Milstein enjoyed a long-standing relationship with the concertos in this collection. In fact, except for Brahms’s, he included them explicitly in the short list of the greatest works in his autobiography, From Russia to the West. He expressed reservations about Bach’s Concertos, which he thought belonged under the heading of chamber music; and he placed Beethoven’s Concerto first, divining in it a spiritual message that had somehow sprung out of thin air. He agreed with early critics who considered Bruch’s Concerto a better work than Brahms’s, despite its being somewhat uneven in inspiration and suffering {like all Bruch’s concerted works for the violin] from an inferior finale. He accepted Tchaikovsky’s word for the merit of Lalo’s Symphonie-although it’s clear that he also warmed to it personally. He recorded all of these concertos several times in the studio, some more than once.

More often than not, broadcasts and live performances of artists who made many studio recordings represent them as possessing qualities and characteristics distinctly different from those of an editor’s air-brushed and reassembled studio portrait. But in Milstein’s case, the live performances seem equally flattering, if not more so. At the very least, they reveal the injustice of dismissing him as simply a violinist’s violinist. He had in his lyre a string for every occasion, even if he reserved the use of that lyre for music-and occasions- of his choosing. But though he may not have been a man for quite all seasons, all seasons flattered him.

THE ART OF NATHAN MILSTEIN: PREVIOUSLY UNISSUED PUBLIC PERFORMANCES

CD No.1 Bruch: Violin Concerto No. 1 in G Minor, op. 26 Antal Dorati, ORTF, 24 Sept. 1961 Bach: Violin Concerto No. 1 in A Minor, BWV 1041 Antal Dorati, ORTF, 24 Sept. 1961 Brahms: Violin Concerto in D, op. 77 Istvan Kertesz, ORTF, 23 Sept. 1963 Total Time = 76:13.

CD No.2 Beethoven: Violin Concerto in D, op. 81 Eugene Ormandy, Concertgebouw at Montreux, 5 Oct. 1959 Lalo: Symphonie Espagnole, op. 21 (short version) Andre Cluytens, ORTF, Jul. 1955. Total Time: 66:37. Digitally remastered by Aaron Z. Snyder in 2005. AAD. UPC# 0-17685-11682-7