When some five years ago I did a detailed comparison of the available recordings of the Dvorak Concerto for ''Building a Library'' in BBC Radio 3's ''Record Review'', my final choice was firmly for Heinrich Schiff's 1980 version, even over more flamboyant readings from Rostropovich and others. For one thing, he paid so much more attention than most of his rivals to the detailed markings in the score, yet the result sounded spontaneous, not at all cautious, with the emotional range of this grandest of cello concertos fully conveyed.
Now, recorded last year in Vienna in digital sound (the 1980 recording was late analogue) comes this new version, and the comparison is fascinating. Schiff's overall view has not significantly changed, but where so many artists returning to a work seem to broaden their earlier views, he has here made his tauter, while taking a rather freer more volatile view of the virtuoso passagework. The timing for each of the three movements is marginally faster than before. The result is more commanding as well as more urgent, even though the cello is recorded in a more natural balance than is common in this work, the opposite of spotlit.
It means that the solo instrument's first entry does not give the impression of a super-cello, as most recordings do, and even to the degree that the earlier Schiff version did, but the concentration and tension bear witness to the scale and power of the interpretation. When it comes to the great second subject melody Schiff's hushed pianissimo is ravishingly gentle, and unlike almost every rival he avoids drawing the tempo out, observing Dvorak's In tempo marking at a very marginally broader speed, as the metronome marking suggests. The result has a touching simplicity and tenderness.
Yo-Yo Ma in his version, currently listed only as part of a two-disc boxed set, is the only rival to match Schiff's pianissimo, but with Lorin Maazel as his accompanist, the drawing out of tempo is extreme. Andre Previn, like Sir Colin Davis on Schiff's earlier version, is a fresh and understanding partner, pointing rhythms even more crisply, and the Vienna partner, pointing rhythms even more crisply, and the Vienna Philharmonic, more naturally than the Concertgebouw, brings out the Slavonic tang in the score. The brighter, more detailed recording helps, with the Vienna horns—so important in this work from the opening tutti on—sounding glorious.
Schiff's marginally more flowing speed in the slow movement again brings out the freshness of folk-based ideas, with the middle section again more volatile, but with the cadenza-like figuration of the reprise more thoughtful. Only in the finale does the marginally more backward balance of the cello mean that the result is less biting. There I suspect that Schiff has consciously sought to take a lighter view of the main Allegro, to bring an even greater contrast with the meditative gravity of the epilogue. With the help of Previn, he has succeeded in building even on his earlier masterly achievement. Few versions come near to matching this.
Though the coupling is not so generous as the one for Schiff's earlier CD (the Elgar Concerto), it is more apt. I was delighted to find that these are not the usual orchestral arrangements of the Rondo and Silent woods, but have Previn as a sparkling piano accompanist. Speeds are faster than they would be with an orchestra, with freer expressiveness encouraged. The vigorous G minor Slavonic Dance, with its cross-rhythms, comes in a cello and piano version that the composer himself made.'