These two versions of the Glazunov Violin Concerto, sharply contrasted both as performances and in their couplings, relate the work and its composer in two quite different directions, each with illuminating and highly enjoyable results. Those devoted to Glazunov will specially welcome the coupling from Chandos of his two most popular works. It makes one wonder why so apt and attractive a linking has not become common—maybe a question of virtuoso violinists not wanting to risk the idea of being taken as a subsidiary attraction.
With Oscar Shumsky there is no danger of that. The concerto may be placed after the ballet, a much longer work, but with Shumsky's strong, clear tone, recorded with greater warmth and sweetness than on many of his earlier recordings, and with the solo instrument placed rather close, his strong, positive view of the work comes over powerfully.
Anne-Sophie Mutter takes quite a different view. Hers is a much more volatile approach. No doubt encouraged by Rostropovich, himself very free as a concerto soloist, she is far more freely expressive than she has generally been on record. In the flexibility of phrasing and tempo, it is very like a one-off, live performance, and where Shumsky pours forth a wonderfully even flow of firm, pure tone, Mutter ranges wider both in tone and dynamic, with pianissimos that caress the ear. She is helped in that by the rather more distant balance of the solo violin, where conversely Shumsky's closeness certainly reinforces the power of his playing. Mutter is the more fanciful in the central cadenza—which is given a separate track on the Chandos issue but not on the Erato—and the galloping rhythms of the finale prompt her and Rostropovich to a delightfully light and well-sprung performance, ending with a dazzling account of the coda. Unfortunately, in some of the tuttis the acoustic of the Kennedy Center in Washington makes for unpleasantly dried-out yet misty orchestral sound. Shumsky in that final section is bigger and bolder if rather less fanciful, and the warm acoustic favoured by Chandos makes for much comfortable sound, though detail sometimes gets obscured.
Mutter in the Prokofiev is similarly encouraged into a fanciful performance, freer than I would have expected from her with other conductors. The yearning main melodies of the outer movements are both ravishingly presented, with the very opening of the concerto made the more mysterious at a mere whisper of pianissimo. That couldn't contrast more with one of the sillier remarks in the Erato note that this concerto is ''somewhat closed to cantilena and traditional melodic conception'' (in the original ''peu ouvert aux cantilenes et a la melodie de facture traditionelle''). The central scherzo (presumably what the note writer was thinking of) brings a deliciously witty reading, seemingly carefree. As in the Glazunov, the performance is marred by the cloudiness of the orchestral recording.
The third work on the Erato disc—at 22 minutes, marginally longer than either of the others—is quite different, the orchestral piece (without soloist) which Rodion Shchedrin, regularly a maverick within the Soviet musical heirarchy, wrote for Rostropovich and his Washington orchestra in 1987 to celebrate the millennium of Christianity in Russia. This extended, consistently measured piece is like a great passacaglia based on Russian Orthodox chant, rising up from the merest murmurs to a central climax that is almost Mussorgskian in its simple brazen splendour against the tolling of bells. Each new section brings a different mixture of instruments, always inventive and colourful, though before the end the suspicion arises that this is not too far off becoming an ecclesiastical version of Ravel's Bolero. An enjoyable work none the less, here given a dedicated performance.
Jarvi's performance of the complete Glazunov ballet is characteristically vigorous and colourful. The only CD rival is the digital transfer of Svetlanov's analogue recording of the mid 1970s with the Philharmonia, an outstanding EMI recording of the period. The new Chandos digital recording brings extra range and brilliance, but the very reverberant acoustic tends to cloud the opening of the most celebrated passage in the ballet, the exhilarating Bacchanal at the start of the fourth scene, ''Autumn''. Svetlanov's EMI recording is far clearer in setting the sharp rhythm before the surging melody enters. The performances present a clear contrast too, when Svetlanov regularly adopts slower speeds and generally a more relaxed approach than Jarvi. That goes with extra refinement and point in the playing of the Philharmonia. Svetlanov's is still a red-blooded performance, but Jarvi is more thrustful still. In the ''Valse des bleuets'', for example, from the third scene, ''Summer'', Jarvi is faster and spikier, where Svetlanov is more relaxed and sensuous. Glazunov devotees may well be influenced by the couplings: Svetlanov has the two Concert Waltzes as against the Violin Concerto on the new Chandos issue.'