For EMI-Electrola Ulf Hoelscher taped the Brahms concerto with Tennstedt, and in 1985 under Hans Vonk he recorded this accomplished Beethoven with the Dresden Staatskapelle. It’s a serviceable budget version, offering good sound on the Unesco label, a subsidiary of Disky Communications, Holland. Hoelscher is a plain-dealer, giving a middle-of-the-road interpretation with no extremes of speed and no attempts to over-glamorize the work. He has a secure technique, but there’s a certain sameness about his tone. The first time you notice it is during hushed and more introspective sections of the first movement development, which betray a certain lack of imagination. Compare Szeryng’s Philips version with Haitink and you’ll realize how great the possibilities for tonal and dynamic contrast here can be! When Hoelscher approaches the recapitulation, you don’t get that impression of emerging from semi-darkness to brilliant light that characterizes better accounts of the work.
Hans Vonk’s accompaniments are distinguished; he lavishes care over Beethoven’s dynamics, bringing out the differences between pianissimo and piano more noticeably than most, and Hoelscher is in full command in both cadenzas. He’s particularly good, too, in the high, soaring lines of the Larghetto, skillfully managing the often bumpy link into the concluding Rondo. In all, this is a good bargain Beethoven, technically assured but less engaging than Szeryng’s. The fillers, the inevitable Romances in G Op. 40 and F Op. 50, from 1971 sessions involving Josef Suk and the ASMF under Marriner, are performed with equal competence and complementary sonics.
