Music Minus One Violin: Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in D ... (ISBN 1596151315)

great idea-poor execution:
The idea behind Music Minus One series is great. It allows players of different levels to get a feel for playing with an orchestra or a chamber ensemble. They have quite a few advanced pieces in their offering, the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto being one of them. Although the idea is fantastic, the execution made this a rather painful experience. First off, the orchestra is not at the same tuning as the 440 Hz oboe note given in for the tuning. It is tuned significantly sharper, which makes one wonder why they even bothered with the track. Second, the tempo is not strict. At all. Sure, it would be unmusical to play this piece very very straight. But the idea behind this should not be that the soloist try to follow the whimsical rubatos of the orchestra. It would be a much more useful experience if the orchestra maintained a metronomic consistency except in a few places where the composer specified the tempo changes or the performance tradition mandates it. Having practiced this piece a lot with the metronome at all sorts of different tempos, I can comfortably say the accompaniment, particularly in the first movement, takes too much liberty with the tempo. Instead of allowing the performer to stretch the phrases within the confines of strict tempo, it forces the performer to simply memorize another's interpretive rubatos. I do not think I would buy another Music Minus One recording, if this is an indication of what the series is like.