Three new CDs of the Sibelius concerto, one of them new and the remaining two reissues. The newcomer on Finlandia is Miriam Fried's second recording of the piece: her first with the Belgian Radio and Television Orchestra under Rene Defossez appeared with the Chausson Poeme some time after her triumph at the 1971 Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels (DG Privilege—nla). "Enormously assured and mature, these performances have chutzpah from beginning to end" is how EG described that record. Her present reading is not wanting in that respect either! I have heard more ethereal accounts of the opening bars though there is great breadth here. She pulls back at the Largamente section (five bars after fig. 3) rather more than did Kyung Wha Chung on Decca or do Accardo, and Amoyal on Erato/RCA (to go no further in the alphabet) but almost convinces one that she is right. She brings great tenderness and feeling to the slow movement though not perhaps the purity of Chung or Accardo. I found her finale curiously lacking in exhilaration—her tempo is about the same as Ferras, steadier than the pace favoured by Accardo. The Finlandia record is splendidly engineered with a very truthful perspective between soloist and orchestra, and a well integrated orchestral balance. All the same, the Finlandia issue is handicapped by a less generous coupling than many of its rivals listed above: both Pierre Amoyal and Viktoria Mullova (on Philips) offer the Tchaikovsky Concerto, Nigel Kennedy for EMI has Simon Rattle's most recent version of the Fifth Symphony and with the incomparable Heifetz performance RCA give us his hardly less wonderful readings of the Glazunov and the Prokofiev G minor Concertos. This disc is in a class of its own. No criticism of Okko Kamu or his fine Helsinki players is intended but as far as the international market is concerned, the Finlandia planners should surely have been more aware of the competition, particularly as the two new reissued rivals are at mid-price.