Kyung Wha Chung, it seems, secured her first broadcast as a singer: well, anything is possible in a world where Ella Fitzgerald secured her first professional work as a dancer. We are told of the violinist's unexpected achievement (admittedly, she was only three years old at the time, a bit young even for a sixteenth-size fiddle) in a biographical note by EG which is partnered by very civilized notes on the music by James Harding.
The music is, of course, a splendid selection of encore pieces. Most are familiar to encore-fanciers, and probably none the less welcome to them for that. A few will perhaps not have been encountered before, and if so their very unfamiliarity will serve to give variety to a programme quite likely to be subjected to continuous listening. Among these Chaminade's Serenade espagnole states a case for being better known, as one of Kreisler's arrangements, than it is; and so does the Heifetz arrangement of Debussy's beautiful Beau soir, an early song.
The continuous listening I suggested as likely will stem partly from the intrinsic variety of the well-arranged programme (a pity, though, to split up Kreisler's Liebesleid and Liebesfreud, clearly intended as a pair with their own built-in contrast). But the continuous listening will stem principally from the quality of performance: once you start listening you are very unlikely to be able to stop. Other star violinists have played such pieces with faultless technique; or with bewitching tone; or with a style which could be properly described, without reservation, as the con amore of the record's title. But few, indeed, of them have combined all these three aspects of string-playing in such tremendous, heart-warming degree as, on this occasion, does Kyung Wha Chung. This is a stunning demonstration of encore-playing.
It is aided and abetted by Phillip Moll in the part of the most skilful and sympathetic of accompanists: sympathy in the highest degree imaginable is displayed in, particularly, Elgar's La capricieuse, written one Christmas Eve as a Christmas present for his wife (other husbands stuck with a Christmas Eve problem may well wish that a similar solution was available to them!).
Like the performances, the recorded quality of sound is of the very finest in every respect. This record is a winner.'