Reinhold’s fiddle drags the opera fantasia into the 20th century.

He came, he saw, he exuded charisma and he conquered.

Musikproduktion Dabringhaus und Grimm makes a big deal on their website about the ideals behind high-end audio production, and this recording certainly sounds superb. The tone is warm and naturally resonant, and the instruments are reproduced in a beautifully natural-sounding fashion. If you have a serious audio system at home, this is the sort of recording that you can use to show off just how good a CD can sound. It’s a disappointment, then, that the playing on this disc is merely adequate, rather than good or great. When you can hear every note with crystal clarity, it’s distressing to realise that what should be breathtakingly virtuosic runs at the end of the famous Carmen Fantasy are, in this recording, rather messy. The more reflective passages come off well, with the duo working well together, but in these pieces the spotlight is clearly on the violin. In turn, this means that the flaws come through rather obviously. The other issue is merely a matter of programming. I will admit to a soft spot for the late 19th century’s more flamboyantly virtuosic works, but isn’t an hour and a quarter of operatic paraphrases really a bit much? Yes, they’re rendered in lovingly……

Glamorous German violinist Julia Fischer looks like a thoroughly modern classical celebrity, but in recital her repertoire is in the grand tradition of the mid-20th century when programs never seemed complete without Tartini’s Devil’s Trill Sonata, Ravel’s Tzigane and works by the subject of Fischer’s fifth Decca CD, the 19th-century Spanish showman Sarasate. These dazzling works, composed at a time when Sarasate rivalled Joachim as Europe’s finest violinist, make great showstoppers and encores, but what’s surprising is how satisfying they turn out to be in their own right. Beginning with a couple of Spanish dances, it’s apparent from the get-go how effortlessly the 30-year-old masters the technical challenges of works designed to leave jaws on floor. She sounds like she’s having fun, and why wouldn’t she, especially in Zigeunerweisen, whose czárdás rhythm allows Fischer and accompanist Milana Chernyavska to demonstrate how convincingly a German and a Ukrainian can perform Spanish music inspired by Hungarian gypsies. The highlight, though, is the Serenata Andaluza, whose opening raises expectations of Bizet’s Carmen wandering in, but then transforms into one of those million-miles- an-hour extravaganzas of the kind that prompted George Bernard Shaw to say Sarasate’s music “left criticism gasping miles behind him”. Amen……