Beethoven: Violin Concerto; Romances Nos. 1 & 2

Vio. Con. rec. 28-29 Aug 1947, Kunsthaus, Lucerne. Penguin Guide rosette. Gramphone Magazine, 11.1997: "The question that most collectors will be asking is whether – or how – this Lucerne set compares with the 1953 EMI recording that Menuhin and Furtwangler made in London with the Philharmonia. The answer is simple: the older sessions achieved the better performance, the newer ones, the better recording. Alan Sanders’s excellent booklet-note recounts a touching occasion where Menuhin unknowingly tuned in to a broadcast of the Lucerne recording and “reflected that he would dearly love to be able to realize the Beethoven Concerto in such a fashion”. The collaboration with Furtwangler had obviously inspired a rare and distant inspirational flight, one that even memory could not adequately recall. And it is a great performance: ardent, inward, unhurried, with a rapturously beautiful Larghetto (faster than the Philharmonia recording though not as broad as its Moscow predecessor) and with superior playing of Kreisler’s two cadenzas. Turning to the worthy Philharmonia remake witnesses a noticeable drop in intensity and a rather more awkward delivery of the solo line."