I've always had mixed feelings about the music of Richard Strauss and have never taken to his orchestral music, nor to the operas except for Rosenkavalier. His vocal music for soprano is another matter, and the collection of 24 Lieder for soprano and orchestra sung by Diana Damrau is unalloyed delight -- especially when accompanied by the Munich Philharmonic (conducted by Christan Thielemann, an all-Bavarian Strauss celebration). All one can say about Damrau is: she is just so exactly right singing this music. Her technique is exemplary, her sound beautiful, her diction superb, her feeling for the music innate. Another gold disc.

More Heifetz this evening, with Mark Obert-Thorn's transfers from LP of some of the Los Angeles re-makes from the 1950s -- Lalo, Wieniawski, Chausson, Ravel, Tchaikovsky. The transfers are excellent in terms of Heifetz's sensuous sound (one can readily appreciate why one American critic referred to his playing as "silk underwear music"). Naxos is the usual excellent value.

In my view, no one comes close to Heifetz's playing in any of these works. Having said that, the Heifetz recordings would be my first choice for none of them. Too much Heifetz, not enough orchestra, not enough composer.

Staying with the happy note: the Waitrose supermarket turns out to sell veal chops! My supermarket allegiance has just changed all over again. My two chops made a superb meal on Saturday evening. And I picked up 12 more bottles of Monsieur Guigal's excellent 2006 Côtes du Rhône (Majestic Wine).

There is often a subtle, but real, link between nationality or geography and the performer of a given piece of music. The subject is fraught with contradictions, however, and few generalisations have seemed so tenuous or fragile.

Thus, I admired greatly the Wiener Oktett recordings of Schubert and Mendelssohn last week because, to me, they sounded so right. In the same way, I admire Schnabel, Erdmann, Ney, Kempff, Backhaus and Fischer in the piano music of Schubert and Beethoven ... because they sound right. As do Gilels, Kogan and Rostropovich in the Tchaikovsky piano trio. As do Furtwängler (especially), Knappertsbusch et al in Bruckner. Grumiaux, Ferras et al in Franco-Belgian music. Sammons in the Elgar violin concerto. The Busch Quartet and Chamber Orchestra in the music of Bach, Beethoven and Schubert. The Russians -- Oistrakh, Kogan, Vengerov, Repin, and others -- in the Shostakovich violin concerto. Klemperer in Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner and Wagner; Russians performing Russian music; Austro-Germans performing German music; Franco-Belgians performing French music; even the English performing English music (often helped by near-neighbours such as Bernard Haitink, Janine Jansen and Simone Lamsma). Not to mention Czechs in Czech music ... and so on.

Exceptions, of course, prove the rule. My favourite players for the Bach unaccompanied sonatas and partitas this year are Lara St. John (Canadian), Nathan Milstein (Russian) and Oscar Shumsky (American). For the Shostakovich violin concerto, I favour Leila Josefowicz (Canadian) and maybe at the moment Julia Fischer (German). For the Paganini violin concerto, Leonid Kogan (Russian). However, on the other hand, my main preferences for recordings of the Beethoven violin concerto are, in random order: Erich Röhn, Wolfgang Scheiderhan, Adolf Busch, and Georg Kulenkampff. And, after all, if players are confined to the composers of their home regions, it does not leave American, Japanese and Chinese artists much to play in the way of great music. Imagine Hilary Hahn sentenced to a life of playing George Gershwin, Charles Ives, Samuel Barber and Leonard Bernstein!
The link between "Homeland" and instinctive empathy is a somewhat mystical one. My ears, however, tell me that it is often a very real link even when language is set aside (as in Lieder and opera, native language speakers usually have a very real head-start over the competition). And, yes, the Chinese Tianwa Yang does seem to have a certain empathy with the music of the Spaniard Sarasate. As do the Finns and Nordics in the music of Sibelius.

Suffering from a kind of mini-flu, I spent the weekend listening to Schubert, mainly centred on some CDs of Robert Goldsand I had received, plus a re-issue of the famous Wiener Oktett recordings from the early 1950s (Octet, Trout, plus the Mendelssohn Octet). Goldsand turns out to be a good, classical pianist from the Austrian school. I liked his playing, but when I put on Edwin Fischer playing the Schubert Impromptus immediately after Goldsand, I noticed the difference. Fischer just sounded "right" and natural, and less contrived; his tempi also sounded "correct" (whatever that might mean).

