A really excellent new CD features the young German violinist Julia Fischer. She fits well into the all-star team of extraordinary young female violinists and, like Janine Jansen and Elisabeth Batiashvili, is thorougly musical and "serious". This, her first CD, has an excellent Khachaturian violin concerto, the Glazunov concerto, and the first Prokofiev concerto. Adding to the pleasure is the all-Russsian back-up of Yakov Kreizberg and the Russian National Orchestra. Recording is excellent, though the violin balance a little too natural for my taste; with these concertos we are, alas, used to a more forward balance for the soloist. But Julia Fischer is yet another young violinist to watch.

A new release (December 2002 recording) of Schubert's Trout Quintet also makes one wonder whether, in recorded classical performances, the "good old days" were always that good. This new Trout, with an all-French line-up of the Capuçon brother, Gérard Caussé. Frank Braley and Alois Posch, sparkles and dances and underlines the fact that this was a young man's music written for an informal social occasion. Difficult to think of a Trout I'd rather put on. And the recording (Virgin) is really first-rate.