Arabella Steinbacher plays the Beethoven violin concerto beautifully and intelligently (especially the Larghetto). I love her playing (and the recording quality). But she is too slow. The first movement weighs in at a massive 26'32 (compared to Janine Jansen's recent recording where she takes a healthier 22'56). Beethoven marked the tempo allegro, for heaven's sake (with ma non troppo as a qualifier). And the concerto dates from 1806, not 1875. To me, much as I love Ms Steinbacher's playing, it all sounds too long and too precious. A shame.

Home coming after Christmas, full of good food. Started my evening with Sandrine Piau singing Handel (quite glorious), followed by Astor Piazzolla playing Astor Piazzola (courtesy of Carlos), then ended with Pavel Sporcl's CD Gipsy Way [as it is spelled on the sleeve]. Sporcl is a highly impressive violinist, and this CD is probably one of the best compilations of gypsy-inspired music that I know; worth the CD for the Zigeunerweisen alone.

As a change from the Berg concerto, I feasted yesterday on a new recording of Max Bruchs' G minor concerto played by Sarah Chang. This is the kind of music that suits Miss Chang down to the ground; she is a highly romantic player, emotional rather than cerebral. In music like Bruch, Mendelssohn or the Goldmark concerto she is most enjoyable (and still a very fine violinist). I must dig out her Goldmark concerto again; I remember doing a movement-by-movement comparison in this concerto between Chang and Joshua Bell; and Sarah Chang won hands down. Having criticised EMI's recording technicians recently, it must be said that they do a good job for Sarah Chang (and for the superb Dresden orchestra under Kurt Masur).

Only once did I purposely buy a recording of Alban Berg's violin concerto, and that was in the early 1980s (Kyung-Wha Chung) when I was curious to hear the work. I listened to it several times, with complete incomprehension, and the LP later ended up in a landfill site somewhere. Since then I have had the misfortune to acquire NINE further recordings of this tuneless, themeless, melody-less, meandering concerto. The latest was yesterday evening, when Arabella Steinbacher had a renewed go at convincing me. I listened and listened ... and still hate the piece. There are so many better violin concertos written in the twentieth century (not least the under-appreciated one by Benjamin Britten). Ms Steinbacher has the Berg concerto as a filler to the Beethoven, which I shall listen to with much more interest, since she is a fine violinist. As for Berg: Bah!

An unexpected pleasure. I don't remember what made me click my mouse on the début CD of Sophia Jaffé, but it certainly wasn't because I had read or heard of this young Berlin-born violinist. Probably it was the selection of works on the CD -- eclectic, but not hackneyed. So we have the Four Pieces by Josef Suk, the Bach E major partita for solo violin, Ysaÿe's second solo sonata, and Beethoven's Op 96 sonata. This is the only recording of the Suk four pieces I posses bar one by Ginette Neveu that I have loved since the original LP came to me back in the 1950s.

Miss Jaffé is impressive. A marvellously deft right arm. Strangely, the four works on this 78 minute CD could almost have been recorded by four different violinists, since Jaffé is very good at varying her approach, sound and style to suit the different composers and the different periods. Only in the Beethoven Op 96 (very well played) did I feel she sounded slightly "conventional". But the Ysaÿe and Bach were joys to listen to, and the Suk yielded little to my cherished Ginette Neveu recordings. Why are these Suk pieces not played more often? The fourth piece -- Burleska -- temporarily found favour with violinists as a virtuoso encore piece, but otherwise performances seem to be rare. Probably what first attracted me to Jaffé's CD. But I received a lot more pleasure than I had bargained for! If Miss Jaffé manages to pick a similarly enterprising programme for a second CD, I'll be there.

Unfortunately, the two CDs of Schubert works by the Belcea Quartet are not a big hit with me. I have already commented on the undesirability of long, first movement exposition repeats in a recording for frequent consumption. Here, the Quintet's first movement weighs in at 20 minutes. The first movement of the D 887 Quartet extends for a massive 22 minutes. And even the Death and the Maiden's first movement is 16 minutes. Particularly in the case of the first two works, I find their structures become unbalanced.

More annoying, on re-listening, is the wide dynamic range of the recording. Set the volume control so that the frequent fortissimo passages are not too loud, and I then have to strain my ears to listen to the frequent pianissimo passages. Maybe listening through headphones would partly solve the problem; but not the problem of the repetition in the first movements. Quiet playing is a good, and rare, thing. But not if you can't hear it!

