About this Artist

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Editorial Reviews

Itzhak Perlman always presses so many of the right buttons that listening to his playing can feel like a guilty pleasure. If you suspect that the utter pleasantness of his performances comes in exchange for a decrease in artistic merit, listen again. Don't be disarmed by the beauty of his tone or by his wit and whimsy, and instead scrutinize the performance for its interpretative virtues. Under such scrutiny, however, the violinist's stock merely rises -- therein lies the Perlman magic. This compilation of button-pushing pieces showcases Perlman's manifold charms. These are very "violinistic" selections, from Henri Wieniawski's sparkling Polonaise de concert to Fritz Kreisler's infectiously swaying Liebeslied. In this latter piece, with its hypnotic weaving of piano and violin melodies, the reason for Perlman's choice of Samuel Sanders as his exclusive accompanist in these recordings is immediately clear. With Sanders' rock-solid and nuanced support, Perlman's fancy takes comfortable flight, especially in those pieces with a Spanish flavor: works by Manuel Ponce, Enrique Granados, and Pablo de Sarasate, as well as Cécile Chaminade's Sérénade espagnole and Franz Léhar's Serenade. Paul Ben-Haim's lovely Berçeuse sfaradite reminds us of Perlman's explorations of popular Jewish and Klezmer music, and it's the unadorned lyricism of this and many of the other pieces -- especially the transcriptions of Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky, and Gluck -- that reveals the poignancy at the heart of this invariably satisfying musician's art. David Kasunic, Barnes & Noble

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