Rostislav Dubinsky and Luba Edlina are Soviet-born and husband and wife; they now live in the West and play as members of the Borodin Trio as well as performing together as the Dubinsky Duo. Skilful and experienced, they offer a notable degree of artistic unanimity, and their present account of the ten Beethoven violin sonatas is certainly worth hearing and therefore to be welcomed, although it appears in a competitive field in which other violinists include Oistrakh, Menuhin, Stern and Perlman. I should probably name the pianist partners of these artists as well since the keyboard parts in this music are demanding enough to justify the composer's original designation ''for piano and violin''. In fact the two instruments are treated by Beethoven as equals and at the start of the First Sonata the two players announce the first motif in unison (well, actually octaves) and it is the string player who continues melodically over flowing piano quavers, while in the second it is the pianist who first states a melody. In these two sonatas, in D major and A major respectively, we learn much about Dubinsky and Edlina's style, which while reasonably flexible in rhythm and tone is essentially powerful, and while in a con brio movement such as the first of No. 1 this pays off, the final Rondo Allegro of this sonata seems to me to call for more lightness and a dance-like quality than it receives here. Similarly the Allegro vivace first movement of the A major Sonata No. 2, struck me as lacking in sparkle and joie de vivre, and I then noted that it is slower than any of the four alternative perform ances, a fact also true of the Allegro molto finale of No. 3. As for the finale of No. 2, for a movement marked Allegro piacevole this seems unrelaxed. Indeed, I must confess that overall I do find the style of these two players a little unyielding. Undoubtedly something which reinforces this impression is the nature of the recording itself, made in an Essex church, which is close and full of impact; I missed pianissimo and 'half-tones' of timbre. But to be fair, the sound is at the same time admirably clear, with every detail of tone and texture audible.
This quality of clarity, of a well-lit musical landscape, is also a feature of the players' interpretative approach. Theirs is a virile and structurally strong Beethoven. I would not wish to suggest that there's anything wrong with that, only that the music might be allowed to smile more and to sound rather more spontaneous. Nevertheless, in writing these comments I realize that other tastes will differ and that I should not be too dogmatic about this authoritative playing. There are, after all, many approaches to these sonatas with their scope and depth—and I use these words deliberately even of the early sonatas and not merely of such obviously bigger pieces like the Kreutzer and the third-period G major Sonata, Op. 96, a work of lyrical beauty and subtlety. Dubinsky's tone can be sweet and full in lyrical music, and in slow movements above all this is an advantage, and for all my reservations I recognize that both he and his partner bring fluency and a clean healthy energy to these scores.
The rival versions must be summed up rather briefly. Menuhin and Kempff(DG) were recorded in 1970 and are vivid yet flexible, they also include the G major Rondo, WoO41, and the Variations on Mozart's ''Se vuol ballare'', WoO40; this is a set with much interpretative warmth and certainly worth considering despite its age. Oistrakh and Oborin on Philips sound more like chamber music designed for a room rather than a hall, but their Paris recording of 1962 sounds restricted and background hiss is excessive. Stern and Istomin on CBS have a modern recording but strike me as strenuous and are surely too closely recorded, with audible breaths and hums. But it seems clear that the performances of Perlman and Ashkenazy (Decca) are currently unsurpassed. These are fresh and sparkling yet offer many depths of classical-style perception, for example in the variation-form second movement of the Kreutzer Sonata, though the players don't observe the first movement repeat. Their recordings date from the mid 1970s and are attractively vivid, however, you can at present only obtain them in the expansive format of five separate CDs, hardly a bargain compared to the five-LP set. To sum up, Dubinsky and Edlina on Chandos are reliable and clearly recorded, but on artistic grounds the Decca set is preferable.'