This high-rating reissue brings accomplished violin playing and excellent sound. Cho-Liang Lin is heard first in the perennial favorite G minor Bruch concerto, with the Chicago Symphony under Leonard Slatkin. The recording dates from 1986 and was made in Chicago’s Medinah Temple. As with many Decca productions from this venue, the dynamic range is vast and spatial instrumental perspectives are ideally reproduced. Lin’s account is passionate and spirited, and the best attributes here are purity of line (rapt, yet always tautly rhythmic, even in the Adagio) and the clean, crisp articulation of fast-running bravura passages (notably in the finale). The recording also conveys Lin’s wide-ranging expressivity, from hushed pianissimo at the first solo entry and in the Adagio, to the huge sonority and solidity of tone in the loudest episodes. You don’t quite get the volcanic spontaneity of Kyung-Wha Chung’s EMI account with Tennstedt, or the peerless authority and eloquence of Heifetz’s last recording with Sargent (RCA) and the New Symphony of London, though there are flashes of both and Lin’s performance is good enough to renew your faith in this oft (but wrongly) maligned concerto.
Marginally less good is Lin’s Mendelssohn with Michael Tilson Thomas and the Philharmonia. The interpretation isn’t especially cultivated (there are moments of unwarranted posturing, leading to some roughness in the cadenza, though the finale is deftly done), but if you want the regular Bruch/Mendelssohn coupling, you’ll find Lin superior to Kennedy on EMI in all respects. But the best performance on this disc is, ironically, of the work that’s least known. Vieuxtemps’ Violin Concerto No. 5 in A is a masterpiece of the genre, and it’s a pity it’s so seldom played these days. Lin taped it in Minneapolis with Marriner during April/May 1982, and this spectacularly played, arrestingly virtuosic reading is one of Lin’s best on disc.
The big opening movement is strongly episodic, its profusion of ideas requiring all the tonal sensitivity and variety that Lin provides, and the many passages of complex multiple-stopping are pin-sharp and devilishly accurate. Perlman’s EMI recording sounds more spacious, and the solo playing is again outstanding, but Lin can make you feel this under-rated work is a true masterpiece. This disc is an undeniable bargain, but if you’d prefer the Vieuxtemps with another French warhorse, try Sarah Chang’s account with Dutoit, which includes Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole.
