Another recording of Handel's opera Agrippina, this time conducted by René Jacobs. Once again, I enjoyed every minute of the three and a half hours. Jacobs is much more theatrical than was John Eliot Gardiner, and he doesn't go for Handel's after-thought unsatisfactory ending, as did Gardiner. I prefer Gardiner's Agrippina (Della Jones) but much prefer Jacobs' Ottone (Bejun Mehta, versus Gardiner's Michael Chance). Very much swings and roundabouts when it comes to choosing an ideal version.

None of the two casts features real Italians, which is a great pity. Singers can learn to pronounce words perfectly, every vowel and every consonant; but it is usually only native speakers who can really relish the sound and significance of individual words. Jacob's Agrippina, Alexandrina Pendatchanska, sings dramatically and in tune; but even reading the Italian libretto while she sings, it is often difficult to make out just what she is singing. Do they not teach enunciation in Bulgaria? With Maria Callas you could understand every word she sang, even if you didn't speak the language.

In the beginning, I listened to 78 rpm records on a portable (sort-of) wind-up gramophone where you had to change the steel needle after every side. I soon advanced to a record-playing deck (78s only) that plugged into the radio for sound. Then I had my very own record player (Pye Black Box) with an autochanger and the ability to play LPs. Things progressed over the years; I was a late adopter of CDs, since the sound of early CDs was inferior to that of LPs. But the mountain of releases of material not available on LP – notably the Heifetz recordings of the 1950s and 60s – had me buying a CD player. In the end, LP player and cassette players went and I settled down with two very large Acoustic Research speakers (each weighing around 25 kilos) and a succession of amplifiers and CD players.

Yesterday I fired up for the first time a pair of Sennheiser RS 170 wireless headphones: and a new era has begun. The sound from the headphones is superb and far better than from my 20 year old speakers. The sheer convenience is amazing (including the reception range of up to 80 metres). Only conceivable disadvantage is I can no longer hear the telephone when I am listening via the headphones. Expect to see my speakers on Ebay before long (buyer collects); I'll buy a pair of smaller speakers for when someone else wants to listen to something with me. However, the remarkable uncompressed wireless quality of the Sennheisers is remarkable and I now hear all sorts of details that were previously just a blur. Age VII has begun!

After many years and many tries, I am beginning to enjoy Shostakovich's tenth symphony. The performance by Vasily Petrenko conducting the Liverpool Philharmonic sounds excellent to me, and the recording (on a cheapo Naxos CD) is first rate. This evening, however, I decided that for such music I have to invest in a pair of wireless headphones. Click, click on Amazon; the headphones will be delivered Monday. Symphony orchestras and apartment buildings just do not get on well together. My neighbours will be happier.

What happened to “classical” music after around 1950, both in terms of writing, and performance? Having greatly admired Josef Szigeti yesterday (1940 recordings) I find myself today bowled over by Walter Gieseking in Beethoven sonatas (1938-40). Giesking plays like, I imagine, Beethoven might have done, with an appropriate wildness to much of the music.

Difficult to think of much significant classical music after 1950, apart from a few last stragglers from Shostakovich or Britten. For performers, Heifetz, Klemperer and a few others made it for a few more years after which, apart from welcome oddities such as Sviatislav Richter, there not many great names that come to mind. Historians in a hundred years or so will probably discover that music became “mediatised” after the second world war and that there were plenty of marvellous composers, pianists, singers and violinists except their output never saw the light of day since they did not fit the perceived commercial mould. We are very fortunate that music – written or performed – has been preserved for eternity on paper or recorded media.

Yesterday evening I dipped into Josef Szigeti (with Andor Foldes) playing short pieces by Schubert, Brahms, Dvorak, Hubay, Kodaly, Mussorgsky, Lalo and Debussy (recordings from 1941, on a Biddulph CD). It was striking how violinists of the pre-1950s era were able to invest each short piece with its own colour and character. One listens to Szigeti, and the 33 minutes or so occupied by the pieces speed past. Modern violinists are churned out of violinists factories to play every piece with a beautiful, seamless, golden flood of sound; Szigeti uses his bow to invest different colours and to point up rhythms. I enjoyed the experience immensely, which would not have been the case had a technically expert violinist such as Chloë Hanslip or Joshua Bell been playing. A salutary re-discovery, and I was also pleasantly surprised how well the old Biddulph transfers came up (Lewis Wiener, produced by Eric Wen). Peter Biddulph knew about violin sound and seems to have insisted on fidelity. I am glad I have so many Szigeti recordings; his playing and sound are no longer fashionable; but fashion ain't everything, and quality, is.