I sometimes wonder about EMI. It does seem to me that I have often felt dissatisfaction with many of the company's post-1980 recordings. I enthused recently over Harmonia Mundi's recording quality in Isabelle Faust's Beethoven violin sonata set. Listening to the Belcea Quartet's Schubert recordings (2009, EMI) doubts surface. Individual instrument sounds and characters are lost, since there is no "air" round the recording; it almost sounds as if it were mono, recorded through headphones. It could be argued, of course, that a string quartet should sound like a blend of four instruments, not a collection of four distinct players. But the Busch Quartet was marvellous in the 1930s and one could still admire Adolf, Hermann and their colleagues.

The actual performances by the Belcea are excellent; the broad dynamic range (specified by Schubert's dynamic markings) gives the three works a sharp, bitter edge that sounds most un-Viennese but is probably much what Schubert wanted. More controversial, for me, is the Belcea's decision to obey the repeat markings in the opening movements of both the C major Quintet and the last G major quartet. Composers mark repeats for all kinds of reasons: from habit or convention, to form a logical, balanced structure, or to enable newcomers to recognise the new material being presented before the subject matter is developed in the development section. It is this last reason, I suspect, that persuaded Schubert to mark the long expositions of the first movements of these two works to be repeated (as he did with the last, B flat major piano sonata). However, with a recording that one can play over and over again for years, this "familiarity" reason disappears. The first movements sound too long, and the overall structure of the works is disrupted.

After well over 50 years of serious music exposure and listening, there is a long list of works and composers I love. Two special favourites to whom I return again and again are Handel, and Schubert. This morning I took delivery of a two-CD set of Schubert's Death & the Maiden quartet (D 810), G major quartet D 887, and the C major String Quintet D 956. Works of inexhaustible beauty. The new set comes from the Belcea Quartet and I shall listen with great interest.

A pleasant surprise listening to Henry Merckel on a Music & Arts CD. He plays the Saint-Saëns third violin concerto, Lalo's Symphonie Espagnole, and a couple of bits. I really thought my days of listening to the Symphonie were over, but it was good to listen to the refined, sophisticated sound of the Franco-Belgian violin school. Merckel's trills are a pleasure, and his right arm articulates the music and points the phrasing. Somewhat sad that this kind of lithe, sophisticated style of playing was soon to be buried by the popularity of the organ-toned sound of a new generation of violinists such as Menuhin, Oistrakh, Rabin and Stern. But great to discover that Merckel's sound and style still lives on in these recordings from the 1930s (with the Pasdeloup Orchestre).

By coincidence, I also listened to a "Musique en Wallonie" CD on which someone called Charles Jongen plays Vieuxtemps' Fantasia Appassionata Op 35 and Henri Léonard's 4th Concerto Op 26. Highly attractive music, highly competent violin playing. Alas, there are not even any second-rate Belgian orchestras, let alone first class, so the Orchestre Symphonique de Liège fumbles around in the background. But no one buys Vieuxtemps or Léonard for the orchestral bits.

Haydn and Dvorak

We all have our blind spots. In music, even after over 50 years of really trying, I still cannot warm to the music of Josef Haydn or of Antonin Dvorak. A friend has just sent me a fine recording (Panocha Quartet) of two Dvorak string quartets and, true to form, I was bored to tears when I put them on. What is it about Haydn and Dvorak that makes my eyes glaze over?

I decided that it must be because I like my music to have an occasional dash of lemon or of tabasco. Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert provide this .. as do Tchaikovsky, Wagner and Shostakovich. But, for me, Haydn and Dvorak just write simple, happy peasant music. No twists. No emotions. No forebodings. I might have added Mendelssohn to the list of simple souls, but at least his Opus 80 F minor string quartet shows that he was capable of real emotions from time to time. Sorry Antonin; sorry Joseph. Your superb, professional music is just not for my ears.

I am greatly enjoying the C major violin concerto Op 30 of Moritz Moszkowski. I have now listened to it three times -- with pleasure. It has attractive themes and is very pleasant listening. A bit over-long at 37:43, but far above the meandering efforts of "composers" such as Weingartner, Bruno Walter, or Furtwängler.

