Joel Hill wrote:

>Thanh-Tam Le said:
>
>>Bruch: apart from the 1st violin concerto, try the Scottish Fantasy.
>>Rhapsodic it is, formally uncomplicated, but I cannot resist Heifetz
>>playing this.
>
>There is really *no* need to resist Heifetz in this work.  The intensity
>and beauty that he projects are what violin playing is all about.  Probably
>the best version of this beautiful work.

Try if you can find it, the fantastic Oistrakh/Horenstein/LSO version
of Scottish Fantasy, coupled improbably with Oistrakh/Hindemith/LSO doing
the glorious big 1939 Hindemith concerto.  I never got from Horenstein the
story of how he came to record that; probably he was in London and somebody
else fell through..The opening E-flat minor chord, triple piano, has never
sounded so chilling....

It's wonderful that this piece has moved from being Heifetz' private
domain for so many years into the central violin repertoire, since the
1970s on---I had the pleasure of collaborating with Shlomo Mintz in it
about 1983...

Joel Lazar
 [unabashedly prejudiced in extremis, of course]