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.

Fleeing the advancing armies, or tidal wave, or whatever: which CDs do I grab and take with me? Do I choose work, or performance? This involves also the perennial question of recording quality, versus performance.

For me, performance of a given work is always the No.1 consideration; recording quality comes second. Where there is a clear “winner”, rival candidates can safely be left behind. So I will tuck under my arm Albert Sammons in the Elgar violin concerto (1938), Adolf Busch and Rudolf Serkin in the Schubert Fantasia (1931), Wilhelm Furtwängler in Bruckner's 9th Symphony (1944), the Busch String Quartet in the late Beethoven quartets (mid-1930s), Julian Sitkovetsky and Niyazi in the Khachaturian violin concerto (1954). From my recent purchases I would add Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien in the Lekeu sonata and the Goldner String Quartet and Piers Lane in the Elgar Piano Quintet. For Kreisler pieces, I will always go for Kreisler himself during the first three decades of the last century. For the great Bach choral works I will defy contemporary wisdom (and the BBC) and pick Otto Klemperer in the Mass in B minor, and the St. Matthew Passion (1960s).

For most works, however, it's a toss up. There are many recordings of the Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Bruch, Sibelius and Shostakovich violin concertos, some from great players of the past in poor or average sound, some from excellent players of today in average or very good sound. Which CD do I seize for the first Shostakovich violin concerto? There are so many good ones; Batiashvili? Josefowicz? Fischer? Khachatryan? Kogan? Oistrakh? Repin? Vengerov? And some of these have recorded many versions; there is no obvious choice, as there is not for the Sibelius violin concerto, nor the Mendelssohn, nor the Bruch. Bruch's Scottish Fantasia is a fight between Heifetz and Rabin, with everyone else standing in the wings. Many candidates for the Paganini caprices but, for the first Paganini violin concerto, a fight between Rabin and Kogan (with many runners up, however).

I am extremely happy when I discover a new “golden classic” that can overtake older recordings – one reason why I was pleased with Thomas Zehetmair's 2008 recording of the Elgar violin concerto which, although it certainly does not overtake Sammons' classic version, certainly provides a thoroughly acceptable modern alternative. But otherwise, when the great wave bears down, which version of the Sibelius violin concerto do I grab and run with out of the 50 on my shelves?

Somewhere around I have all 21 Brahms Hungarian Dances played by: Marat Bisengaliev, Aaron Rosand, Hagai Shaham, Oscar Shumsky .. and Baiba Skride. A vast assembly of individual violiinsts plays a selection of one or more indidual dances, from Leopold Auer to Fritz Kreisler and Jascha Heifetz, and beyond. I have no doubt as to the winner of the complete 21 dances: Baiba Skride and her sister, Lauma, take the jackpot. One of those rare cases where I need no other recordings. I am mortally ashamed that I left Ms Skride out of my recent list of top-notch young female violinists. She is a superb player.

After enjoying my recent Naxos CD of three Russian violin concertos, I turned to Julia Fischer on a PentaTone CD where she plays three more Russian concertos (Khatchaturian, Prokofiev 1, and Glazunov) accompanied by Yakov Kreizberg and the Russian National Orchestra. A pity Ms Fischer has left PentaTone; it's a company that currently produces some of the best quality recordings.

I greatly admired these performances of both the Glazunov and the Khatchaturian concertos (I haven't yet re-listened to the Prokofiev). The Glazunov “belongs” to Heifetz, Rabin and Milstein, of course, but Fischer is competitive. I have always enjoyed Khatchaturian's melodic and attractive violin concerto (although some miserable critics tend to sniff at it since it is not “progressive”). The great recorded performance of this concerto is that of Julian Sitkovetsky with the Romanian Radio Orchestra conducted by Niyazi (1954) a searing and scintillating performance that will probably never be equalled on record. Julia Fischer, however, does well and is, of course, better recorded than poor old Sitkovetsky back in 1954. The twentieth century Russians certainly produced many highly attactive violin concertos.

A new Naxos CD of “Russian Violin Concertos” makes pleasant listening. The three concertos are quite undemanding of the listener and pass an enjoyable 64 minutes. The violin concerto by Julius Conus is (relatively) well-known. The Concertino for violin & string orchestra by Mieczslaw Weinberg claims to be a world première recording; the piece, dating from 1948, was only published in 2007. I enjoyed it greatly. The third concerto is that of Anton Arensky; it appealed to me less, mainly because – unlike the Conus and the Weinberg – is does not have much in the way of memorable thematic material.

Well done (again) Naxos. No good relying on the “old” record companies of the world for this kind of CD. The violinist in all three concertos is Sergey Ostrovsky, a name quite new to me. He plays well like a good little Russian, with a sound world heavily influenced by the smooth sound of the Oistrakhs who left a deep imprint on Russian violin playing. Excellent back-up with the undemanding orchestral parts by the excellent Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra conducted by Thomas Sanderling (son of Kurt). And finally, and most welcome, Naxos gives all three works an excellent recording, with good balance between orchestra and soloist. A real bargain for £5.50, or thereabouts.

