Isaac Stern - Bernstein: Serenade / Dutilleux: L'arbre des songes (1995)

You can't beat Isaac Stern at anything. He invests Bernstein's Serenade for Solo Violin, String Orchestra, Harp and Percussion, after Plato's Symposium with characteristic feeling, and all this is backed up by Leonard Bernstein's conducting of the Symphony of the Air in a 1956 recording. (Both works here are reissues--but don't let that stop you.) The Bernstein may sell this disc, but the Dutilleux is the more interesting composition. Dutilleux's brand of music is polymorphic--shifting tonalities and fluxuating textures, and both of these soli as well as tutti. Fans of Alfred Schnittke will take to this music easily. --Paul Cook