Known for his thorough-going interest in the music of Brahms, Julius Katchen (1926-1969) was an American virtuoso and contemporary of the more flamboyant William Kapell, and their musical interests were not dissimilar. Katchen's was a more classical style, but equally muscular and aggressive. If Kapell gravitated towards Copland, Katchen found a sympathetic spirit in Rorem. Both artists gave fire and panache to Prokofiev's Third Concerto. Katchen's recording in this set is his earlier of two, this made in November 1953 with Ernest Ansermet, always a sympathetic reader of the iconoclastic Russian. Katchen executes some graceful filigree in the second movement theme-and variations, and he gets the blood racing in the finale. The Bartok, from October 1953, tries to balance a Hungarian ethos with French taste, in the manner of the Annie Fischer/Igor Markevitch inscription. The second movement nocturne is particularly refined, with Ansermet's orchestral tissue's having a balletic character. The Mikrokosmos group shows off Katchen's relishing all kinds of eccentric accents and irregular metric units, free dissonances and displaced intervals. Even in the course of punishing acrobatics, Katchen manages a semblance of warmth and grace in what are Bartok's experiments for his larger forms. Assuming Testament will continue to issue Katchen's Decca originals, might we hope for the return of the Katchen/Monteux Brahms' D Minor Concerto? (Gary Lemco, Audiophile Audition, October 2003)