Hi-Res Downloads

96kHz/24-bit, FLAC; Decca 4788758 (supplied by www.highresaudio.com)

Glazunov’s romantic concerto provides a balm after the terrors and intensity of the Shostakovich: held back from performance until Stalin’s dictatorship was over. There was far slighter music by that composer – ‘Romance’ from The Gadfly – in Benedetti’s 2012 Decca collaboration with the Bournemouth Orchestra and its Ukranian chief conductor, The Silver Violin. Here, she rises to the challenges of music written for Oistrakh, whose 1955 New York benchmark recording is now on Sony. There’s something of a Heifetzian concentration in her playing (and the coupling sounds even more like a live performance) so it’s a shame she’s given full stage width for the long cadenza and we briefly get a ‘wrong end of a telescope’ effect as the Burlesque opens, although the ear quickly adapts. CB

Sound Quality: 90%

Hi-Fi News Lab Report

The anomalous tone at 20kHz is more irritating from a technical than audible standpoint [see Graph], otherwise this 96kHz rendering is free of compression and makes good use of its bandwidth to capture the thrilling string harmonics. PM