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It seems preposterous to recommend an expensive 12-CD compilation of prize-winning interpretations, recorded in the heat of combat during the Queen Elisabeth Competitions in the years from 1951 to 2000. But several performances are likely to interest piano and violin aficionados. Vladimir Ashkenazy (first prize, 1956), for example, is heard in a performance of a work he never recorded, and--so far as one can tell--never performed again. But Ashkenazy gives Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 1 the wildest ride you'll ever hear. Despite the power and velocity with which he hurtles through the piece, his playing often possesses the delicacy of lace: his octaves are feather-weighted and lyrical cantilenas are never hurried.
Almost equally impressive is Ekaterina Novitskaya (1968)--at 17, the youngest first-prize winner--in Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition." Her playing is colorful, exciting, and powerful enough to shake the fillings loose from your teeth. Perhaps the single finest performance in the set comes from Youri Egorov (third prize, 1975) in Schumann's "Carnaval." Compared with the winged flight of this unedited live performance, Egorov's otherwise fine studio recording (EMI) sounds earthbound. Alexei Michlin took first prize in 1963 with a performance of Shostakovich's Violin Concerto No. 1 that matches those of Kogan and Oistrakh at their best. In Ravel's "Tzigane," another Russian first-prize-winning violinist (1967), Philippe Hirshhorn, exudes even more high-wire intensity than his friend and rival from childhood, Gidon Kremer, does in Schumann's "Fantasie." Four years later, the Israeli Miriam Freed beat a strong Russian contingent with a gloriously sonorous and deeply affecting Sibelius's Violin Concerto. In contests from which the Russians were absent, first prize winners were usually less impressive. Such was surely the case with Pierre-Alain Volondat (1983), whose readings of Brahms's Four Ballades are merely petulant and with Lebanon's Abdel-Rahman El-Bacha (1978) in a fleet, but emotionally and pianistically lightweight performance of Prokofiev's Second Concerto. --Stephen Wigler
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