Search - Claudio Abbado, Wiener Philharmoniker, Nathan Milstein :: Tchaikovsky & Mendelssohn - Violin Concertos

Excellent!

Musicus | Oslo, Norway | 12/01/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"After hearing this performance of the Mendelssohn concerto at a friend's home, I searched it and found it here. So I knew that it would be nice. What a happy surprise then, when the coupling, the Tchaikovsky concerto is the best I've heard to date! Since no others would do, I stayed with my old Stern/Ormandy-recording, although the sound is not that good. I tried numerous recordings; no-one did the trick before I found the present recording. I still enjoy the Stern/Ormandy, but the present one with Milstein/Abbado (a quite young Abbado using brisk tempos) has much better sound. Tempos are brisk, yes, but the main theme of the first movement has all the festive style you can wish for. (I never liked Heifetz on neither of these two concertos.)

As I said, I already knew that the Mendelssohn would be good and it is. Before I prefered the Grumiaux/Haitink for this work, and it took me some weeks to conclude that this Milstein/Abbado is even better."