The performance of the E minor concerto is rather less novel in approach though it has one quirky moment where Rubinstein gives the very opening phrase of the first movement a curious rhythmic snap—which I don’t, pace Mr Summers, detect to “exactly the same” extent in the subsequent 1961 re-recording. Nevertheless, this is another very fine performance, superbly conceived and executed. Contemporary critics had a few negative things to say about Alfred Wallenstein’s direction of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, but I actually found that to be one of the recording’s great strengths. The conductor fully matches Rubinstein in strength and vigour and, in Mark Obert-Thorn’s expert restoration, the orchestra comes out sounding very well indeed, even allowing for the date of the performance. Initial pressings must have been rather odd because one English reviewer swore that he detected a saxophone in the orchestral mix! 

When wanting to listen to a Rubinstein account of these concertos in the future, I imagine, then, that it will almost certainly be this one—rather than the over-impulsive 1930s accounts or the comparatively stately traversals of his final “grand old man” phase—that I will be taking from the shelves with the greatest sense of pleasurable anticipation.

Complementing its Chopin release from Cortot [8.110612] and Moiseiwitsch [8.111118], Naxos now offers the first disc in a series devoted to Arthur Rubinstein’s recordings dating from the mid-a940s to the ‘50s. Mercifully uncut, unlike Rubinstein’s previous disc s of both concertos with Barbirolli, these are astonishing performances, occasionally, particularly in the F minor Concerto, content simply to astonish. Here there is an almost arrogant dismissal of all difficulties and a prima donna stance sometimes hard to square with some of Chopin’s more delicate and ornate confidences. In the scintillating coda Rubinstein takes his bravura to a spine-tingling edge, but in, for example, the Larghetto’s central storms there is a brusque, streamlined indifference to the music’s finer qualities. In the E minor Concerto, while recognisably the same pianist, Rubinstein is altogether more subtle, following his characteristic exuberance and extroversion with playing of a rapt magic and delicacy. The music may be sent smartly on its way by both conductor and soloist, but the patrician ease, nonchalant glitter and authority of Rubinstein’s playing are uniquely his to command. These are both extraordinary performances by an extraordinary pianist though of the two, the E minor Concerto is the more affecting. Mark Obert-Thorn’s restoration of the 1953 sound is a model of remastery though even he cannot make the 1946 F minor Concerto sound less than cramped.