My first Gramophone review, Brahms and Khachaturian Violin Concertos with Henryk Szeryng and the LSO under Antal Doráti (on Mercury, 2/93), was a coming of age, even though I had been publishing reviews elsewhere for some years. I was in fact a phoenix that rose from the flames of Classics, a Gramophone magazine that I edited (with Andrew Achenbach as my trusty assistant) for its all-too-brief run of 11 issues. Gramophone though was ‘the bizz’, the perceived gold standard, and writing for her was a palpable wish fulfilment. As a devoted reader since childhood I was immensely proud to have been selected by James Jolly, even though the kudos of being included in the highlighted critics’ panel was still a month away. 

Looking at that fairly innocuous review now (see below), I see nothing in particular that’s wrong with it. I’ve written better – and worse – since, and the critical evaluation still holds, certainly within the context of its time. But 20 years of further listening (and reading) have helped sharpen my critical responses and I like to think that I’m a better reviewer now than I was then. The big difference is that in those days I held idolatrous views of certain artists and entertained some fairly fixed opinions, whereas nowadays it’s more a case of evaluating each recording on its own terms. Comparisons, yes; preconceptions, no. Much healthier. 

Brahms Violin Concerto Khachaturian Violin Concerto

Henryk Szeryng vn London Symphony Orchestra / Antal Doráti

Mercury Living Presence 434 318-2MM (73' • ADD) (Buy from Amazon)

Szeryng's three commercial recordings of the Brahms Concerto have each featured strong accompaniments, but Doráti's – which marries muscle and breadth with a fine sense of structural balance – is in many ways the finest. Szeryng himself is able to soften or strengthen his instrument's voice according to the dictates of the score, a virtue that is tellingly illustrated in his playing of Joachim's first-movement cadenza. The Khachaturian, too, is vital and forthright, and here Doráti's natural feel for the music's balletic character pays high dividends: sample his taut handling of the third movement's Goyaneh-style opening tutti, where a crack 1964 LSO charges at the notes like a band of angry Cossacks. It's a tuneful and engaging piece and the Szeryng/Doráti partnership relishes its every colourful detail; what's more, the engineers capture both works in keen, forwardly-balanced sound. The transfers are truthful to the original tapes, hiss and all.

Rob Cowan (Gramophone, February 1993)