The playing of Thomas Christian is accurate and tasteful. But one cannot help wishing the concerto was being played by Janine Jansen, Alina Ibragimova, Renaud Capuçon .. or Kreisler, Heifetz or Michael Rabin. In pleasant music such as this a committed violinist with personality makes quite a difference. Still, all praise to Thomas Christian for actually playing the work, in the first place.

The music critics and academic musicians of the twentieth century have a lot to answer for. Their systematic denigration of anything they considered to be "traditional" music -- ie, non-revolutionary -- made composers such as Sibelius shut up shop. I recall the premier of Shostakovich's first violin concerto being damned with faint praise, as was the premier of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem. All music was post- Schönberg, Webern, Berg, Nono, Stockhausen, Boulez, et al. Bartok was suspicious, Stravinsky was admitted cautiously for his later, cerebral music. In England, William Glock and Hans Keller reigned supreme at the BBC and made sure that no 20th century music with even the hint of a tune or melody was allowed on the air. Practising musicians -- and audiences for music -- may have hated the dodecaphonists and all their followers and hangers-on. But few such people worried what musicians and audiences liked.

Slowly, the hidden music of the 20th century is being brought to light. To read one of the initial criticisms of Rachmaninov's fourth piano concerto, quoted by Yevgeny Sudbin, is to realise just what composers were up against: "It is neither futuristic music nor music of the future. Its past was present in Continental capital half a century ago. .. Mme Cécile Chaminade might safely have perpetrated it on her third glass of vodka". Thank you, learned American critic. On a new CD, Sudbin plays the original, uncut version of Rachmaninov's fourth piano concerto and makes a very fine job of it. The concerto was dedicated to Nikolai Medtner -- another victim of writing "unrevolutionary" music -- and the CD couples this with Medtner's second piano concerto, dedicated to Rachmaninov. Sudbin writes his own programme notes and opines, concerning the Medtner: "Why this concerto is not performed more often nevertheless remains a mystery and is nothing short of scandalous. It offers everything a pianist, or a conductor, can wish for". Bravo Yevgeny Sudbin for the (excellent) performances. And bravo BIS for recording the two works and making them available. Stockhausen's second piano concerto, anyone?

There is no shortage of recordings of Beethoven's complete set of 10 sonatas for violin and piano; from sets I have, Kreisler-Rupp (1930s), Szigeti-Arrau (1940s), Ferras-Barbizet (1950s), Grumiaux-Haskil (1950s), Pamela and Claude Frank (1990s) and Christian Tetzlaff with Alexander Longuich all spring to mind. I have now added Isabelle Faust with Alexander Melnikov; the new set is of a very high standard indeed but somewhat "different". Faust goes from pianissimo to fortissimo; her tone goes from sweet to (intentionally) somewhat harsh. Her bow darts around. The firm end result for me was intense admiration -- for Beethoven's music. Played by Faust and Melnikov he comes over as a true revolutionary of 1800, writing music that is often experimental and frequently "different". Too often this music can sound like a wannabe-Brahms; but not here. Maybe the second movement of Op 30 No.3 doesn't sound as beautiful as usual; but you turn to Faust and Melnikov for excitement, variety and astonishing mood changes, not for simple beauty.

The recording (Harmonia Mundi) is excellent, with a good balance between piano and violin. Faust and Melnikov have a true duo partnership. Kreisler and Rupp are still around after 70 years; maybe Faust and Melnikov will have a similar long life. I have long been a fan of Isabelle Faust, and this new CD set confirms my admiration.

My appetite is returning, so the virus is abating. Just a question of multiple boxes of Kleenex for a while.

I embarked on the latest instalment of Sigiswald Kuijken's Bach cantata series (Volume 9). I am now a fan of the series (and of the music). The instrumental contributions are usually excellent, and the vocal contributions variable, but usually good. One complication is Kuijken's claimed "discovery" of Leipzig pitch at A=465 Hz, versus Dresden pitch at A=415 Hz. This seems to be based on organ tunings. For instruments this is no great problem, of course -- they either tune higher or lower, or transpose. But voices can sound a bit desperate at A=465, with the bass, Jan Van der Crabben often sounding more like a basso castrato, and the tenor, Christoph Genz, sounding even weedier than usual; no Heldentenor, he. What with Marco Vitale's "Roman pitch" of A=392, and Kuijken's "Leipzig pitch" of A=465, those who claimed to possess "perfect pitch" (whatever that was supposed to be) must be having a hard time of it.

