Both these reissues, it will be seen, come at bargain price, and neither disc has notes on the music. I fail to understand why Philips and DG cannot reprint notes from the original issues: it is a basic service for collectors who at this price may be investigating Brahms for the first time.
The Philips disc also suffers from the fact that Haitink is in less than inspired form. At no point in either the Concerto or the Tragic Overture does his conducting rise above the routinely efficient, though the playing of the Concertgebouw is excellent within a very good, spacious recording. In these circumstances Krebbers is somewhat handicapped. He is a very fine player technically, with a beautiful quality of tone, but he is not inspired to produce anything other than an accurate, perfectly idiomatic, serviceable performance.
The DG disc offers a good deal more, and in the Concerto it is soon clear that a stimulating partnership between conductor and soloist has been formed. In the opening tutti Karajan makes the BPO play with a good deal of weight and commitment, and throughout the work he conducts watchfully and attentively. The early 1960s recording is not quite so good as the Philips, but the balance is unusually realistic, with the soloist set at a decent distance from the microphones. Ferras has a more silvery, slightly thinner tone than Krebbers, but he plays with a good deal of passion and poetry, particularly in the first movement. Here he almost reaches the same level as David Oistrakh, whose performance is on mid-price EMI. Ferras also plays with some distinction in the Adagio, but Oistrakh finds an extraordinary vein of eloquence in this movement, and in the finale, where Ferras's technique fails him slightly at one or two points, Oistrakh's superior strength and force of personality make a greater impression. But the DG disc is an attractive bargain, and has a most desirable bonus in a finely balanced yet ardent performance of the First Sonata.'