For once a record company's hype is totally justified. Heifetz was and is supreme, as all other great fiddlers would surely acknowledge. I have a treasured video of him playing the Bach 'Chaconne', as he does here, with an extraordinary range of dynamic and feeling, and a total grip on the structure (and yet he looks uncannily dispassionate). The subtlety of his bowing is a thing to marvel at.
This is a superb and indispensable anthology, excellently accompanied too. How persuasively Reiner shapes the opening of the Brahms, and Sargent the Scottish Fantasy; how tenderly Heifetz plays the 'Canzonetta' of the Tchaikovsky, and then astonishes us with his quicksilver brilliance in the finale. The violin's first entry in the Sibelius (unsurpassed) is quite Elysian, and Heifetz's tone in the slow movement sends shivers down the spine. He discovered all the romantic charm in the endearing Glazunov concerto, and virtually made it his own. And how good that the selection ends with Gershwin, sparklingly syncopated and bluesy by turns: nothing else here better shows the flexibility of the Heifetz bow arm, even if the microphones are too close.
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