Cantelli in Tchaikovsky. Ehnes in Paganini

I was disappointed a few weeks ago revisiting Guido Cantelli in Tchaikovsky's Pathétique symphony; it seemed to me simply too fast and too Toscanini-like. However, the Pristine Audio reincarnation of Cantelli's 1950 Tchaikovsky 5th Symphony restores this famous performance to life. Also on the Pristine disc is Cantelli's 1951 Romeo & Juliet Overture; this is a work I love, and this is the performance with which I grew up (it was on an LP with Wagner's Siegfried Idyll on the other side of the disc). Evergreen classics, and it's good to have both the Tchaikovsky works again in very passable sound (Mark Obert-Thorn transfers).

Less keen revisiting James Ehnes in his recent re-recording of Paganini's 24 Capricci. Being Ehnes, the playing is technically and stylistically impeccable. But in this Paganini playing I do miss a sense of joie de vivre, of exhuberance, of sheer revelling in the music. I must investigate some of the other recordings I have (I remember liking in particular that by Leonidas Kavakos).

Monday, and finishing up things since I shall not be eating in again until Saturday evening. So a good start with pâté de foie de canard, followed by perfectly cooked langoustines, followed by a truly excellent sirloin steak, followed by the remains of a very ripe Camembert. The whole accompanied by a good green salad and a bottle of Côtes du Rhône. No dessert, alas.

Three and a half hours go by quickly when listening to Handel's Agrippina. I listened to the 1991 recording on Philips conducted by John Eliot Gardiner which is excellent, with a good spacious sound and with Gardiner less manic than often. The singers are very good, though sometimes lacking in theatrical thrust. The singers (with not an Italian amongst them) simply do not relish the words in a way a native Italian speaker would. But what music! Music positively streamed out of Handel who apparently wrote the entire three and a half hour opera in just three weeks. I liked the work so much I have just ordered a second version for comparison – the new recording conducted by René Jacobs. Reports in due course.

People who like drawing up lists of “top three” or “top ten”, or whatever rarely have much problem with the three greatest composers, and Bach, Mozart and Beethoven almost always romp home. But the second tier? And the third tier? Almost as difficult for list-builders as “the greatest French / English / Italian composer”.
However, Handel (and Schubert) must always come immediately after the top three. Listening today to a new CD of arias from his oratorios (late Handel, composed 1744-50) I marvel anew at his sheer musicality and his incredible gift for simple but memorable melody where he is on a par with Mozart and Schubert. Many, many composers wrote arias for operas and oratorios or cantatas; very, very few are on a par with the caro Sassone.
The present CD features two Canadians – Karina Gauvin (soprano) and Marie-Nicole Lemieux (contralto). The Complesso Barocco is conducted by the reliable Alan Curtis. All are completely beyond reproach. A happy disc.

There are some CDs that, without star names or trumpet-blowing PR, manage to be highly enjoyable. One such I heard yesterday evening features Svetlin Roussev (violin) and Frédéric d'Oria-Nicolas (piano). They play the third sonata by Nikolai Medtner, coupled with the third sonata by Grieg. Both works are first class. The recording and balance (2008) are first class. The playing reminds me that “big names” are not always a guarantee of first-class results and that this CD really does deserve the three stars I gave it.

I also heard the thoroughly admirable Albert Sammons in the first Schubert “sonatina” (with William Murdoch) and in Vieuxtemps' Ballade & Polonaise Op 38 – the latter recorded in 1916 with the Band of the Grenadier Guards, euphonium to the fore. The son of a shoemaker, Sammons was one of the very few violinists who was entirely self-taught. He never had (nor sought) an international reputation and was always happy to tour the local English musical circuits. By any measure, however, he was a front-rank violinist as his whiplash right arm in the Vieuxtemps demonstrates. Again, you do not need to look for big names to find first rate.

