Search - Camille Saint-Saens, Eugene Ormandy, Philippe Entremont :: Saint-Saëns: Concertos

Reference performance by Zukerman

Nehemia Velvart | 07/22/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The performance of the Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso for violin and Orchestra by Pinchas Zukerman is the very best recording I've heard of this piece ever (I have heard over 20 recordings); it is the reason I purchased this CD and it is truly a collector's jewel of a performance.



All the concertos are decent performances and excellently recorded."

Two winners and a disappointed performance!

Hiram Gomez Pardo | Valencia, Venezuela | 10/30/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Though I am not a consequent of Entremont 's style, I must acknowledge Entremont was in very good shape, those evenings with Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra, specially with the Fourth Concerto. He caught the required élan and marked bourgeois style, with the adequate bright sound, so typical of the French Orchestras. Of course, the hitherto per excellence still belongs to Robert Casadesus who in recorded an admirable performance under Rodzinski in a live performance still available.



I have problems with the second Concerto who finds in Jean Marie Darré and Artur Rubinstein their most remarkable performers to date. Entremont employs excessively the pedal and confers the Concerto a certain dryness and rhythmic untidiness, that joined with a glassy sound of the Orchestra really draws badly the whole meaning of the piece which, somehow would seem to coincide with Oscar Levant when affirmed about this work: "It starts like Bach and concludes like Offenbach."



Fortunately Leonard Rose saves the game with his fabulous approach of the Cello Concerto."