Itzhak Perlman, LSO, André Previn - Mendelssohn & Bruch: Violin Concertos (2015) [HDTracks]

Itzhak Perlman and André Previn have worked together in the recording studio on many occasions and on a wide-ranging repertoire. The latter has conducted the former in eleven works, their first joint production (Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole and Ravel’s Tzigane for RCA) dating back as far as 1968. All the albums that followed were made for EMI, beginning with this one, which they recorded in 1972. After that, they appeared together in orchestral works by Bartók (see volume 6), Goldmark and Sarasate (volume 17), Sibelius and Sinding (volume 21) and Conus and Korngold (volume 27). In addition, Previn moved to the keyboard to accompany Perlman on a number of rag and jazz albums (volumes 10 and 24) although, unlike Anne-Sophie Mutter and Gil Shaham (on DG), Perlman has never recorded Previn’s own sonatas or concertos.
For decades, the coupling on an album of the Mendelssohn and Bruch violin concertos happened so often that it became virtually an unspoken rule. Even though the premiere of the Mendelssohn (1845) had taken place a generation earlier than that of the Bruch (1868), it began to seem as if they had been written with one another in mind! When we talk about “the” Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, we actually mean his second, the E minor, Op.64, because his first — a very early work only rediscovered many years later, by Yehudi Menuhin, in 1951 — has never really established itself in the repertoire. Similarly, we tend to speak of “the” Bruch Concerto, always with reference to his first work in the genre, the G minor, Op.26 — he in fact wrote two others, neither of which has ever achieved the same level of popularity. Here, Itzhak Perlman goes with the conventional flow, and sticks with the traditional pairing, as indeed he did, just as happily, eleven years later, when he re-recorded them with Bernard Haitink (volume 33).