Honestly, I've never been a big fan of Jascha Heifetz... until I heard his Brahms, which is incredible! A simultaneous realization is that Hilary Hahn's recording of this sounds a bit flat -- not intonation wise, she's almost painfully in tune (always!), but her Brahms is a little boring. She has the amazing, almost piercing, tone that soars, but listening to that for 30 minutes of Brahms can be a little dull.

On a completely different note, the Shostakovich String Quartet No. 11 is so grotesque. Not that I didn't know this before, but wow. It sounds much more gross than any of his other quartets (not in a bad way; in fact, I love his string quartets!). I wonder what could possibly have been going through little Shosty's mind when he wrote something like this.

Back to the Brahms Violin Concerto -- I am mesmerized by the middle movement. I always had the bad habit of skipping the slow movement when listening to concerto recordings, but not anymore! I think that the opening few minutes (notably, the oboe solo) represent one of the most beautiful musical moments; the unwritten, but generally played (I think?), breathmark at the peak of this melody is one of the most incredible musical commas I've ever heard (though sadly not written in by Brahms, as far as I know), and when Heifetz makes the epic shift at the end of the movement, it leaves me in awe...