Authentic performing styles are one thing, authentic recordings quite another. For the Lubin/Hogwood versions, Decca have achieved a balance that allows the fortepiano to emerge strongly and clearly, though at times you have the feeling that it might be being helped. The EMI balance is rather more like what you would hear in a concert hall: natural, yes, but with the soloist rather less present, and in one or two places in the outer movements of the Third Concerto Tan sounds a little like the Biblical still small voice straining to be heard amidst the orchestral earthquake, wind and fire. I'd certainly have preferred the fortepiano tone to have been a little brighter, more incisive, especially in the above mentioned work. On the other hand, the EMI recording doesn't draw attention to the instrument's action—creaking pedals in solo passages for instance.
When it comes to matters of performance I find myself more drawn to Tan. When reviewing the Lubin, Stanley Sadie noted that he ''is not in the traditional virtuoso sense a commanding player''. Tan's playing also has little in common with the post-Lisztian 'lion-tamer' approach, but he does sound more in command expressively: the studied quality which I find in Lubin's handling of the Third Concerto's Largo is totally absent; even apparently awkward details like the left hand's quasi tremolando tenths in bar 11 emerge with relative ease, thus allowing the poignant righthand line to work its spell unobstructed. Tan's playing is more fluent and natural—which is certainly not to say lacking in tension. In comparison, Lubin tends to sound didactic. I'd give the latter the edge in the more energetic passages of the outer movements, but to choose him would be to miss Tan's memorably mysterious multiple trills at the end of the first movement cadenza and the dancing irreverence of the finale's Presto coda—to name just two examples.
Tan's Fourth Concerto I find altogether convincing, despite the slight dullness in the piano tone. Colouristic revelations abound: there's the sharp clarity of the chromatic runs (bar 164, etc. first movement!) or the bubbling leggieramente figures not long after the piano's second, 'real' entry—a clear contrast with modern jeux perle. And then there are the incisive oboe sforzandos, the thrilling, triumphant horns at the beginning of the recapitulation, and the eerie effect of the woodwind-timpani pianissimo semiquavers in the finale (bars 254-72). And given Norrington's reputation as, in Stephen Dodgson's words, a ''speed merchant'', some listeners will be surprised to discover that on the whole tempos are by no means unusually brisk: in the Andante of the Fourth Norrington takes the marking con moto very much at face value, but in contrast to Hogwood his sempre staccato doesn't sound 'applied' to the music, and Tan is able to acquit himself very well in the role of pianistic Orpheus without resorting to big rubatos.
In short then, despite the greater brilliance of the Decca sound and Lubin's more forceful realization of Beethoven's 'stormy C minor' moods, Tan has the advantage in naturalness of expression and characterization, and of the two versions of the Fourth Concerto his is the one that holds out most hope of lasting enjoyment. That the fortepiano will eventually displace the modern concert grand in this music, as the harpsichord largely has in Bach, seems unlikely, but its revival presents a challenge that demands to be acknowledged.'