Baiba Skride

In any recorded performance of the Brahms violin concerto, the important elements – apart from the composer – are the violin soloist, the conductor, and the recording engineers. Despite my recent massacre of my CD collection, I have still ended up with 79 (!) recordings of Brahms' Op 77. The most recent is by Baiba Skride, with Sakari Oramo on the Orfeo label.

It is excellent. Miss Skride plays beautifully, intelligently and with a perfect technique. Oramo – himself a violinist – gives maximum support with the Stockholm Philharmonic. And Orfeo achieves the rare feat of an excellent recording with ideal balance between soloist and orchestra. An ideal balance between one solo violin and an orchestra of around 100 players is easier said than done; in the concert hall, the conductor is supposed to look after questions of balance. In recordings, it is down to recording and balance engineers who too often get things wrong (usually spotlighting the soloist). In a concert hall, the eye can help the ear in, for example, feeding the information that the soloist is scrubbing away desperately even when the orchestra is at full throttle. In a recording, the ears are everything, and unaided, and thus deserve a little help from the balance engineers. For Baiba Skride, the Orfeo engineers get it just right.

This recording balances the “macho” Brahms with the more feminine and lyrical side of his music. I liked it very much indeed. Yet another Brahms violin concerto to add to the highly recommended list. And yet another young female violinist deserving international fame. I have been disappointed with several recent recordings of this concerto; I am delighted with this one. Technique, tempo, interpretation, collaboration and recording all come together. As an encore, Orfeo and Baiba Skride (with her sister Lauma) offer Brahms' Hungarian Dances (all 21 of them, arranged by Joachim). The playing here reminded me often of Toscha Seidel in Brahms, and there can be no higher praise than that.

When I was younger, most major pianists were bald-headed men: Solomon Cutner, Wilhelm Backhaus, Sviatislav Richter, Vladimir Horowitz, et al. But after enthusing recently over Lise de la Salle, I have now to enthuse over Yuja Wang. Her recital CD of Stravinsky, Scarlatti, Brahms and Ravel is one to keep close to the CD player. She displays cool intelligence, plus an incredible technique. Which does not necessarily mean I long to hear her in the Beethoven Diabelli, or the Bach Goldberg. But her Brahms Paganini variations scintillate, as do her two well-known Scarlatti sonatas. Ravel's La Valse sounds suitably demonic and sinister, and the suite from Stravinsky's Petrouchka does not really need an orchestra when Ms Wang is around. A three-star CD.

I first heard Elgar's Piano Quintet at a concert at Boxgrove Priory many years ago and was immediately attracted to it. For some reason it has often been disparaged by critics, some of whom no dealt felt that, because of its date of composition (1918-19) Elgar should have been dabbling in serialism and electronic synthesisers, or whatever.

For me, the music is saturated in nostalgia, in mourning for the end of an era and for the 5.5 million young English, French, German and Austrian men who died in the terrible years of 1914-18. It is End of an Era music, rather like Strauss's Four Last Songs of nearly 30 years later.

I already have the work recorded by John Ogdon and the Allegri quartet, Peter Donohoe and the Maggini and Harriet Cohen and the Stratton quartet (1933) but I launched out on the new recording by Piers Lane and the Goldner Quartet, on the grounds that one can never have too many recordings of the Elgar piano quintet. I am glad I did; the Goldner performance is a revelation and knocks spots off all the rivals. Despite all the participants being Australian, they get to the very heart of this complex, multi-faceted but very English score. I love this performance, which is very well recorded (Hyperion) with a model balance between piano and string quartet. The CD also contains the string quartet to which I have never really taken; perhaps the Goldners will convert me.

It is a little difficult to understand why the music of Henri Vieuxtemps isn't played more. His music is melodic, well written and immediately appealing. It is, however, pretty well absent from concert halls, and rare in recordings, apart from the fifth violin concerto, for some reason.

These are good days for lovers of rarer music in recording. Yesterday I took delivery of a boxed set of all seven Vieuxtemps violin concertos for the price of less than three hours work at the English minimum wage. The set, from Fuga Libra, would never have existed thirty years ago. The orchestra – Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège – would never be mistaken for the Vienna Philharmonic, but it plays with affection and enthusiasm and is well recorded. The seven concertos are given to seven different soloists, all young and from Latvia, Armenia, Russia, Belgium and Australia. Many are pupils of Augustin Dumay, who is also the “artistic advisor” for the seven concerto recordings.

