Australian audiences experienced Alina Ibragimova’s light, luminous tone firsthand in her recitals with pianist Cédric Tiberghien. It’s a sound as suited to the beloved Mendelssohn concerto as the 27-year-old violinist is to her partners on this disc, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. On gut strings, this warhorse is leavened with much-needed finesse.

Ibragimova launches straight into the first movement’s Molto Appassionato with sweetly focused tone – no need to milk that aching, Jewish-sounding melody when it unfolds so simply. She lingers tantalisingly on lyrical phrases, but dispatches fast passages with whiplike agility (if a little less warmth), only occasionally on the verge of getting ahead of herself. It’s that balance of impetuous zeal reeled in by cool, crisp discipline that makes this young firebrand such an exciting performer. Her cadenza is heart-on-sleeve with some very exposed playing – delicate but not lacking in energy – and the riccochet passage passes through ear-bending dynamic gradation before melting back into the main theme of the orchestral recapitulation.

Throughout most of the recording Ibragimova uses vibrato sparingly but judiciously. It’s a little soppy in the tranquil Andante, but still a palate cleanser compared to sickly sweet James Ehnes on Onyx. The Enlightenment band are as gentle as fabric softener here, with horns beautifully burnished when they emerge subtly from the texture. By contrast, the soloist is almost unpleasantly hard-edged in the oscillating, double-stopped passages. Luckily, her featherlight deftness of touch and quicksilver energy return in the balletic Allegro Molto Vivace that ends the concerto in uplifting E Major and recalls the delights of Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Mendelssohn’s last major work for orchestra, six years in the making, was written for the concertmaster of the Leipzig Gewandhaus, so the Enlightenment’s leaner sound is apt. The late, popular E Minor is coupled here with one of Mendelssohn’s earliest works, the D Minor Violin Concerto, dashed off as a present to his teacher when the composer was just 13. It’s the perfect vehicle for Ibragimova’s refreshingly youthful energy. She communicates well with fellow London-based Russian Vladimir Jurowski (planned more than two years ago, the late Sir Charles Mackerras was originally attached to this recording), but the maestro gets a chance to flex more muscle without the soloist between the two concertos, in the overture The Hebrides, Mendelssohn’s paean to the windswept Highlands that also inspired his Scottish Third Symphony.