Years ago, any 15-year-old who performed with Sarah Chang’s degree of technical facility would have been hailed a genius. Nowadays, with prodigies fairly thick on the ground, youthful virtuosity is no longer headline news. Indeed, it is probably fair to say that the general level of technical accomplishment among young musicians is higher now than it has ever been.
Of course, Sarah Chang is by now something of a concert-circuit veteran, having performed with just about every major orchestra in the world, invariably to wide critical acclaim. She has a clean, sweet tone, immaculate musical taste and extremely quick reflexes (Sarasate’s two pieces positively fly off the bow). Her Ronde des lutins flits a single note from string to string (the central section’s main trapeze act) with great aplomb; her Hora staccato spits and sizzles, and she makes seductive music of Faure’s delightful Berceuse. She can be playful (as in Tchaikovsky’s Valse-scherzo), tonally chaste (Gluck), elegant (Paganini) and mischievous (Prokofiev), but I found her Brahms sonata movement rather uninvolving.
As a programme of sweetmeats, this disc could hardly be bettered, even if none of the performances quite rivals those ‘old acquaintances’ whose indelible personalities shine through hundreds of vintage records. Most of this music is of their time, not ours, though Chang’s quick-wristed characterizations are charming in themselves. Accompaniments and recordings are first-rate.'