Mendelssohn Violin Concerto

Few weeks ago I heard Vivian Hagner playing Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in e, with NYPO under Maazel. She picked a very slow tempo. Before that I had heard Milstein's, Kreisler's, and Chun's interpretations, who, especially for the firmst movement, had picked a faster tempo. This concerto has a lot of lyricism in it, and I believe, with a faster tempo, most of that lyric richness can be neglected.

After searching I found a recording by Hagner on Amazon. It was not available in music stores in town. So I tried whatever was avaliable, and found the closest at Barnes and Noble: Anne-Sofie Mutter with Karajan and BPO in 1980s. Very nice and polished performance, great articulation, and of course slower tempi. The first movement in Mutter/Karjan version is 14:00. I did another search and other versions by Zuckerman, Milstein, Hope, Hahn, Jansen, Salerno-Sonnefeld, Perlman, Gromioux were faster than Mutter and Hagner. I still like the slower tempo much better! I had the same feeling, when for the first time I heard Schumann's piano concerto live with Radu Lupu playing with the CSO under Daniel Barenboim. He chose to play the first movement with an extremely slower tempo, and it sounded as poetic as Schumann should sound.