Dvorak: Violin Concerto; Piano Quintet.(Sound Recording Review)

Sarah Chang, violin; Leif Ove Andsnes, piano. Sir Colin Davis, London Symphony Orchestra. EM17243 5 57521 23.

This may be the best Dvorak Violin Concerto currently before the public. It may not be the best ever, that would still be Perlman's mid-'70s release with Daniel Barenboim, also with the LSO, but it's close. Different but close.

If there can be such a thing as a feminine approach to a work, that's the difference between this 2001 recording and Perlman's. The Dvorak Violin Concerto is a composition of startling contrasts, yet Chang and Perlman approach them differently. The first movement is meant to be melancholy, almost bittersweet, yet Chang makes it more lyrical, more lilting, more ethereal, while Perlman, still mercurial, seems more granite solid. In the second, slow movement, Dvorak turns his piece into a ballad, interrupted only occasionally by turbulent outbursts, and again it's in these outbursts that Perlman appears more in command. The final movement finds Dvorak returning to his roots in Czech folk music, and here it's a toss-up between Chang and Perlman as to which artist is more idiomatic and which conductor, Sir Colin Davis ...