Just occasionally the concert reviewer needs to put away their pen and paper and just allow the performance to wash over them.

It doesn’t happen that often, but when it does they know they have witnessed something from another level to which no superlatives, no star rating, can do true justice.

This is the case as Israeli-American violinist and conductor Pinchas Zukerman returns to Australia for the first time in 10 years for three intimate recitals with Russian pianist Olga Sitkovetsky in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide.

Pinchas Zukerman. Portrait supplied

The program is a cleverly planned mixture of short pieces and two of the great violin sonatas from the repertoire in Ludwig van Beethoven’s Spring and César Franck’s Sonata in A major.

A linking theme is an extract in both halves from the Violin Sonata FAE, co-written by Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms and Schumann’s pupil Albert Dietrich and dedicated to their friend the violinist Joseph Joachim.

Zukerman launches the evening with Brahms’ Scherzo from the work. Its bowed tattoos and the restless, Romantic interplay between fiddle and piano make for an arresting and start.

The passion of the young Brahms requires an antidote, and Zukerman provides it in the next piece. Paul Ben-Haim’s Berceuse Sfradite, with its gently bobbing piano and full romantic violin lines and trills, is like a gondola laden with Jewish honey cake – delicious but never sickly.

This is dessert before the main course of the first half.

Beethoven’s Spring Violin Sonata in F major starts a little more sedately than I expected, but as the Allegro progresses, the sap rises. Sitkovetsky’s sparkling piano and Zukerman’s even bowing, glowing tone and effortless control of dynamic and nuance show he deserves the accolade “a true titan of music” that concert promoter Chris Howlett uses in introducing him.

The slow movement is indescribably beautiful and the brief playful hide and seek of the Scherzo makes way for a reading of the Rondo which shows all the distilled wisdom and chemistry of two players who have more than five decades each of performing at this level.

Schumann’s Intermezzo from the FAE Sonata and Edward Elgar’s Salut d’amore after interval set us nicely in an Edwardian salon before the second main course of the night, Franck’s 27 minutes of rhapsodic delight.

This sonata must rank as one of the most beautiful of wedding gifts, its score presented to the great Belgian virtuoso Eugène Ysaÿe when he married his first wife, Louise Bourdau.

It makes for a glorious ending to this exceptional concert, the second in a series which is the brainchild of enterprising Melbourne cellist Chris Howlett, co-founder with Adele Schonhardt of the Digital Concert Hall during the COVID pandemic.

The recitals are aimed at stripping away the barriers so that young and financially strapped people can enjoy live classical music. Howlett has started a “pay what you can model” which encourages patrons to donate through the Australian Culture Fund to help someone attend who cannot afford a ticket.

The series launched with the King Singers, and coming up later in the year are South African violin virtuoso Daniel Hope and British pianist Sir Stephen Hough.

Pinchas Zukerman also performs at Elder Hall, Adelaide on 23 April. A Classical Music Australia event.