David Frühwirth in a recording for Avie in the year 2000 shows that you can compile a violin recital disk without having recourse to the inevitable Banjo & Fiddle, Liebesfreud, Thaïs Méditation, or La Capricieuse. He assembles 17 short pieces for a 70 minute CD that is varied, interesting and refreshing. We pass from Hubay to Kurt Weill to Zimbalist to Glazunov to Ovide Musin to Hans Sitt to Chopin to Vieuxtemps ... and it's all enjoyable. Yes, it can be done.

Frühwirth does not have Heifetz's palette of colours, nor Kreisler's charm. But he does reasonably well. Out of his seventeen pieces, I would have omitted Ravel's Pièce en forme de Habanera -- it's done too often, and Frühwirth's Havana here is a bit misty on a cold morning -- and George Gershwin's Short Story (that gives the CD its selling title). Gershwin was a meretricious American who wrote smart jazz-inflected pieces for smart Americans in the 1920s. I cannot understand why his smart little pieces are still programmed; it is fortunate for us that he died before he was 40 years old, so his output of playable little pieces is limited. Apart from those two small gripes: 15 out of 17 is a big hit rate for one CD of enjoyable, out-of-the-way "romantic pieces" for violin and piano. It will be played on future occasions.