SZYMANOWSKI Violin Concertos: No. 1; No. 2 • Alena Baeva (vn); Bogusław Dawidow, cond; Opole PSO • DUX 575 (49:31)

Alena Baeva is a sultrily attractive young woman—a matter the open-out pasteboard sleeve, with its four fetching full-page color photographs, makes inescapable. Through both works she maintains a guilelessly fluent, sweetly seductive croon in even the most raucous passages, though her cadenzas are reeled off—albeit in startling coruscations—as if they held no expressive secrets. In these works it is not enough to play beautifully. Baeva alternates moments of poetry with stretches of faceless proficiency. The Opole band is a cut above bush league, but one immediately discerns a lack of direction, slant, or interpretive thrust in these splashy readings. Dawidow simply keeps things moving at a relaxed pace, where Wit (with Ilya Kaler, Naxos 8.557981, Fanfare 31:1), say, wallows in Szymanowski’s sensuous scoring, or Kazimierz Kord (with Kaja Danczowska, Accord 011 314, Fanfare 24:3 ) makes the most of his ecstatic, hallucinatory shifts. Both bring immediate lift and animating focus where Dawidow beats time.

Superbly balanced, glowingly detailed, walloping sound—with the soloist brilliantly on top—may persuade you that these are better performances than they are. I look forward to hearing Baeva again—in these works, coached and led by a more practiced hand. Recommended as an introduction to a promising artist, and as one of the best sounding CDs of the year.

FANFARE: Adrian Corleonis