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If, as Joseph Banowetz claims in his lively and informed notes, Rubinstein was ''the last in a line of pianist-composers that climaxed with Liszt, Busoni and Rachmaninov'', it is surely necessary to add that he was hardly a composer in the same league. And while I am more than grateful to have two such rarely heard concertos on record, powerfully and persuasively performed, it is difficult to warm to their often facile and derivative quality. Rubinstein may have been an anarchic and elemental virtuoso but he could be a sadly conventional composer. Clearly, he knew the finale of Beethoven's E flat Piano Sonata, Op. 31 No. 3, all too well, and in the First Concerto its propulsive tarantella combines uneasily with a Mendelssohnian mix of earnestness and sugar-sweet facility.

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Concertos Nos. 3 and 4 are not only formidably demanding from a technical standpoint, but also are extremely difficult to interpret musically. Rózsa has all the violinistic equipment necessary to tackle these fiendish scores, as he impressively shows in the first movement cadenza of the E minor work. For comparison, I turned to Salvatore Accardo's account on Deutsche Grammophon with Charles Dutoit and the London Philharmonic. Accardo is rightly regarded as a Paganini specialist, but he is neither as subtle in his phrasing and inflection nor so stylish and polished in bravura passages as Rózsa.

Concertos Nos. 3 and 4 are not only formidably demanding from a technical standpoint, but also are extremely difficult to interpret musically. Rózsa has all the violinistic equipment necessary to tackle these fiendish scores, as he impressively shows in the first movement cadenza of the E minor work. For comparison, I turned to Salvatore Accardo's account on Deutsche Grammophon with Charles Dutoit and the London Philharmonic. Accardo is rightly regarded as a Paganini specialist, but he is neither as subtle in his phrasing and inflection nor so stylish and polished in bravura passages as Rózsa.