Through this CD I made my first acquaintance with Tchaikovsky's great Violin Concerto, and I still find it enjoyable, even enthralling listening, although a comparison with Decca's 1975 recording with Ruggiero Ricci, violin, and the Netherlands' Radio Orchestra directed by Jean Fournet, does reveal some weaknesses: Keith Clark indulges in some very relaxed tempi, needing in all six and a half minutes longer than Fournet, and this is at the expense of the sheer excitement which the Ricci version is able to generate. Mariko Honda plays excellently and very deliberately, but she is not able to match Ricci's fireworks, both in the central section of the first movement and in the closing Allegro vivacissimo. Her violin has a darker tone which seems to emit a certain melancholy; Ricci's lighter, slightly higher-pitched instrument seems to have the edge. The Slovak Philharmonic does its best, but it cannot in any way rival the finely chiselled Dutch version (whose Canzonetta is superb). And although the Naxos recorded sound is probably very realistic, the Decca provides much more direct access to the instruments of the orchestra, thus opening up some detail which the Naxos hides. All in all, I would say that this Naxos CD offers a highly respectable performance, one which one would be lucky to hear live anywhere except in a leading metropolis, but it cannot really rival the world-class Decca team.

Where the Naxos CD does score points, is its coupling with the 'Sérénade mélancolique', Tchaikovsky's first work for violin and orchestra, and the 'Souvenir d'un lieu cher' in the version orchestrated by Glazunov. Teije van Geest has here produced two lovely masterpieces in excellent recorded sound, my only reservation being the acoustics of the concert hall which cause considerable echo as soon as the orchestra gets a little louder. But that is, perhaps, a minor point, and anyway it is something that most of the early Eastern European Naxos recordings suffer from.