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...