The first concerto is a long work (over 37 minutes) and extremely difficult to play. Vieuxtemps must have had a formidable right arm since whole stretches of the concerto demand incredible bow control by the hard-pressed soloist. As with the music of Spohr and Sarasate, the Vieuxtemps concertos are on the whole light on bravura and rich in melodic violin figuration. Vineta Sareika (Latvia) plays the first concerto extremely well and no allowances need to be made for the fact she is an unknown violinist. The 1690 Gofriller she plays sounds just right for this music. As with the orchestra, there are probably many pluses to featuring lesser known musicians; probably Joshua Bell and the Philharmonia orchestra would sound more polished, but they might never achieve the commitment and enthusiasm evident in these recordings. “We try harder” is not a bad motto; the results can be rewarding, as here.

In the second concerto, the Armenian Hrachya Avanesyan is perfectly good, if not as exceptional as Vineta Sareika was in the first; it's a question of naturalness and fluency -- the Armenian sounds as if he has only recently learned the concerto, and he is not as good a violinist as the Latvian. He sounds as if he has been coached to play in a style that does not come naturally to him. The wisdom of having Dumay as artistic director comes across; however disparate and contrasting the Latvian and the Armenian may be as violinists, their approach to Vieuxtemps is similar.

The Russian Nikita Boriso-Glebsky is given the third concerto, to my mind the least interesting of the first five. He is technically immaculate and copes with the music effortlessly. Stylistically he sounds something of a crossover from the Brahms and Tchaikovsky concertos, a quite different world from that of Vieuxemps. A word of praise for the conductor, Patrick Davin, who gives excellent support (at least, in the first three concertos).

On to the fourth concerto, which is my favourite. Such a pity Heifetz truncated and mutilated the orchestral part for his recording with Barbirolli. For the current recording, the soloist is the Belgian Lorenzo Gatto. An admirable performance, though quite a few fluffs. He and the orchestra manage the difficult scherzo well – Vieuxtemps indicated that, if it were found too difficult for the performers, it could be omitted. A couple of momentary miscalculations by the orchestra in the slow movement have it sounding a bit like Stockhausen.

The main problem is that Gatto simply does not have the authority that a soloist needs in a concerto such as this. Authority is difficult to describe or define (though not too difficult to recognise). When a soloist such as Heifetz, Julia Fischer, Michael Rabin or Alina Ibragimova – to pick four at random – start to play, you prick up your ears (even during a blind listening session). That is 'authority'. For the fourth concerto, I stick loyally with Arthur Grumiaux, a man with much quiet authority.

Concerto No.5 is given to Iossif Ivanov (born in Antwerp, despite his name). In this work he comes face to face with Jascha Heifetz, and it is pretty obvious that Ivanov knows the Heifetz performance extremely well. He does not quite equal Heifetz (who can?) but he is a gold medal runner-up. On a wet Sunday evening, after a good meal, one could almost be forgiven being confused between the Heifetz rendition and that of Ivanov. A big hit for the Fuga Libra set (the first big hit since Vineta Sareika in the first concerto). On to numbers six and seven ..

Number 6, and the Belgian Jolente de Maeyer. An excellent player, and not a bad concerto but it confirms the difficulty of writing finales; we rarely look forward to a finale, with a few exceptions such as Mozart 41, Beethoven 7, Schubert Unfinished (!), Bruckner 9 (!), Das Lied von der Erde, and Brahms 4, and Vieuxtemps is no exception.

The Australian Harriet Langley has the seventh concerto and does extremely well; it's not a bad concerto either, written, like the 6th, when Vieuxtemps had retired to Algiers (like Saint-Saëns after him; what is it about Algiers? I spent a few days there in the 1970s and hated the place. Perhaps it was better in the nineteenth century). The slow movement has a definite couscous sound to it. Anyway, Ms Langley does very well indeed.

So, to sum up: nearly four hours of highly enjoyable music, well recorded and, in the main, extremely well played. It is good to have the seven concertos all in the same sound and stylistic world. Maybe, individually, some of the concertos might sound better elsewhere, but it's a set I'll return to with pleasure. Well done, Fuga Libra, and Augustin Dumay.

Ibragimova and Tiberghien and Guillaume Lekeu's Sonata

There are certain 'golden classics' of recorded music such as: Abert Sammons playing the Elgar violin concerto, Jascha Heifetz playing Saint-Saëns' Havanaise, and Introduction & Rondo Capriccioso, Wilhelm Furtwängler in Bruckner symphonies … and more. Having listened almost obsessively many times to Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien in Guillaume Lekeu's sonata for violin and piano, I sense that a new golden classic has arrived. Budding violin and piano duos from now on may consider recording Lekeu's sonata but, after auditioning Ibragimova and Tiberghien, hastily change to Franck, or Brahms, or Debussy.

Be it for an enthralling performance of the sonata, for an exemplary example of supreme duo playing, for a state-of-the-art example of what a violin is capable of, or for how entrancing a 1738 Pietro Guarneri can be made to sound: Hyperion CDA 67820 is an instant modern classic. I really love this performance.