Isserlis is placed very forward in
recording balance: in the Elgar it adds but in Walton's concerto it obscures opening's magical shimmer of harp vibraphone - while making the soloist's initial intake of breath distractingly audible.
However, I occasionally found the piano a bit too loud, more a problem with the
recording balance, perhaps, than the pianist.
In the present study, we used a seesaw-like platform that allowed by
recording balance performance as time in seconds and also, by using an electrogoniometer, to record the direct rotation of a platform.
(If McGegan and the Philharmonia Baroque are marginally better than Hogwood and the Academy, the
recording balance is worse.) The same must be said of other orchestras on the discs under review here; we accept standards for orchestral playing that we would not countenance for soloists, hence the dual personality of most concerto recordings.
But the production does his musicianship no favours, the
recording balance And this not least in the wonderful Concerto for Violin and Oboe (C minor here, as in its twoharpsichord version, when we normally hear it in D minor when violin and oboe are the soloists).