Although there are eight recordings of the Stravinsky to choose from, neither of the Szymanowski concertos are anywhere as near well served and, as far as I know, this new issue remains the only one to couple the Stravinsky and Szymanowski. The recording is impressively truthful and will give much pleasure. I like it a lot.
I began my listening with the Stravinsky and was much taken with both the quality of the sound and the dedication of the playing. Chantal Juillet has the wiry vitality that this score needs and Dutoit's credentials as a Stravinskian are impeccable. Juillet is a reticently balanced (and at times reticent) soloist: she is by no means as forwardly balanced as Kyung Wha Chung on Decca—not to mention either of the DG recordings by Itzhak Perlman and Anne-Sophie Mutter which are both very upfront. The Decca balance is much closer to the kind of perspective you would expect to encounter in the concert-hall.
The Szymanowski concertos are among the most glorious and intoxicating works in the repertory. Their sound world is totally distinctive: an exotic luxuriance, a sense of ecstasy and longing, a heightened awareness of colour and glowing, almost luminous textures that are quite magical. No scores cry out more strongly for the advantages of modern recording, and in this respect they are well served here. Dutoit is attentive to every detail as is his soloist who is scrupulous in matters of dynamics and refreshingly selfless in putting the score before all else. As in the Stravinsky the Decca recording is truthful in matters of balance: indeed some may feel the soloist needs just a little more help. Chantal Juillet produces a refined rather small tone and Decca have opted not to glamorize or beautify it. Indeed in the opening pages the orchestral piano looms much, much larger than she does. Fine though her account of the First Concerto is, she does not command quite the lyrical fervour or songful intensity of Wilkomirska—or to go further back Uminska (Parlophone, 12/48) and Oistrakh (EMI, 11/60).
Once when he was discussing the Third Symphony (The Song of the Night), Szymanowski wrote that ''our national music is not the stiffened ghost of the polonaise or mazurka … it is rather the solitary, joyful, carefree song of the nightingale on a fragrant May night in Poland''. No image more vividly describes the world invoked by the closing pages of the First Violin Concerto, and although Juillet plays them very persuasively and sensitively, the last ounce of ecstasy and enchantment eludes her. In the concert-hall the eye, of course, helps to enlarge the aural image, following with a score serves similar ends, but listening as I did the first time round without a score, certain details did not come through. Even in the fourth measure of Kochanski's cadenza when there is no orchestra to swamp her, the top note (admittedly pianissimo) barely registers and there are other moments where she does not ride through the opulent orchestral texture with sufficiently full-throated ease. Polish conductors seem to distill a special enchantment and magic in this music and Dutoit and his Montreal players are hardly less impressive in their responsiveness and sensitivity. Though they do not always match the heady, potent atmosphere that Witold Rowicki and Jerzy Fitelberg (for Uminska) captured in their earlier records, they come very close to it. The powerful blend of sensuousness and sensuality of the Second Concerto comes over well—without obliterating memories of earlier versions such as Szeryng (Philips, 7/73) or Jasek (Supraphon, 9/67). But all this may sound curmudgeonly and given the state of the current catalogues pretty academic: instead of dwelling on reservations, let me commend these sumptuously recorded performances to you. The soloist has intelligence and taste, and Dutoit and the orchestra respond to these scores with evident relish and enthusiasm, and the orchestral textures glow as they should. No one coming to this music afresh is likely to be disappointed.'