Back from travels to Brussels and Paris. 'Flu has struck and I am laid low with a vast pile of new CDs to choose from. What will I pick first? Well, first was Paul Agnew singing Purcell songs; yet another Purcell song disc for my collection, but no one can have too many such discs. Agnew sings very well indeed; the three accompanying instruments are excellent (Elizabeth Kenny et al) and a special note for the recording quality; one notices right from the start the excellent balance between the four participants and the excellent "space" around the music. I like Purcell.

Second was Chloë Hanslip's new CD of Hubay (Naxos) that comes with a special "glamour" outer cover of the podgy Chloë (presumably paid for by her mother, since Naxos does not usually push young flesh). Once discarded and binned, the tasteless outer sleeve reveals a normal CD inside with a cover picture of Jenö Hubay; much more appropriate, given that he composed all the music on the disc. Hubay was not a great composer, but he wrote some attractive late-romantic music. Ms Hanslip plays very well and partly makes up for the tacky outer sleeve. At least she habitually gives us Hubay, Bazzini, et al and not yet more Mendelssohn, Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Brahms and the other usual suspects.

A big pat on the back for Brilliant Classics for Volume I of its promised complete Handel cantata series. Prices are eminently sensible (ie, low) for these CDs. The performances of the first four cantatas conducted by Marco Vitale, with Contrasto Armonico and Stefanie True are excellent. Vitale uses a compromise "Roman pitch" of A=392, and this gives an attractive mellow sound without the screeching and rasping that often characterises "baroque" performances.

Ms True is Canadian, and although her Italian sounds accurate, she does not relish individual words in the way a native Italian speaker would. A pity; but at least she sings prettily and in tune. It is a problem with vocal music that no one sings it quite like a native-speaker does. Anyway, a very minor flaw in a superbly recorded, performed and sung CD.

Opus Kura has issued new transfers of George Enescu's 1929 studio recordings of Corelli, Chausson, Kreisler, Pugnani and Handel, together with a 1950 recording of him playing his own third sonata (with Célingy Chailley-Richez). These 1929 Enescu recordings (almost the only ones he ever made, in his prime) are a whole master class in the art of violin playing and illustrate why the voice, the piano and the violin have triumphed over all other musical instruments when it comes to repertoire and popularity.

With Enescu, we hear incredible right arm techniques, truly magnificent trills, a highly sophisticated range of vibrato, the ability to paint with a broad palette of colours, the ability to combine rubato with firm rhythmic control. Corelli's La Follia variations illustrate almost every aspect of a violinist's art -- and also show you do not need to indulge in baroque follies in order to play 18th century music with no excesses of 19th century romanticism.

I expected Enescu in 1950 to sound well past his prime (he was partly crippled with a spinal disorder). But his playing of his own third sonata, despite the obstacles, is still better than anyone else I can think of. It is really tragic that the recording industry did not fight to record Enescu during the 1926-33 period; we have very few performance souvenirs of this great violinist.

Two Christians; two Joachims .... a CD sent to me by a friend seemed to have things in common. Joseph Joachim's first (Op 3) violin concerto is played by Thomas Christian in a recent off-air broadcast (WDR). Joaquin Rodrigo's Concerto d'Eté is an old recording by Christian Ferras (with Ataulfo Argenta).

But there the similarities end. In truth, Joseph Joachim's first violin concerto is a pretty stodgy and uninspired work. Thomas Christian sounds like an accurate player, but he is neither inspired nor inspiring. The work drags on and sounds like many dutiful violin concertos that have never survived the test of time.

Joaquin Rodrigo's violin concerto came like a welcome draught of clear spring water. The concerto is immediately attractive, with good thematic material. Moreover, Ferras communicates a love of the work and his playing (in 1953) is charismatic. Ferras might even have been able to breathe life into Joachim's first concerto ...

There is a strange symmetry between the lives of Christian Ferras and Michael Rabin. Both were truly first-class violinists. Both had an enthusiasm and joie de vivre in their playing. Both sprang on the world in the early 1950s. Both reached their zeniths in the early 1960s. Both fell to earth in the 1970s, one the victim of alcohol, the other of narcotics. On this current CD, it is good to have the playing of Ferras in the Rodrigo concerto preserved.