Frank Martin's own recording of the Petite symphonie concertante comes from 1970 and confirmed my suspicion that most performances and recordings I have heard over the years are too fast. He takes the opening at the speed he marked (crotchet=54), which is slower and more concentrated in atmosphere than most subsequent recordings (Marriner—HMV, Otterloo—Chandos, Vanjar—Supraphon; all nla) and the Adagio section (fig. 41, track 2) gains from a similar breadth. Two of the soloists here, Germaine Vauchet-Clerc and Doris Rossiaud, took part in Ansermet's pioneering 1951 recording on Decca (now available on CD). When reviewing that CD release I wrote of Ansermet's performance possessing ''a concentration, authority and atmosphere that is quite special and which no subsequent account has ever matched'', but I was unaware of the existence of the Jecklin version; I have to say that it is an even more convincing and atmospheric account of this masterly score. The 1970 Swiss Radio recording is in mono, which does not in itself worry me, but the sound is less than state-of-the-art, even by the standards of the 1960s. It certainly does not sound as if nearly 20 years separate it from the Ansermet!
Nor is the Maria-Triptychon very much better. The work was written in the late 1960s in response to a request from Wolfgang Schneiderhan for a work for violin, soprano and orchestra that he could perform with his wife, Irmgaard Seefried. The ''Magnificat'', which constitutes the middle movement, originally stood on its own (Haitink conducted its premiere in 1968), the two outer movements (''Ave Maria'' and ''Stabat mater'') being added later. A more recent recording of the work with Edith Mathis and Schneiderhan, recorded at the 1984 Lucerne Festival under Jean Fournet, who gave the complete work its premiere, was briefly available on a Schwann Musica Mundi LP (9/86—nla) but the present issue is, as far as I know, the only current CD version. There are moments of great vision during the course of the piece but the subfusc monochrome recording undoubtedly limits its appeal.
I have never before heard the 1962 orchestral transcription of the 1944 Passacaglia for organ (the 1952 version for string orchestra Martin made for Karl Munchinger is more commonly encountered), and it is good to have it under Martin's own direction, But, again, the recording does not do justice to the playing of the Berlin Philharmonic or the refined orchestral palette Martin commands. All the same, readers with a special interest in this remarkable composer should consider investigating this issue for the sake of the Maria-Tryptichon and Martin's own authoritative account of the Petite symphonie concertante.'