Usually, compilations such as this one–two CDs, two and one half hours of nothing but “romantic”, relatively slow-paced violin “favorites”–speak for themselves. If you like this sort of thing, you don’t need some critic telling you that you should or shouldn’t have it. But this one, which features selections from the Decca and Philips catalogs performed by several of the 20th and 21st centuries’ first-rank artists and recorded primarily during the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, left me a little unimpressed and uninspired. As a violinist, I’ve heard all these pieces many times, played a few of them, heard several of these artists perform live, and remember most of the original recordings from which these selections were taken. But having these 29 tracks laid out in such a mixture of works, styles, and performers makes you realize both how homogenized and uncharacterful much of the playing is and how certain players–Szeryng and Perlman, for instance–really stand out as individuals whatever they are playing.
Of course, comparative analysis of playing technique and the state of violin performance today is not the point of a recording with a subtitle “Over two and one half hours of the world’s most beautiful music”. And to be fair, the nature of the music gives only a relatively narrow perspective on what any particular artist can do. Nevertheless, I found myself enjoying the less familiar pieces and performers more and tuning out things like “Winter” from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (Alan Loveday), Massenet’s Méditation (Nigel Kennedy), the Adagio from Brahms’ Violin Concerto (Joshua Bell, who aggravatingly insists on playing just behind the beat!), and the Andante from Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto (Leila Josefowicz). Yes, I did renew my appreciation for Midori and for Kyung Wha Chung–and, when I just let the music flow in the background my enjoyment was correspondingly enhanced (just what the producers had in mind, I’m sure). The sound varies but not disturbingly so, through the whole range of recording techniques and technologies from decent early-’60s and ’70s analog to the clearest, most detailed digital of the ’90s.
