If I was slightly disappointed that Ashkenazy's reading of the Second Symphony of Rachmaninov lacked the full thrust of passion (Decca SXDL7563, 7/82; CD 400 081-2, 3/83), this account of the more elusive Third Symphony brings no such reservation. Evidently the Concertgebouw players had fully come to respond to Ashkenazy's warmly and authentically Russian approach. He is more volatile than either Previn on HMV or Maazel on DG, so that both speed changes and style of phrasing are more extreme. The poco piu mosso leading up to fig. 4 in the first movement has Ashkenazy taking the light skipping triplets faster than his rivals, and the grand melody of the second subject is taken very broadly indeed with the tenutos firmly marked in. Maazel refuses to let the strings rise above piano (strictly the marking prescribed) which makes him relatively chilly. Previn on that melody is faster and more direct than Ashkenazy but just as warm and rich.
Those contrasts are fairly typical, and the Decca digital recording with its range and beautiful bloom matches the warm Romanticism of the interpretation. Next to it the DG sound with its close-up focus on individual instruments sounds rather abrasive, with the Berlin violins rather edgy and sometimes even thin. But the sound suits the incisiveness of Maazel's urgent reading—which unlike the other two omits the exposition repeat in the first movement. Ashkenazy in the finale has a basic speed even faster than Maazel's, hectic to the point of wildness, and then characteristically slows more markedly for the second subject. Purely on interpretation I still marginally prefer the Previn with its more direct, less extreme view but with comparable warmth, and the sound is among HMV's most impressive of its period. But Ashkenazy's volatile view is equally compelling, and he has the advantage of superb digital recording, not to mention a fascinating coupling, the ''Youth'' Symphony—in fact only a first movement written when Rachmaninov was still only 19. The first subject with its syncopated rhythms in compound time brings direct cribs from Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony, and the second subject is too sharply contrasted to allow a truly symphonic synthesis, but it is a bold, highly enjoyable piece well worth hearing.'