And the Wiener Oktett in Schubert (and Mendelssohn) also sounded "right". These classic performances will now be the ones I turn to when I want to hear Schubert (which seems to be more and more often these days; I love the restless tonality and modulation in his music).

I have admired the violin playing of Vadim Repin for over twenty years now. But I hesitated a while before buying his new CD (with Nikolai Lugansky). Main obstacle was the Franck sonata, a magnificent work but one of which I already had 48 recordings (including one by Repin and Lugansky from Tokyo, 2004). But I ceded, swayed by the presence of the Janacek sonata and the second Grieg sonata (not the over-played third, thank goodness).

My purchase turned out to be a wise decision. This is a CD with three gold stars and deserves to stay in the catalogues for the next 50 years. To list the virtues:

** The DG engineers have achieved a true recorded balance between piano and violin (no easy thing to do). We do not have a GIANT piano, and a tiny violin. Nor do we have (as prevalent in much of the past) a GIANT violin and a tiny piano. And pianissimos are quiet, fortissimos are loud.

** The players play as a true duo. Often, one is torn between listening in admiration to what Repin is doing with his violin, or Lugansky with his piano. Nota bene, Mr Heifetz, wherever you are.

** Both pianist and violinist are on truly excellent form. This is (almost) a "throw away every other version" record of these three pieces.

A pity the Janacek and the Grieg were not placed with something besides the over-exposed Franck sonata (Lekeu, or Elgar, or Magnard, to list neglected violin and piano sonatas of a similar ilk and period). However: still three gold stars. This goes into my "do not file away" rack.

I have always been ambivalent about the music of Béla Bartok. I recognise the exemplary craftsmanship, and I enjoy many passages and themes in his music. But enjoyment of Bartok is too often cerebral, and I rarely warm to real emotions, feelings or revelations of the man behind the music. I feel the same now having just listened to the two violin concertos (and I know the second, main concerto very well by now). There simply is not the same emotion in the music that one gets, for example, in the twentieth century concertos of Elgar, Shostakovich, Britten or Sibelius.

Nevertheless, the new PentaTone recording is absolutely first rate, with a completely ideal balance between soloist and orchestra (Orchestre de la Suisse Romande conducted by Marek Janowski). The thoroughly capable and admirable soloist is Arabella Steinbacher, a violinist whom I admire more and more (except, as detailed previously, for her Beethoven violin concerto).

Not too many people (I would guess) listen to Glazunov's violin concerto three times within the space of a couple of hours. But I did, today: Oscar Shumsky (1987), Julia Fischer (2004) and Arabella Steinbacher (2006 - off-air). Shumsky was three stars -- serious, beautiful playing, undemonstrative. Fischer was good, but a bit studied and somewhat dictated by head rather than heart. Joint winner with Shumsky (somewhat to my surprise) was Arabella Steinbacher. Technically as good as Shumsky and Fischer, but with a heartfelt commitment to Glazunov's glorious score that was highly welcome. And less dawdling than Fischer.

Of course, still to come in my potential listening pile if I ever find the energy are Jascha Heifetz (two versions), Nathan Milstein (four verions), Riccardo Odnoposoff, David Oistrakh, Michael Rabin, David Nadien, Stoika Milanova, Galina Barinova, Myron Polyakin, Viktor Tretyakov, Vadim Repin, Bronislav Gimpel, Julian Sitkovetsky, Erica Morini, Ida Haendel and Semyon Snitkovsky. If Alexander Glazunov were still alive, he would be mightily pleased at the success of his friendly and likeable little violin concerto

As I've remarked previously, the shuffle-play facility on CD players is not often relevant to classical music. But sometimes it does come into its own, like this evening. Yevgeny Sudbin plays 18 piano sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti (and very good they are, too). Shuffle-play prevents over-familiarisation with the first ten or so. Then on to 19 tracks of Kreisler pieces, played most enjoyably by Ulrike-Anima Mathé, a CD I haven't taken off the shelf for a long time. The music is excellent; no wonder it is still going strong after over a hundred years. And I like Mathé's playing; she understands that Kreisler's music does not respond well to dawdling and over-sentimentalising, and she understands the Viennese dance rhythms that underlie so many of the pieces. A good hour's listening, and another excellent candidate for the shuffle-play (there are no multi-track pieces on either this or the Scarlatti CD).