During the 1950s and 60s, my father lived just two streets away from Alfredo Campoli, and since he played in the LSO for almost all of that period, he came across Alfredo frequently. He never had a good word to say for the violinist. Partly because of Campoli's background (a café violinist who announced he was turning “classical” after 1945 when café orchestras went out of fashion in England) and partly because of what he once termed to me “his pretentiousness”.

Being the son of my father, I imbibed this prejudice. And listening again this evening to Fat Alfredo playing the Elgar violin concerto, I concede that my father was right. Alfredo was not a violinist of stature. The Elgar violin concerto (1954, with Adrian Boult) features ever-so-sweet violin playing, a bit like eating a meal of sweet courses where even the ham is braised in honey, the whole accompanied by a sweet white wine. When the music is sentimental, Alfredo wows it like a cheap Italian tenor from a minor Italian opera house. The 1954 recording is one of those mono recordings where the orchestra has three microphones (or whatever) and the soloist a microphone all to himself; the effect is almost as if Alfredo had been dubbed on afterwards. We have here an Anglo-Italian version of the Israeli Itzhak Perlman and I don't like it, just as I don't care for Perlman. Bring on the unlikely duo of Albert Sammons and Thomas Zehetmair (for the Elgar violin concerto).

Ion Voicu was a phenomenal virtuoso of the violin. Coming to prominence as a violinist in Romania during the period 1940-65 he was of gypsy heritage and not the least attraction in listening to him is the confluence of gypsy, Central Europe, and great virtuosity. Like so many superb violinists of that period in Central Europe, he never became really well known but he lives on via his posthumous reputation among violin lovers. Born in 1923, he died in 1997.

A friend sent me 90 minutes of Voicu, including the Mendelssohn and second Wieniawski violin concertos, plus a recital disc. The Mendelssohn is refreshing and played fast and straight, with no attempt to inflate the music into something it is not; I suspect Mendelssohn would have liked it. The Wieniawski is marvellous. On the recital disc, the Bach “Air on the G string” is pretty lugubrious, a Locatelli sonata marvellous for the playing, if not for the appreciation of a suitable style for Locatelli, Paganini's Le Streghe a real tour de force, Sarasate's Zigeunerweisen as good as one would expect, Eugène Ysaÿe's sixth sonata is quite spell binding. The recital rounds off with a most attractive folk piece for solo violin by Voicu himself – the Morning After the Wedding and here one can really hear the gypsy in Voicu's ancestry. Quite exhilarating. First time I have ever heard it, and I suspect no one else could ever play it like this (except, maybe, Kopatchinskaja).

Pleasant hour listening to Liana Isakadze and comrades playing string music by Otar Taktakishvili, Sulchan Nassidse, Nodar Gabunija and Sulchan Zinzadse. Hardly household names. An old copy CD, courtesy of Carlos. I particularly enjoyed the concerto for violin, cello and chamber orchestra by Sulchan Nassidse; some quite original music, and a strong link with Georgian folk music. Interesting and enjoyable. The orchestra was the Georgian Chamber Orchestra conducted from the violin by Isakadze.

Good food and a good meal. Somewhat difficult to find in restaurants, even if one pays much money. A little easier to find at home, if one cooks it without outside intervention. This evening was superb: a truly excellent aged sirloin steak (thanks to Marks & Spencer). A good green salad with a highly superior dressing (out of a bottle). A three star Reblochon cheese, with a three star Camembert, both from the market in Cirencester. All accompanied by half a bottle of Cien y Pico 2007 red wine. Difficult to eat better, especially at the home-cooking price.

Afterwards: Josef Suk with the Czech Philharmonic playing Dvorak and Suk (the composer) back in the 1970s. Should have been as good as the steak, but the Supraphon digitised transfer had Josef Suk playing on a cheap Chinese violin once he played above the stave. Don't these transfer engineers have ears?

With great delight, I am steadily working my way through four hours on four CDs of Walter Gieseking playing Debussy (a truly incredible bargain from Regis, with the complete set costing only something like £12). The recordings were made by EMI during the period 1951-4 and sound extraordinarily good, since the piano is much more tolerant towards digitised “old” sound compared with the violin. And the performances are beyond praise; Gieseking's delicate touch and light and shade come through faithfully, but he also gives Debussy's music real backbone, unlike many of the somewhat effete performances one hears elsewhere. Difficult to imagine why anyone bothered to record this music after Gieseking over half a century ago.

