Josef Szigeti, Oscar Shumsky and Josef Suk were all violinists of the first rank who eschewed low-cut dresses, TV shows and all the other “celebrity” razz-matazz. They were simply first class violinists of the old school. Working my way through a six CD box of early (1950s and 60s) recordings by Josef Suk, I find myself in immense admiration of his playing. So far I've heard his early Dvorak, Suk, Janacek and Smetana; and no one, but no one, plays it better.

In another world and time, I am also working my way through Riccardo Chailly and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in all nine Beethoven symphonies. Heard five of them so far; four to go. Report in due course.

Sibelius seems to have fallen out of fashion for the moment, although back in the 1950s and 60s he was all the rage (just as, at the present time, we suffer from wall-to-wall Mahler). Almost by chance, this evening I pulled his second symphony off the rack (LSO conducted by Colin Davis) and I enjoyed it immensely. A big plus for my wireless headphones, this ability to listen to the thundering climax at the end of the finale without feeling guilty because of my neigbbours. I must listen to Sibelius more often; strangely enough, I've never been able to take to the third and fourth symphonies – though I like all the others and have a very soft spot for the somewhat uncharacteristic sixth symphony. Davis and the LSO are good in Sibelius whose symphonies inhabit that fin-de-siècle land that also contained Rachmaninov and Elgar.

I rarely venture outside of Western “classical” music. But one of the other paths I enjoy is gypsy music, and the other is selective American folk / country music. Listening this evening to Nina Simone was a very great pleasure. She was a singer who sang from the heart and mixed black, country, jazz and classical streams. I first came across her in the late 1950s singing “Love me and leave me” with a very Bach-like fugal accompaniment; she was a pianist who trained at the Juilliard school. I even went to one of her concerts in London in the early 1980s. She was one of a kind, an abrasive individual with an immediately identifiable persona (a bit like Edith Piaf, Elvis Presley or Leonard Cohen). She died a couple of years ago in southern France where she lived in voluntary exile from America where she was born and where she grew up. Her voice lives on and I have many recordings of her, much cherished.

Susan Graham sings a very fine version of Chausson's Poème de l'Amour et de la Mer (with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Yan Pascal Tortelier, 2004). Nice to hear a singer really engage with the words and the music. Chausson's early death (in a bicycle accident, of all things) was yet another sad loss for music. I've had a long love affair with Chausson's sad song cycle, starting back in the late 1970s with an LP and Janet Baker. The music still tugs at the heart strings after all these decades.

Zehetmair in Paganini

After being somewhat diappointed with James Ehnes's re-recording of the Paganini Caprices, I am pleased to give a good welcome to Thomas Zehetmair and his 2007 recording of the same works. I particularly enjoyed Zehetmair's subtle and prevalent variation of dynamics -- from pp, to ff. And Zehetmair, unlike Ehnes, brings out much of the showman character of these capricci. Welcome to the Paganini stable.

The recent superb Beethoven violin concerto recordings by Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Christian Tetzlaff and Liza Ferschtman were spoiled for me by their bizarre choice of cadenzas (when so many good alternatives exist). It would not have taken much to put the cadenzas on a separate track and thus give us the option of inserting some other version. That (should be) an advantage of the digital age. There are many good cadenzas for both the Beethoven and the Brahms violin concertos, and any decent violinist should have 2-3 in his or her repertoire. Give us a choice, and avoid having excellent performances spoiled by bizarre cadenzas. After Brahms, pretty well all composers became wise and wrote their own cadenzas (or supervised the contribution of some virtuoso). Ruggiero Ricci produced CDs of both the Beethoven and Brahms concertos with a wide selection of alternative cadenzas; so it can be done.

It is pretty self-evident that a significant proportion of current “famous” young classical performers owe as much to their looks as to their prowess with the bow, the keyboard, the larynx or the baton. How many young fat, be-spectacled young performers can you remember with front-rank billing?

There are exceptions. I have always been somewhat mesmerised by the violin playing of Lisa Batiashvili – and still am, listening today to her in the Shostakovich first violin concerto (with Salonen) on a CD with a bizarre collection of fill-ups. Even through headphones, with the lights off: I can listen to Batiashvili for hours with real pleasure. And who cares what she looks like? She could well be the front runner for the title of “the most perfect violinist”.

Over an hour of virtuoso violin music is hard to bring off, but I enjoyed a new CD of opera fantaisies from an unknown (to me) young violinist, Haik Kazazyan (from Armenia). A past CD of opera fantaisies from Gil Shaham disappointed greatly a few years ago, but Kazazyan is an intelligent and sensitive player (as well as being a thorough virtuoso) and brings a wide range of dynamics and tone colour to the six pieces. The fantaisies by Zimbalist (Coq d'Or), Sarasate (Magic Flute), Wieniawski (Faust) and Ernst (Otello) are much to be welcomed. I would have preferred Sarasate's Carmen fantasy to that of the over-played Franz Waxman; and I could have done without Igor Frolov's over-long fantasy on Gershwin's Porgy & Bess (I don't like jazz or show-biz music on the violin).

A short word of praise for Kazazyan's pianist, Andrey Shibko, who is not the usual piano-thumper in the corner and plays most attractively when given the chance (he has quite a few good solo bars in the Wieniawski Faust work).

Three stars for Lucy Crowe! I have not really come across the young English soprano before, but her CD of cantatas and cantata arias by Handel really impresses. She has a lovely voice, with a golden timbre to it, and – oh joy! – she actually enunciates clearly so we can hear every word of the recitatives and arias. How rare, how welcome, and what a contrast to Alexandrina Pendatchanska whom I criticised severely recently for her unintelligible libretto.

A highly welcome Handel aria disc to join the many in my collection. Any niggles? Well, The English Concert is a little reticent as recorded and I suspect Georg Frideric would have wanted a livelier sound for his glorious music. And the CD does contain a pretty high dosage of melancholy lamentations; not a wise Christmas gift for a relative subject to depression.

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.