I welcomed Perlman's recording of Khachaturian's vital and tuneful Violin Concerto in its LP form and have enjoyed the CD equally. It emphasizes that the forward balance of the soloist is an artificial one, but the violin image is obsolutely clean and truthful. Orchestral detail too now has an added degree of tangibility, but the 'studioish' acoustic remains a slight drawback—Khachaturian's scoring could do with a warmer resonance. But the performance is first rate and unlikely to be bettered in the immediate future.
Tchaikovsky's Meditation (which, by a slip of the typewriter, I wrongly attributed to Glazunov—who only arranged it—in my original review) offers agreeable balm after the sheer energy of Khachaturian's finale (which has a fiercely recorded opening tutti, both on CD and LP).'