The Bartok concerto is palpably immature, the Berg all too presciently valedictory, yet it makes sense to couple them on record. Both were inspired by women: Bartok's by his early love Stefi Geyer, Berg's by Manon Gropius, the daughter of friends, who had died at the age of 18—as well as (less explicitly) by two of his own love affairs. Both are in two movements, and in both the late-Romantic heritage is a real presence, though to quite different effect. Bartok's harmony is still unfocused, his formal control unsure, so the performer may be tempted to underplay in order not to draw attention to the concerto's weaknesses. Berg's integration of diversities and balancing of symmetries are masterly, but the performer may be tempted to over-dramatize in an effort to do justice to the music's sheer emotional force.
Kyung Wha Chung's blend of sweetness and strength in the Bartok is ideal, more vivid in both reflection and action than Menuhin, whose 1967 HMV recording shows its age. At first I feared that Chung might be tempted to over-interpret, but the performance as a whole is shaped and balanced by Solti as well as the music itself permits. The Berg is deeply felt, technically first class and excellently recorded. But the magnificent version by Perlman and Ozawa on DG is to be preferred, I think, mainly because it is more like a live perfomance, with a more positive dramatic character. Perlman never over dramatizes, and yet Chung can seem a little pallid in comparison, or even laboured, as in the second movement's brief canon, where she unwisely shuns the collaboration of a solo viola, breaking the rhythmic continuity of what is already a dangerously protracted cadenza. Chung's reading is entirely consistent, and sufficiently different from Perlman's to provide a complement: but neither her interpretation nor the Decca recording supersedes the DG.'