These were stunningly fine performances in their time, and they remain stunningly fine performances nearly 20 years later. At the time he made these recordings in 1986 and 1987,
Cho-Liang Lin was best known as a Mozart player, that is, as an elegant but ultimately ephemeral lightweight, and
Esa-Pekka Salonen was best known -- if he was known at all -- as a conducting composer specializing in the industrial noise of
Magnus Lindberg. But together on this disc,
Lin and
Salonen made beautiful music.
Lin's interpretation of Sibelius' concerto is immensely muscular and enormously passionate, and
Salonen and the
Philharmonia support him with every ounce of their strength.
Lin's interpretation of Nielsen's concerto is wonderfully warm and marvelously funny, and
Salonen and the Swedish Radio Symphony share the love and get the joke. Plus,
Lin and
Salonen, while duly respectful of the exalted position of Sibelius' concerto in the repertoire, in no way slight the stature of Nielsen's concerto, and the result is not only two superlative performances separately, but one superlative disc. Sony's minimalist remastering of Columbia's early digital sound is clean and close and only very occasionally too harsh.