Britten and Walton - Violin Concertos - Ida Haendel (1978)

BBC Music Magazine:
Performance: ***** / Sound: *****
"Ida Haendel’s sinewy and athletic reading of the often under-rated Britten combines toughness with a cumulative dramatic impetus which is hard to resist. Berglund and the Bournemouth players respond with a terse and argumentative vigour, suitably balanced between resignation and defiant rhetoric, especially in the closing Passacaglia. The Walton Concerto, also dating from 1938-9, is played with an apposite blend of inscrutable panache, as in the irrepressibly brilliant central movement, and elsewhere, a sensuous, if occasionally over-indulgent languor. Rare lapses in the finale can be safely overlooked, in a performance of eloquence and undisputed stature." --Michael Jameson

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) - Violin Concerto Op.15
Sir William Walton (1902-1983) - Violin Concerto in B minor

Ida Haendel, violin
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
Paavo Berglund