The distinguished Romanian pianist, Clara Haskil, was still only 65 when she died in Brussels in 1960. She was therefore at the height of her powers when recording the Schumann Concerto with Willem van Otterloo and The Hague orchestra in 1951. What I admired most in the performance was its overall shapeliness and cohesion. Every detail is most sensitively cherished yet never does she allow pursuit of expression to undermine structure. Her ritenutos and tempo changes are exactly as Schumann requests them, no more, no less. And by scrupulous observance of the letter of the score she gets so much closer to the music's spirit than the last free-ranging contender who came my way (no, I won't mention who). Piano and orchestra are finely interwoven, and though one or two woodwind solos (particularly the oboe) emerge just a bit vinegarish, the sound-quality is very acceptable for its age in this reissue.
Of the solos, the Abegg Variations also date from 1951. Haskil's delicately glistening finger-work here is wholly magical, and it's beautifully reproduced. In the Waldscenen (never released in the UK before) Haskil again gets to the very heart of the matter without ever making you aware of an interpreter at work. If the two robuster hunting pieces are perhaps a little less pianistically refined well perhaps that's how huntsmen actually are. It was only in the Kinderszenen that once or twice I wondered if her approach was a little too Gallic (she was trained in Paris) or should I say classical—for miniatures so intimate. Yet that said, her unaffected simplicity still has an eloquence all its own.'