At just 11 years of age, Sarah Chang is, quite simply, an undisputed violinistic phenomenon. She appeared with Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic at the age of eight, playing Paganini's First Violin Concerto, and recorded this debut recital disc a year later. Subsequent engagements with the orchestras of Philadelphia Chicago, Pittsburgh and Montreal drew unreserved critical approbation, although one assumes that Chang's concert schedule will be limited as she continues her studies at the Juilliard School under Dorothy DeLay.
Sarah Chang uses a quarter-size violin here which cannot be expected to match the amplitude or tonal resources of a larger instrument, but discreet engineering and sensitive accompanying from the excellent Sandra Rivers ensures that she is never unduly pressured. Her tone is pliant and imaginatively modulated, whilst every purely mechanical aspect of her technique seems to be already fully formed. None of the formidable demands of the Sarasate Carmen Fantasy (heard in Zino Francescatti's edition) challenge her in any degree; and even if her performance fails to generate the last frisson of excitement, Chang's playing is utterly reliable. The two Elgar miniatures have a captivating innocence of their own but her liberal use of portamento in Salut d'amour though affecting, is slightly mannered, as is her rather four-square, obviously contrived rubato in La Capricieuse. Her sizzling accounts of Khachaturian's ''Sabre Dance'' from Gayaneh, and the bristling Prokofiev march, from The Love for Three Oranges require little comment—both are electrifying!
Sarah Chang's Paganini leaves the listener dumbfounded. She plays the first and fifteenth Caprices with the confident elan of a seasoned virtuoso, whilst her apparently innate grasp of their hidden symmetries raises the music far above the level of the merely didactic. The programme also includes two of the Op. 34 Shostakovich Preludes, in transcriptions by Dmitri Zyganow, again played with remarkable assurance and maturity. Chang is marginally less convincing at this early stage, however, in any less obviously demonstrative offerings. Tchaikovsky's Souvenir d'un lieu cher, Op. 42, and Kreisler's Tempo di Menuetto after Pugnani are certainly charming but a shade inflexible. Chang is adroit, yet unyielding in Milstein's arrangement of the Chopin Nocturne in C sharp minor, and the same could also be said of the Liszt transcription. Her naturally spontaneous playing is heard to greater effect in the Gershwin transcription, but it should be stressed that these few vaguely negative observations do not alter the basic facts—this is an astonishing disc. Sarah Chang's playing will enthral and captivate in equal measure. I can do little more than echo Sir Yehudi Menuhin's observation: ''Sarah is the most ideal violinist I have ever heard''—I would urge you to hear this disc as a matter of priority.'