bay). Capuçon and Braley play as a chamber music team; they do not over-inflate this mainly genial music and give it a French-style clarity as the parts move to and fro. For a change, the recording engineers sound clued up and neither instrument is over-favoured compared with the other. 55% of the time I am marvelling at Frank Braley; 45% at Renaud Capuçon. Highly enjoyable.

Soyoung Yoon

The “right speed” for a piece of music is a complex matter. Comparative tempi come into it, as do a composer's markings. The right speed also depends on overall context. I remarked recently (Adrian Boult in Brahms) that over the 16 movements of the four symphonies, I never once found an instance where I was unhappy with his tempi. In the end, if it sounds too slow, it is too slow. And if it sounds too fast, it is too fast.

This complex question re-surfaced listening to the remarkable young violinist Soyoung Yoon in Sibelius's violin concerto. The second and third movements sounded fine, to me. But the first movement was a bit of a disaster, with Yoon seemingly seeking to convert Sibelius's allegro moderato into andante tranquillo; at times, it sounds as if everyone is falling asleep. Timings are indicative (though not, of course, the final verdict). In the first movement of the Sibelius, the classic Heifetz-Beecham recording comes in at 14.26. Miss Yoon and her team come in at 17:35 for the same piece of music, the difference being not so much the basic tempo, but the new recording's willingness to dally by the wayside the moment the music becomes tender and lyrical. As an unfortunate result, in the hands of Miss Yoon and her conductor (Piotr Borkowski) the first movement degenerates into a series of episodes that go on too long.

For the rest of the work, and for the following Tchaikovsky violin concerto, things go less controversially, though the artists still show longings to linger whenever the music suggests it could be possible. The violin playing of Soyoung Yoon reminds me of Nathan Milstein: fluent and flawless, and as a master class on how to play the violin, the current CD is excellent. Miss Yoon has won every major competition anyone could possibly want to win. What I miss is the kind of personal involvement and passionate commitment one gets with violinists such as Janine Jansen, Patricia Kopatchinskaja or Leila Josefowicz – to mention just three younger female violinists around at the moment. And I love performances of the hackneyed classics that I have heard too often, that make me sit up and enjoy an over-familiar work all over again, as a couple of years ago I enjoyed Christian Tetzlaff in the Sibelius violin concerto.

The orchestra here, the Gorzow Philharmonic in Poland, confirms my impression that young artists are often better off with enthusiastic players in less well known bands than they are with the big name orchestras where enthusiasm is often lacking, and where a band heavily laced with substitutes goes through the motions on a Wednesday morning to earn a few more euros or dollars. I enjoyed much of the playing by the Gorzow orchestra. I was recently highly impressed with the début CD of the Korean Soo-Hyun Park. Her fellow Korean, Soyoung Yoon, is no less talented as a violinist, but perhaps to make an impression one needs to choose concertos other than the hackneyed dozen where competition and comparisons are so fierce.

Adolf Busch in Beethoven

The omens were not good, and I half regretted ordering the Guild issue of Adolf Busch's March 1949 performance of the Beethoven Violin Concerto with the Statsradiofoniens Symfoniorkester conducted by one Launy Grøndahl. Busch was born in 1891 and died in 1952, so this performance was just three years before his life and career ended. The Danish radio station did not have a tape machine, so the radio recordings were made on a turntable, of which the station only had one, necessitating gaps in the recordings when one disk was full and the next one was made ready. Conductor and orchestra were unknowns (to me). I ordered the CD because of Adolf Busch who, especially when playing Bach, Beethoven or Schubert has always seemed to me to be without equal.

By serendipity, the performance proved to be a major acquisition. In my opinion, for performances of the Beethoven concerto that are truly great (amongst the many hundreds of violinists who have played the work), one has to concentrate on Busch, Erich Röhn, Kulenkampff and Schneiderhan. This 1949 Busch performance is a triumph of digital rescue. The remastering engineer, Peter Reynolds, has done absolute wonders with the sound, which is more enjoyable and natural than many modern digital recordings. The five gaps in recording have been expertly patched by Anthony Hodgson with bits from Busch's 1942 recordings, and few will notice many of the gaps. The performance is Busch's Beethoven at its best and greatest, with especially superb repose in the central larghetto. This recording receives one of my very rare “AAA” accolades; even the orchestra and the conductor come out with flying colours.

We live in a remarkable age of audio restoration, with the return of great artists of former years such as Busch and Furtwängler. For me, almost everything recorded by Busch and his string quartet in the music of Beethoven and Schubert deserves re-issue on golden discs – and his Bach performances can follow swiftly on. Audio restoration is a job for dedicated craftsmen, not for those working to a budget or earnings target. Thus the highly limited success of the mass digitisation programmes undertaken by companies such as EMI and RCA in the 1980s and 90s (not to mention the mangling of the Russian tapes in the 1990s by the likes of Bertelsman and Russian Disc). EMI Classics has now been sold to Warner, so do not expect much from the treasure vaults of EMI's unrivalled horde from the early 1900s to 1990; I suspect that Warner engineers are more accustomed to p/e ratios and Return on Investment (ROI) than they are to spending hours and days on restoring a 1949 classical recording to pristine audio condition (no pun on any audio recording company intended!)

