These four pieces fit very well together; the more especially because the two Saint-Sa?ns contributions, very similar in style, are on separate sides. For this particular programme is it difficult to think of a more suitable soloist than Kyung-Wha Chung, whose finger-tips throw off the reworks (or the approach shots to reworks) with ease, and who affords the more melting passages (in better supply) a sweetness which suits them ideally. Perhaps there will be a few listeners who would like, reasonably, the Tzigane to have a bit more passion, a bit more fire. perhaps I would like it myself. But all of us are possibly up the wrong tree, for it may be that the final degree of fire and passion in the violin sound is there all the time, and that what the ear needs in this piece is a rather stronger recording of the soloist. This could well be, for the recorded balance is that of the concert-hall, and composers do often have in their mind’s ear (their scoring declares) a rather more forward balance for their string soloist than the concert-hall really allows. Gramophone
