Reviewing Ashkenazy's performance last month (and how enjoyable it has been to return to his reading so soon) I predicted that it would be a hard act to follow, and so it proves. There are differences of approach in virtually every number, and many of them are of a kind that cannot be described in terms so blunt as 'better', 'worse', 'more exciting' or 'less beautiful'. Even those that are qualitative are matters of fairly fine shading; my listening notes are twice as long as usual because of the frequency of such phrases as "very slightly . . .", "just a touch less . . ." and "a fraction more . . .". I have to say that most of this cautious hair-splitting is in Previn's favour, but that is not to say that Ashkenazy's reading is eclipsed: it is a very fine account indeed that I could happily live with (and was indeed looking forward to doing so until Previn's came along).

There are three main reasons for preferring, however marginally, the new version. On this showing, to begin with, the LSO is the better orchestra: the woodwind solos, again and again, have just an extra degree or two of character and distinction of phrasing; the violins show barely a trace of strain in those perilously exposed high-lying phrases, the cellos have an absolutely secure expressive warmth, even at the extremes of their register: they in particular make the pas-de-deux, No. 36, a genuinely romantic, Tchaikovskyan adagio. Previn, secondly, finds rather more variety of nuance in the work than Ashkenazy does, and finds it easier to control the balance of the scoring, which so often inhabits a borderland just this side of stridency or congestedness. Number 26, the mazurka for the Prince's entrance, is a good example: Previn distils as much grace as swagger from it (Ashkenazy rather less of the former), the showy trumpet tune is kept in its place, prominent but not dominating (Ashkenazy allows it to step forward as though it were the movement's centrepiece) and the introduction, a bit of a scramble in Ashkenazy's account, is urgent but controlled. The HMV recording, too, has a shade more space around it and rather more warmth than the Decca (both of them helpful qualities in a score that can sound tiringly bright) and has been managed with a little more imagination: the two solo violins in "The dancing lesson" (No. 7) really do sound as though they are simply placed at the front of the orchestra) and, again in No. 26, the off-stage trumpets are more realistically placed in the Previn/HMV version.