I do not have too many prejudices (Me? Prejudices?) But I am wary of singers who sing in a language that is not their own, and I am wary of male altos (would you be comfortable meeting a male alto on a lonely street at night?) So I was both surprised and delighted to enjoy most thoroughly Gérard Lesne singing solo alto cantatas by the Bach family (Johann Michael, Johann Christoph, Johann Sebastian, plus an interjection from Georg Melchior Hoffmann, in a piece long attributed to J S Bach).

This is good music, very well sung with superb diction, and ably backed by Il Seminario Musicale (Naïve. 2001). My pilgrimage through my Bach vocal collection commenceth. If I eat and sleep but rarely, I'll finish around 2016.

I have kilos of CDs of Bach cantatas and I really must begin to sort out some kind of priority ranking. Not all Bach cantatas are of equal quality, and certainly not all performances are of equal merit. I started today with an excellent example: cantatas BWV180, 49 and 115 performed by the excellent Ensemble Baroque de Limoges directed by the equally excellent Christophe Coin (Astrée Auvidis E 8530, recorded 1993).

All three cantatas are 24 carat Bach, and Coin has a first-rank line-up of soloists: Barbara Schlick, Andreas Scholl, Christoph Prégardien and Gotthold Schwarz (a very good bass). First-class solo voices are very important in Bach, and frequently an area of weak points in many recordings. Not so here. Coin uses a small choir rather than the econo-choirs favoured by modern accountants and performance managers. I prefer my choruses and chorales sung by small choirs.

I note there are two other CDs of Bach cantatas from the same forces; I have ordered them today without hesitation.

Back home with Christmas out of the way for another year. Most unusually for me, I had a Mozart evening. The symphonies number 39 and 41 (Klemperer, of course) and the string quintets K 515 and 516 (Grumiaux and friends, of course). Highly enjoyable. I haven't listened to Mozart for quite a while. Criminal neglect.

A Tale of Two Cities. In New York in November 2010, Leonidas Kavakos and the New York Philharmonic conducted by Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos performed the Tchaikovsky violin concerto (which I downloaded to listen to). It was a bravura performance, greeted by ecstatic audience noise after both the first and last movements (in this concerto, the New Yorkers didn't get the chance between the slow movement and the finale, played without a break). Kavakos and the orchestra both played at white heat and the old warhorse fair galloped along.

In Berlin in April 1939, Georg Kulenkampff and the Berlin Opera House Orchestra conducted by Arther Rother performed the same concerto (well transferred by Michael Dutton). Alas, Berlin won by many furlongs. This is a very well played and very musical performance of this much-performed concerto. I enjoyed it greatly, even with the absence of the somewhat hysterical razzmatazz that marked the New Yorkers. Both Kavakos and Kulenkampff are on my list of preferred violinists. But Kavakos and the New Yorkers should not have flogged the old warhorse to the extent they did.

Schubert's B flat sonata D 960 is definitely one of my top works for listening to. I got to know it decades ago via an LP with Clifford Curzon. I now have thirteen recordings of the piece which is, for me, at the very peak of piano sonatas. Recently The Gramophone magazine ran a brief survey of the 113 (!) known recordings. That by Wilhelm Kempff came out top, so I took it off the shelf and listened to it again. For my taste, it's very good but with a slight air of routine; it doesn't sound as if it were that special a piece for Kempff on that day. Curzon is still very good (especially in the second movement) but, for me, his playing of the piece is too studied and too precious, and he does not make the all-important (for me) exposition repeat in the first movement.

I have previously praised the recording by Leif Ove Andsnes so I took that off the shelf. I still like it very much. Andsnes plays with a simplicity and naturalness that makes one imagine Schubert is in the room. Much of the music is resigned and world-weary and does not need elaborate pointing by the pianist. Andsnes makes the first movement repeat (as does Richter) and I think it is very necessary for the overall form of the work (presumably so did Schubert, which is why he wrote some extra bars as lead-in to the repeat). I must go back to Richter (a performance in Moscow that I like) and also re-sample the recording by "Joyce Hatto" -- who was actually playing I know not, but I remember liking the performance a few years ago.

