A critic once wrote that Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto sounded “very nasty indeed … as if it were being played with a wire brush!”

How things have changed. Until relatively recently it was an outlier to the canon, but since so many of the usual suspects – the cohort of overwhelmingly and consistently brilliant younger violinists – have tackled it with such aplomb, it has achieved a sort of critical mass of success among reviews and listeners. The fact that two new recordings – with James Ehnes and Frank Peter Zimmermann – have arrived simultaneously attests to its new-found popularity.

Interestingly, Zimmermann recorded the work way back in the early 90s (at 24) with the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by the late Gianluigi Gelmetti. This new compilation sees him juxtaposing the Concerto (and I use the word advisedly) with Bartók’s two Rhapsodies, Martinů’s Suite concertante and Méditation.

It’s a somewhat odd compilation, at least on the face of it, with the brittle elegance of the Stravinsky, Bartók in Magyar vein and Martinů...