A different kettle of fish comes with Miroslav Vilimec playing the fourth violin concerto of Jan Kubelik. I was not aware that Kubelik wrote any violin concertos until I received this from my friend Ronald. This is a live performance from 1994 and the music is interesting. Kubelik had a talent for thematic material (evident in many of the short pieces for violin that he wrote). Here the music reminds me of the Viennese Korngold, crossed with bits of Mahler. I enjoyed it, since the violin, although having lots of “virtuoso” passages, also sings lyrically in many places. A concerto to come back to. The other work on the CD-R, the Op 23 violin concerto by Heinrich Ernst played by Lukas David, sounds much more conventionally “virtuoso” compared with the Kubelik concerto. I much prefer Jan Kubelik.

The violin concerto by Aram Khachaturian is not the world's greatest. And the Romanian Radio studios in 1954 were not the world's greatest recording venue, nor the Romanian Radio Orchestra the best orchestra of the time. But the performance recorded in 1954 by the said forces conducted by Niyazi created one of the all-time greatest violin concerto recordings in history. Julian Sitkovetsky plays like one possessed during the public performance. In the annals of violin playing, this is above that of Heifetz, Kreisler, Milstein, Oistrakh, Kogan, Rabin and the other greats. This is truly incredible technique allied to truly incredible passion. One of a kind. Available to date only on either Russian Disc, or Arlecchino (both currently unavailable). Sitkovetsky recorded the concerto again in Moscow two years later, with the composer himself conducting. But the version with Niyazi is the one to have.

Two years after this, Julian Sitkovetsky was diagnosed with lung cancer. Two years after that, he was dead at the age of 32. Not since the early exit of Josef Hassid has violin playing been robbed of such a supreme exponent. On my shelves, his recording of the Khachaturian violin concerto with Niyazi will hold a place of honour. And I'll play it to anyone who questions as to what the violin can really achieve.

A hot afternoon in England, with temperatures going up towards 29 degrees. So a good time to sit back in a cool(ish) lounge and spend three hours with Handel, this time with his opera Berenice.

The usual ridiculous plot of sundry kings, queens, princesses and princes in exotic lands (Egypt, this time). No really memorable characters (such as strong, wicked sorceresses). And no great arias in Berenice, thought many pleasant and admirable ones. Not Handel's greatest work, but an enjoyable way to spend a hot Sunday afternoon. Alan Curtis is highly competent, as usual, as is Il Complesso Barocco. The admirable cast does not really have a weakness, and I particularly enjoyed the singing of Klara Ek, Ingela Bohin, Franco Fagioli and Vito Priante.

“Harry Collier”, said Mephistopheles; “your time has come, and we will descend together to a very warm place where you can re-join many of your friends. I have decided that you may take with you just one copy of just one violin concerto – the violin is my instrument. The concerto will be: that of Piotr Tchaikovsky. Make your one choice, and come with me”.

“Lord Mephistopheles”, I stammer (playing for time – I have seen the film The Seventh Seal over and over again since I was 16 years old in the sixth arrondisement of Paris, but hopefully Mephistopheles has not). “I have 76 versions of that concerto. How can I choose just ONE, in so short a time?”

“ONE!” says Mephisto, raising his pitchfork. So I run off to choose just one, out of 76, the oldest version in the collection being from 1928 (Bronislaw Huberman, excrutiating) , and the most recent from 2010 (Leonidas Kavakos, excellent). How does one choose between seven versions by Vadim Repin, for example?

In the end I stand juggling Julia Fischer (2006) and Mischa Elman (1947, in the Hollywood Bowl). Have to have Elman but, there again, the Fischer account is an excellent modern classic.

Mephistofeles lets me off the hook: “Forget Tchaikovsky”, he says. “Go with Beethoven and choose one of your 80 versions – you have ten seconds left”. Well, that is a lot easier than the Tchaikovsky, and I descend happily with Mephisto clutching Erich Röhn and Wilhelm Furtwängler's 1944 performance. Lucky he didn't pick Sibelius or Brahms.