Karl Goldmark's Violin Concerto

Karl Goldmark wrote two violin concertos, though only one has been published [where's the other one?] The Violin Concerto No.1 in A minor of 1877 is a highly agreeable work, with gentle melodies and superb writing for the violin (Goldmark was a violinist). It was championed for some time by Nathan Milstein but, on the whole, it is a concerto that is mysteriously neglected by concert promoters, recording producers, and violinists. The classic recording is by Nathan Milstein with the Philharmonia Orchestra in 1957 and, in many respects, this recording still stands at the head of the (fairly short) list of competitors, even after over half a century. Out of curiosity, I listened to three would-be runners-up: Nai-Yuan Hu with the Seattle Symphony orchestra under Gerard Schwarz; Vera Tsu with the “Razumovsky Sinfonia” under Yu Long; and Benjamin Schmid with the “Witold Lutoslawski Philharmonic, Wroclaw” under Daniel Raiskin.

At the start, it has to be noted that all three competitors are well worth hearing, but none can replace the 1957 Milstein. Both Hu and Schmid suffer from fairly indifferent orchestral backing; one senses that both the Poles and the Americans were not familiar with the work, and not too enthusiastic about playing it. Tsu with her Slovakian orchestra is much better served, with the orchestra having a good rhythmic swing when required. Hu has a truly lovely violin sound and is a fine player, but he is apt to slam on the brakes whenever the music becomes sentimental, and he also plays the last movement's extended cadenza without a cut (everyone else, wisely, makes a cut); it seems to go on for ever. Hu is also a bit deficient about allowing much dynamic range to his magnificent del Gesù violin. The always admirable Benjamin Schmid gains full marks for keeping things moving; his timings are roughly the same as Milstein's (though Milstein makes cuts in the finale that brings his overall timing down).

In some ways, Vera Tsu with her Slovakian players is my favourite of the three contestants. She has an excellent dynamic range and makes a lovely sound, which is important in this gentle, genial concerto. She captures well the wistful melancholy that lies at the heart of much of the music, and she is also an excellent violinist (as are the other two). Her main weak point is the familiar one with many post-war musicians: the belief that playing sentimental music very slowly makes it sound deeper and more profound. Wrong. Music needs to keep moving. When Goldmark says his slow movement should be played “andante” he knew that andante was connected with the Italian verb andare [to go], and that andante means strolling along. Miss Tsu does not stroll; she crawls, and ends up taking 7:40 against Milstein's 5:57. She is even worse in the Korngold concerto that is also on her CD, where the andante movement takes forever and a day at 8:27, sometimes not seeming to move at all. These things should have been corrected in music school. Musicians as diverse as Toscanini and Beecham knew that the more fragile the music, the more the need to keep it moving and not to drag. Vera Tsu plays very slowly very beautifully, and with admirable concentration. But the tempo in slower passages is just wrong for this kind of music.

Of the older generation of violinists apart from Milstein, Peter Rybar and Bronislav Gimpel played and recorded the work. Of the younger generation, there are Joshua Bell and Sarah Chang (who is just as slow as Tsu in the andante, and whose EMI recording is not of the best). Until another really well played, well accompanied and well recorded version comes along, I am happy with the 1957 Nathan Milstein and 1995 Vera Tsu (Naxos).

Miss DiDonato, and Miss Ly

I was perhaps a little curmudgeonly in my reaction to Joyce DiDonato's new Drama Queens CD of baroque opera arias. In truth, it is a magnificent compilation of magnificent arias, sung with the greatest artistry and technique by a soprano equal to any in the current constellation. And heard through wireless headphones, the sound is not as shrill as I first thought. Perhaps I am becoming allergic to the rasping sound of “authentic” violins. Anyway: a plug for Sennheiser's RS 170 wireless headphones; I began my music listening 60 years ago via a wind-up “portable” gramophone player with steel needles, and the Sennheisers give perhaps the most authentic sound yet.

A reader chides me for the current absence of anything to do with gastronomy. In truth, my current menus at home have not been terribly exciting. However, from recent adventures I can mention: the restaurant at the Whatley Manor Hotel (near Malmesbury). Superb French-type cuisine and highly enjoyable as long as someone else is paying the bill. And Miss Ly's restaurant at 22 Nguyen Hue, Hoi An in Vietnam if you ever feel in need of real food in an authentic local environment. The food comes from the Central Market that is around 75 metres down the street. Superb.