At his best, Serkin's driving energy, fierce intelligence, and his unfailing lucidity of touch produced recordings that do that rare thing: they transcend the medium. This is one such.

Serkin is said to have disliked recording and his legacy is mixed, technically and artistically. Yet, at best, his driving energy, his fierce intelligence, his quick mind, and (until comparatively recently) his unfailing lucidity of touch often produced recordings that do that rare thing: they transcend the medium.

One such recording is his 1968 Cleveland account of Brahms's D minor Piano Concerto which Sony have recently reissued...coupled with another Serkin speciality, Richard Strauss's Burleske for piano and orchestra. Serkin "at the peak of his form, emotionally, intellectually, and technically" is how Trevor Harvey described the performance in these columns in May 1969 and I wouldn't disagree with that. From the piano's first entry it is evident that we are in the presence of a musical plain-dealer who is something more besides. The touch is plain but never monochrome, resolute but never harsh. There are miracles of dynamic shading yet dynamic changes that are elementally swift and steep. Above all, there is a revelatory way with rhythm, full of potency and drive in quicker music, and turning the more reflective passages into slow sustained acts of transcendental enquiry. As a reading this has something of Arrau's weight and profundity (Philips D 420 702-2PSL, 11/87) matched to Curzon's lyricism and sense of forward drive (Decca D 417 641-2DH, 10/87, also conducted by Szell). It is not better than either but it has some of the best qualities of both. There are those, it must be said, who are distracted by Serkin's stamping pedalwork and by breathing that has Serkin, like Arrau, cross-hatching the lie of a phrase with his own peculiar form of musical emphysema. Such things don't worry me unduly. You can't expect a man to go up the north face of the Eiger, silently, in carpet-slippers; and, in the slow movement, I find the counterpointing of Serkin's stressful breathing, with the sublimely conjured and spun melody that floats from it, to be a moving re-enactment of the composer's own recalcitrance in the face of the brute marble out of which this concerto is sculpted.

Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra are, needless to say, superb accompanists, and the sound is excellent in an appropriately forthright way, with pianissimos that are not so much pianissimo as properly hushed and innig. I don't agree with the reviewer who found Serkin's account of the Strauss Burleske to be lacking in poetry. Rather, it glints; it is sharp and witty. Above all, the performance redeems the work from its principal failing: the sense it can give of being marginally but fatally over length... [I]f you want a truly worthy memorial of this great pianist from the current batch, there is absolutely no doubt that the Brahms/Strauss disc is the one to have.

-- Gramophone [7/1991]

All recordings [of Harold in Italy] stand to be judged by the famous mono recording by Primrose and Beecham which had a unique incandescent warmth.

-- Gramophone [10/1978]

BEETHOVEN: TRIPLE CONCERTO B

The four players named above constituted the Busch Quartet from 1930 to 1945. They left Hitler's Germany in 1933 and by the outbreak of the war were settled in America. During the thirties they recorded among much other music all the late Beethoven quartets except this one; to quote the sleeve-note, this omission was put right in 1941 when the Busch Quartet made its first recordings for CBS in America. Its quality is astonishingly good apart from some deterioration towards the end of the finale, better than in the Busch recording of the three Beethoven Quartets I wrote about last January (World Records mono SHB27/1-2, p. 136), but the playing, though superlative at its best, is not quite as consistent as in the A minor Op. 132. An irrelevant criticism, perhaps, for in truth this record by the best of all pre-war quartets (as I think) deserves to be welcomed with open arms.

Adolf Busch himself had the most beautiful tone quality, a marvellous understanding of transitional passages (listen, for instance, to the return of the opening tune in the second movement), and an unusually delicate staccato.

The latter helps to make this performance of the third movement the most exquisite I have ever heard; the touch of skittishness is just right (and I hope you are not put off by this word). The tempo, faster than is usual today, also seems just right. Things do not go quite as well in the Alla danza tedesca. Again the tempo is faster than usual; Busch had noticed the Allegro assai marking and, unlike almost all other groups, he tried to take it literally. But the result sounds as though the music has been pushed too hard, and the ensemble slips a little in the middle. The Cavatina is a little soupy in the opening section. Busch scoops here and there in the main tune, as he also does in the second subject of the first movement, the tune that starts with a rising sixth. The odd thing is that quite often when the other players have the same lime there is not a trace of a portamento. Today I think we tend to hold up our hands in exaggerated horror at this trick from the past, and it is worth remembering that in the thirties Busch was frequently praised because he scooped so rarely; as opposed to Lener who did it all the time. I have- made much too much of' the small failings, in the Busch performance of the Cavatina. Much of it is very Moving, and the central recitative-like section finds Busch himself at his superb best. But all four players are in the very first rank ; one remembers particularly the cellist—a brother of the Quartet's leader—in the finale. Here the relaxed tempo is precisely judged as is the delicate humour of the music. I would expect this record to be broadcast at reasonably-spaced intervals until the end of time. It is, as they say, a classic.

-- Gramophone [11/1975, reviewing Op. 130 on LP]

BEETHOVEN: SYMPHONIES NOS 7, 8

Intelligent performances from one of the most celebrated and long-lived of all string quartets. Some things work more successfully than others, and fast movements generally fare better than slow ones (the dashing finale of No. 5 is especially well done). It’s a shame that a few more repeats aren’t observed, but the playing is so well-blended and civilised that I’ll forgive them. The 1951/52 sound is clean rather than especially vivid.

-- Stephen Maddock, BBC Music Magazine

BEETHOVEN: TRIO OP 70 NO 1 BR

BARTÓK: MIKROKOSMOS GYÖRGY SÁ