Albert Sammons was a major violinist. Almost entirely self-taught, he shunned an international career, concert tours and recording marathons -- like many other highly talented artists. Being little known does not automatically mean being of little value. The admirable Pristine Audio has issued rare recordings of Sammons playing the Beethoven Kreutzer sonata (1926) and the Fauré first sonata (1938). Both performances are admirable. I am not usually a fan of the Kreutzer, but I love Sammons' drive here; he reminds me of Isabelle Faust in his refusal to draw attention to his playing and away from the music. Although much of the violin playing is extraordinary, it's the music you remember. Which is as it should be in these works.

Naxos re-issues have now reached Jascha Heifetz's 1950 recordings (transfers by Mark Obert-Thorn) so it is good to find a new excuse to listen to Mr Heifetz playing the violin. The first of these reissues contains the Tchaikovsky violin concerto (Phiharmonia conducted by Walter Susskind, 1950), the Conus concerto (1952 with Izler Solomon), Sarastate's Zigeunerweisen (1951 with Steinberg) and the Korngold concerto (1953 with Wallenstein). The transfers seem to be excellent, though I have not compared them head-to-head with the RCA transfers of 15 years or so ago.

The Romantic repertoire suited Heifetz down to the ground, and he is in his element in all these works. No one, ever, has been able to sound like Heifetz, and the palette of sounds he draws from one small violin remains extraordinary. The current CD also suggests some of the drawbacks from Heifetz recordings: his preference for back-up groups or accompanists rather than partners, and his insistence on being placed well forward. Heifetz must have been mystified by Adolf Busch's rejection of his own studio recording of the Beethoven violin concerto in 1942 because Busch and his violin were "recorded too forward" (Busch had been made to stand on a wooden box next to the microphone).

No matter in the repertoire on the current CD, however. The works by Tchaikovsky, Conus, Sarasate and Korngold can get by with the likes of Susskind, Steinberg, Wallenstein and Solomon waving distant batons and close-up Heifetz playing at his magical best. One can also admire Heifetz's sense of line and phrasing, and the fact that his unwillingness to indulge in sentimental lingering gives all these works a welcome sense of form and cohesion. Heifetz eases up slightly for tender or sentimental passages, but he never wallows as do so many other violinists.

I have made the acquaintance of the playing of the pianist Eduard Erdmann (courtesy of six CDs from Ronald). One of the unfortunate large band of European musicians who came on steam during the years 1930-50 when the time was not propitious to make an international reputation -- especially if you were German or Russian. In terms of piano tradition, Erdmann belongs with Arthur Schnabel, Edwin Fischer and Elly Ney. Along with Alfred Cortot, he is a pianist for those who value musical performance above all, with 100% digital accuracy being less important than 100% musical credibility. Erdmann has a beautiful sound (he is billed on one CD as being a "Poet of the Keyboard"). Maybe he plays a bit too beautifully? There are players (Jascha Heifetz comes to mind) where you can too often find yourself marvelling at their playing, rather than at the music. With artists such as Fischer, Ney, Klemperer or Adolf Busch -- to pick a few random examples -- one marvels at the music.

Back to Bruckner. The admirable Pristine Audio has just released a transfer of Bruckner's seventh symphony (1949, Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Furtwängler, a performance I have known and loved for many, many years). As usual, one can only listen with admiration to the "new" sound on this latest transfer. And one can also admire the fact that, in 1949 and only some 48 months after the end of the second world war, with the virtual destruction of the major German cities, that 100 or so men were able to produce a performance such as this. Light and hope amongst the ruins. Now, Mr Rose, for a transfer of Bruckner's eighth with the same forces (either the 1944 or 1949 version). Then my personal Bruckner canon of 4, 7, 8 and 9 will be complete.

Violin Concertos by Britten and Korngold

Wheels turn, and what was once down starts to go up. Interesting on Tuesday 30th November to find the BBC broadcasting both the Britten violin concerto (James Ehnes) and the Korngold (Jack Liebeck). Written in 1939 (Britten) and 1947 (Korngold) the two concertos are almost contemporaneous, and both suffered the wrath of the critics who were all hung up on the compositional style du jour as epitomised by figures such as Dallapiccola, Nono, Boulez, Stockhausen, et al. I remember distinctly sniffy comments concerning the Shostakovich violin concerto after its premier in Britain around 1957 -- of the sort "well, Russian composers have to write this people's stuff, you know". Well, the composers du jour of the middle of the twentieth century are definitely on the down-circle of the wheel, and the people's stuff coming up. It's good to see Korngold and Britten going up; I have a soft spot for both concertos, though I am ambivalent about much of Britten's music (with important exceptions).