There is rather more to be said in favour of this disc than its unrecommendable predecessor in the series—reviewed in December—which couples Concertos Nos. 1 and 4. The sound is bright and lively, with better control of levels, and the performance has an engaging mixture of devil-may-care extroversion and that pellucid-toned inwardness that calls to mind the years Stephen Kovacevich spent as a pupil of Myra Hess. In the end, I still don't think it entirely hangs together. There are rough patches in the performance and the many blurred triplet semiquavers in the finale are a confirmation that Kovacevich's tempo is far quicker than Beethoven's plain Allegro really allows. Extroversion topples over into impatience, as it sometimes does in the performance of the somewhat novel coupling, the Grosse Fuge arranged for string orchestra. Kovacevich's older mid-price Philips recording of the concerto, with Sir Colin Davis, is much to be preferred, not least because the coupling is a Kovacevich speciality; Beethoven's Op. 109 Piano Sonata.'