It is quite obvious after listening to the Denon CD and this new one from Virgin that the two violinists concerned, Jean-Jacques Kantorow and Dmitry Sitkovetsky respectively, take a very different view of the meaning and scope of the term 'serenade'. For Kantorow and his Mozart Trio in the Beethoven Op. 8 Serenade it is the norm to have the musicians sharing equally in the polyphony of the writing—the parts are balanced. But conversely, he allows them to show off their own playing in the appropriate passages, as in the variations of the fifth movement. The Russian, on the other hand, predominates to such an extent that the other two seldom get a look in. Although his whole approach is more detached than Kantorow's, it is he who applies romantic devices of phrasing, and the result is that the music loses some cogency. The very spacious Virgin acoustic in which the instruments' overtones are floating about everywhere, gives the impression that there are considerably more than three players involved.
Part of the problem is that Sitkovetsky concentrates too much on making his instrument sing (but then, don't virtually all Russian instrumentalists?). He has undoubted elegance, as in the Al/egretto alla polacca, and is content to let the music go by without making demands on the listener. Tempos are often on the fast side, the opening Marcia, which also reappears at the end especially so. I am afraid that I found the Cummings Trio (Unicorn-Kanchana) small-scaled and a bit shrill—their recording conveys the bows' contact with the strings a little too realistically for comfort.
The Serenade in D, Op. 25, dating from 1801 some five years later, is uncharacteristic. It is very light and does not cast its emotional net at all wide. It should sound more ingratiating than it does here, but the playing is always neat. I found the flautist to be dull and the whole performance is too straight-laced. There is minimal interplay between the instruments.'