To get the best impression of Lhevinne's superb pianism, I advise starting with Side 2 of this record. On it, the fantasy and delicacy he brings to the two pieces Albeniz pieces and that well-worn favourite of Sinding's are enchanting; and his brilliance in the preposterous pyrotechnics of the Schulz-Elver Blue Danube paraphrase never ceases to amaze, familiar as it now is from previous transfers—though never before so faithfully reproduced as on Norman Evans's finely adjusted Estonia-ampico. (The fact, revealed in the sleeve-note, that any wrong notes were eliminated in the production of the piano roll worries me very little, since the same thing is done all the time on modern tape recordings.) But to Side 1 I shall return less often. The Tausig version of Schubert's famous Marche militaire (which he put down a semitone into D flat) in an overblown affair quite lacking the wit of Schulz-Elver's, Rachmaninov's or Godowsky's arrangements, and here sounds a bit straight-laced. As for the Moonlight Sonata, I can only agree with the artist, who didn't like it and, so we are informed, wouldn't listen to it in later years. The second movement is very stiff and angular, and though the finale is exciting as a piano-playing, it does little to establish Lhevinne as a Beethoven stylist. So, altogether, this is the least of the three Lhevinne albums of ampico recordings (Vol. 1—414 097-1OH, 12/84; Vol. 2—414 121-1OH, 4/85)—and it contains only 37 minutes of music in all; but Side 2 makes it worth while.'